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Crossfade skips every other song (20 secs) when using Spotify


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Crossfade feature on Sonos when streaming Spotify works on every other song. It will play one song, crossfade correctly, then play the next song for 20 seconds and skip to the next song. That song will play in its entirety and crossfade correctly then skip the next song after about 20 seconds. I see this topic has been posted many times before with no resolution. Any help???

I use Sonos quite a bit and this feature helps the mood for events. I will need to switch to other services if this persist. Thanks!

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Best answer by Corry P 24 August 2023, 11:16

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Hi @jsimmy 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

We are aware of this behaviour and are investigating. Currently, we have no timetable for a resolution to be implemented.

In the meantime, Spotify should play normally if you disable the crossfade feature.

I hope this helps.

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Hi Corry P, 

Yes I am aware that Spotify will work without the crossfade feature. That was not the question in the mind. I saw this being reported a month ago as well. Is the Sonos team actively working on a solution or having customers “deal with it” mindset? Not trying to be direct with my reply, just seems like this is an issue that should be high priority. Especially as most folks use Sonos music system to entertain folks without interruption. Just my two cents.. thanks!

When do we expect a fix to this. I have entertained quite a few times lately and it is quite embarrassing for the song to stop after 10 seconds and it is also not PARTY etiquette to wait for a song to end and quiet to happen before the next song plays so the current fix does not FIX this issue of entertaining

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Hi @jsimmy & @DeanonDean 

You can enable crossfading in the Spotify app and stream to Sonos via AirPlay, Bluetooth or Line-In to maintain the crossfade setting. Spotify Connect (direct play to Sonos from the Spotify app) does not support crossfade, however.

I don’t have any timescale to share with you for when this issue will be resolved.

I hope this helps.

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Hi Corry P, 

Thanks for the update. I have looked into that before but Spotify grays out the playback option when playing on “other devices”

 

Here is the exact note from Spotify: “These options are not available when listening on another device”

It does work when you Bluetooth with the move or roam but you cannot Bluetooth with the speakers installed in your house as those (sonos 1 or sonos beam) are all connected vis Wi-Fi. 

I hope this makes sense. 

Cheers

This really shouldn’t be that complicated to fix. It makes it very hard to setup a playlist for a party with the right length of time for the playlist if you have random songs skipping after 10s. 
Lots of other competition on the market… maybe I should see if they have better software. 

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Hi @jsimmy 

Thanks for the update. I have looked into that before but Spotify grays out the playback option when playing on “other devices”

Here is the exact note from Spotify: “These options are not available when listening on another device”

Yes - this is what I meant by “Spotify Connect (direct play to Sonos from the Spotify app) does not support crossfade”.

It does work when you Bluetooth with the move or roam but you cannot Bluetooth with the speakers installed in your house as those (sonos 1 or sonos beam) are all connected vis Wi-Fi. 

The Move cannot share a Bluetooth stream with other Sonos devices, but the Roam can, when on WiFi, as can the Era 100 or Era 300.

 

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Hi Corry P,

Every time you reply you state the obvious and not address the main issue. Not sure if you are a bot or just avoiding the problem. I’m not just a beginner user with Sonos products. I have tried every work around for months before I posted on this forum which I wanted to avoid. Please escalate this issue as you can see from other comments on the thread that you have many frustrated customers.

Thanks 

Hi Corry P,

Every time you reply you state the obvious and not address the main issue. Not sure if you are a bot or just avoiding the problem. I’m not just a beginner user with Sonos products. I have tried every work around for months before I posted on this forum which I wanted to avoid. Please escalate this issue as you can see from other comments on the thread that you have many frustrated customers.

Thanks 

I’m beyond frustrated with this as well. This has been going on FAR too long. Dead air between songs is just ridiculous. This can’t be that hard of a problem to solve… and don’t give me that “Supply Chain Issues” excuse or some other BS. It was working in the past… now it’s not. Can’t be that hard to fix.

Especially as it’s most likely a fix that Spotify has to do, since it’s not affecting other Sonos streams….which means the engineers at Sonos can’t do anything, they have to wait for Spotify to fix their servers. 

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@corryp is this a Spotify issue or a Sonos issue? And do you have any updates?

 

Cheers 

@corryp Do you have an update on this issue for us? It’s very annoying actual.

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Hi @User232842 & @jsimmy 

No updates, I’m afraid - and there won’t be any until a fix is put in place. There never is - if we say something will be fixed by X date, and then fail to fix it by that date, it just causes more consternation.

soooo…. better to bury ones head in the sand and pretend the problem doesnt exist?

I have this too, its excrutiatingly frustrating for a music system not to be able to play music in a very simple format - come on sonos, sort yourselves out, take some accountability, give your customers a date and get the problem fixed.

I’m not quite sure how you reached that conclusion from @Corry P ‘s post. You may want to re-read it. 

I recently bought my first Sonos product - Sonos Move - where my intentions were to create a while ecosystem of Sonos products after a lot of research.

The multiple software issues, where the crossfade skip over Spotify issue is the most prominent and serious one, as well as the route of actions taken and communication on your end over this issue is really disappointing. I would definitely consider before spending more money and vendor locking on Sonos products.

I’m a software engineer myself, I know for a fact you can and should provide better service for your customers.

As a software engineer, how do you propose that Sonos engineers get access to making changes on servers owned and managed by Spotify? Since it is working on every other streaming companies service, it seem obvious that the issue is not with the API that Sonos provides to everyone, but some sort of implementation or configuration that Spotify needs to do. 
 

I’ve never allowed external engineers code access to the servers in my company. Perhaps your experience is different.

It might be the case and probably true, and yet - there should be high interest on both sides to fix this issue, the fact that Spotify is accessible through Sonos points to some level of partnership - vague responses on Sonos end without any accountability over the end user experience is not acceptable for several months over such core functionality, that acts as a killer feature of this system is not accessible. Have them buffer and imlement crossfade on their servers if needed, just provide some sort of solution, or alternatively some ETA over permanent fix. And saying that providing ETA is not possible as it might be delayed is not a good answer.

 

I’m not assuming to know what’s the issue nor the solution, softwares will always have bugs, it’s how they manage or actively push towards resolution it and communicate about it, even if the root cause is in 3rd parties (and BTW, the fact that it works for all the other services other than Spotify doesn’t necessarily mean that the issue is on their end, who said that each integration is the same and exposes the same API?)

If Spotify tracks are included in a SONOS Playlist, crossfade is successful.

If Spotify tracks are included in a SONOS Playlist, crossfade is successful.

Thank you very much, you are a genius:)

I’m going to move to another service, given Sonos does not appear to be taking this issue or feedback from their customers seriously. 

It’s Spotify’s issue to fix, not Sonos’. If it was a Sonos issue, all streaming companies would be equally affected. 

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Especially as it’s most likely a fix that Spotify has to do, since it’s not affecting other Sonos streams….which means the engineers at Sonos can’t do anything, they have to wait for Spotify to fix their servers. 

That’s fine but why can’t Sonos just say this is the problem and we are talking to Spotify!!!!!!

Likely because they have a company policy not to point fingers at their partners?

Userlevel 1

Hi, just updated my Sonos system to 15.7 an hour ago and so far I have not experienced the Spotify crossfade issue from Sonos.

Don’t know if I’m just lucky for now, I’ll keep playing Spotify playlists on crossfade...

 

Toni

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