1) In the Alexa settings, Spotify is the default player and is linked. Alexa is logged on.
2) The smart speaker (Ultimate Ears Megaboom) is listed as the current device in the Spotify settings;
3) the speaker was hard reset and everything reentered.

The speaker's Alexa assistant works fine with other tasks, but when asked to play music it says it is going to do so from Spotify, then... silence. None of the other devices with the Spotify account are operating when making requests of the speaker. FYI, this was not a problem about 6-9 months ago; the speaker responded to music requests and pulled the music from Spotify just fine.