Question

Spotify Skipping Songs halfway through


Hello

When I use Sonos to play Spotify Playlists, most songs play correctly, but every few songs it will cut out halfway though the song and immediately skip to the next song on the playlist.

It doesn’t appear to happen when I play an album from Spotify (or at least I haven’t noticed it doing).

I have tried restarting my router which hasn’t fixed the issue.

Diagnostic: 1175114501

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Many Thanks, Lee


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29 replies

Hello @leeparkers, and welcome to the Community. I am sorry to hear that you are having some issues with playing your music. I took a look at that diagnostic you sent us, and I am seeing some strong wireless interference on your speakers. 

This can be caused by multiple sources. If you take a look at our article on reducing wireless interference, you can locate these sources, and help alleviate this issue. It looks like the Bedroom speaker is suffering the most. What is around that speaker?

Hello @Richard F. Thanks so much for getting back to me.

To answer your question about the bedroom speaker. It is on a bedside table with no other electrical items near it. My wife’s phone will be next to it at night, but not when I am experiencing the issue. Since Lockdown, my work laptop is in the same room (at least 10 feet away) and I have experienced the issue both when I am working on the laptop and when the laptop is switched off.

I have watched the video that you recommended which was very informative as I am not very technical. I managed to log into my Sky router and change the Channel to 1 and also changed the Channel on my Sonos app to 11 (the video suggested they should not be on the same channel).

Unfortunately, 3 or 4 songs into the playlist and I had a repeat of the issue. I ran another diagnostic: 1467976091.

Would the best thing to do be keep choosing different Channels until the issue goes away?

The one thing I did notice in the video that might be an issue is that my router is right next to my Play Bar (as they are connected by ethernet). They have always been in the same place though and the issue has only been happening for a couple of weeks.

One thing to note is that it only seems to affect Spotify and my TV and Record Player never cut out.

It might be worth noting the other WiFi devices we have in our house:

  • 2 x Samsung Phones
  • 2 x Amazon Kindles
  • 1 x TV
  • 1 x PS4
  • 1 x PS3 (Rarely Used)
  • 2 x Laptops
  • 2 x Amazon Fire TV Sticks
  • We also have a baby monitor that is powered off and rarely used when the issue occurs.

Any further help would be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks, Lee

Because you have one of your Sonos players wired into the router, changing the wireless channel on the router will not affect Sonos. In order to change the wireless channel that Sonos is using, we would need to change the SonosNet channel of the speaker to either 1, or 6. To do that, please follow our article on changing wireless channel in wired setup.

Does this seem to improve the issue?

Hi @Richard F. 

Thanks for getting back to me.

 

I tested Channel 1 and got skips again.

 

I tested channel 6 and was having trouble playing anything from Spotify.

 

Do you think this highlights any issues, or is this a separate issue altogether?

 

Diagnostic: 157097215.

 

Many Thanks, Lee

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Hi @Richard F.

As I'm sure you're aware there are many users posting issues with playing Spotify tracks through Sonos - usually tracks skipping to the next track midway through the Playing one.

Certainly, a level of troubleshoting needs to take place to see if the issue is a local issue such as wireless interference.  Pretty much always it comes back that there is some - although I'd suggest there's probably an element of that in almost all households nowadays - the ‘question' is whether or not it’s deemed to be the culprit for such behaviour, a contributing factor or there is something else causing it.  Obviously the diagnostics that users are submitting gives you lots of information ‘we' can't see.

Another poster recently said that the Support agent they were dealing with said there was a known issue with Sonos and Spotify ‘behaviour’ and it was being investigated.  Certainly in my experience the issue doesn't occur (that I've noticed) when playing Spotify through Sonos direct from the Spotify App, it's always when from the Sonos App.

Are you able to give any information as to whether the poster was correct and the issue is being investigated more actively than we currently know - or that the Support was mistaken and there is no ‘known issue' and it is Sonos’ belief that all such incidences are indeed local to the users experiencing the issues (network setup/interference etc.) and not a more general issue with the Sonos/Spotify integration?

Thanks.

Hi @sjw, I am not aware of any issues with Spotify and Sonos. We may have had an outage at the time of that post. Would you mind providing that a link to that post for me so I can take a look at it? 

Most issues that are reported are isolated to that particular system, such as interference or slow network speeds. There are a few instances of that not being that case, such as an outage that affects multiple users at once. 

Thank you for providing that diagnostic @leeparkers. This diagnostic is showing some issues with the Ethernet cable on your Playbar, most likely caused by a faulty cable. Do you have another cable available to swap it out? Once the cable is replaced, does the issue continue?

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To echo what the previous poster said, there have been a significant number of posts related to Spotify randomly skipping to the next song while using the Sonos app. And they have mostly popped up in the past few weeks. I am one of them. I have a pretty solid wifi network in a medium-sized condo, but have switched to a hard-wired Sonosnet hoping that would fix my issue. Sadly, it’s still happening. This had never happened once (at least I can’t remember it happening once) in the previous two years, but all of a sudden happens at least 2 times per hour since the big “Spotify Outage” a few weeks ago. Something changed since then, and it wasn’t my system. Understand that these are very difficult to diagnose, but it seems these must be related and can’t be all individual setups out of the blue. 

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Hi @Richard F.  it's https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/spotify-skips-to-next-song-or-stops-playing-other-sources-work-just-fine-meanwhile-6806367/index7.html by LukasOnTheRun.

“Eventually after having tried all of the above without seeing any improvement, I called in with a phone agent. We went thru all different kind of analysis of my Sonos setup, he saw some causes for network interference and worked on solving them. He also said general connectivity for my system is good and should not cause an issue. He also told me, that the skipping of spotify songs via the sonos app is a known issue, due to problems in the interface sonos has in place for third party streaming platforms. However this seems to affect Spotify only. According to his information, Sonos is working together with Spotify in order to solve this issue in the next big software update which will be released in beginning of June.   I really hope you guys will be able present the solution with the new update, I won’t be liking to play my music through the spotify app the whole time…”

 

I do think the significant increase in Spotify skipping issues recently suggests more than many customers suddenly having problems with their own setups.

Hi @Richard F. 

 

I’m running on Channel 6 at the moment and, “fingers crossed”, I haven’t noticed the issue in a could of days.

 

If it happens again I will replace the Ethernet cable.

 

Thanks for your help so far!

I have been having this issue for months.  Spent hours with SONOS support, for them to tell me, “The problem is with Spotify, not Sonos.”

Just updated to the new S2 App, and updated all speakers.  The issue remains, and now appears to be skipping more often.  I get the issue when I use the SONOS app and when I start streaming in the Spotify app and use Spotify Connect.

 

Any resolution currently, or on the horizon?  Or do I find a different premium streaming service? I really don’t want to switch to Apple Music, but this issue is ruining my listening experience at home.

Hi @leeparkers. I took a look at your diagnostic, and it looks like your Play:1 is getting poor internet connection. Are you able to swap out the Play:1’s Ethernet cable for a new one? 

Once that is done, does the issue continue? 

Would you also mind running a speed test for me, and replying back with the results in your reply?

Hey Richard. 
 

First off, I do not have a Play 1. I have 4 Symfonisk and a single One SL. You are probably not looking at my diagnostic report. I just submitted a fresh one, 65923675. 
 

I have spent about 2 hours with SONOS support and their conclusion was the issue lies with Spotify. 
 

Yesterday I spent two hours with Spotify support. Then they emailed me this morning saying “The issue is not our problem, it lies with Sonos, case closed”. 
 

Due to their poor response, I chose to cancel my service with them and moved to Apple Music. I have had ZERO issues with song skipping on Apple Music. 
 

But to answer some questions. At my router I have a 210/12 connection. I am not running a mesh network, but a multi access point Ubiquiti system. I can consistently pull 160 to my mobile device when sitting by the Sonos One SL speaker. 
 

Wiring an Ethernet channel is not really an option in my current setup. I have Ethernet drops around the house, just none that would work with my current setup. I’m looking to add a Beam to my TV, which could be hardwired. Just waiting for some smoking deals to pick one up. 

Hi @claimed4all.  I was viewing another customers diagnostic, and gave them that suggestion. I Don’t see any errors on your diagnostic report that would indicate an issue. Your Kitchen speaker is getting mild interference, but not enough to justify an audio issue. Meanwhile the rest of your system looks generally healthy. It should be playing Spotify with no issue.

Your system is playing Apple Music just fine. If there was an issue with your system’s network connection, then you would notice this on multiple music services. 

This leads me to assume that something is either wrong with the Spotify account, or the Spotify server. I will reach out to some of my peers so we can investigate this further, and confirm that. 

@Richard F.

with Spotify I had three accounts in my household and all accounts had the issue. Spotify even set up a temp account, the issue persisted. 

my current plan to try to improve my situation. My Kitchen Speaker would be the easiest to hardwire back to the router, plan is to hardwire that this evening and see what happens after moving to Sonosnet. 
 

Does Sonos have a preferred DNS server?  I’m currently working with my providers default, but am open to another if Sonos likes one more than others. 

I did not see any indication of a DNS issue on the diagnostic. However, for troubleshooting sake I usually try Google’s DNS (8.8.8.8) as that particular one seems to work the best. Let me know how you made out with the change. Does the audio still skip? 

I have exactly the same issue with Spotify skipping tracks over the past couple of weeks, other music sources are fine. System has been solid for years up until now.

Getting no way with Sonos support, asked a few initial questions and then never responded again. Latest diagnosis 1476739541. DNS already set to Google.

@Richard F.

EDIT

People make mistakes, and I recrimped and repunched my cable, all speakers are on WM 0 now.

Not that it’s needed now, I did submit an updated report: 335347347  

I will test out Spotify over the next few days and see if that’s the issue.  

 

All info from here on down is outdated:

i hardwired my speaker labeled Kitchen. I restarted the speaker and waited 20 minutes. 
The Kitchen speaker is still showing as on WiFi when I look at my router, but the network lights are lighting up on my switch for that port. 
 

if I go to About My Sonos, all speakers are showing as WM: 1. 
 

I was going to just remove the WiFi network, but it won’t let me. Settings → System Network → (Sonosnet is grayed out) Networks. I then see my wireless network, but I get no option to remove it. Just says In Use. 
 

I just submitted another diagnostic report, 1359745984
 

What did I did wrong her for my speaker not grabbing the Sonos Net?

@Richard F. 

Been a few days on SonosNet and everything that’s not Spotify is working great. 
I still have a few days left with my Spotify premium, so this morning I fired up a Spotify playlists, within 3 tracks I had a skipping issue.
 

Report: 923143096

 

I keep reading about more and more people having issues with only the Spotify service on these forums. Is there any chance the issue is outside of my network, and the issue being with Spotify or Sonos servers And they way they talk to each other? Any of the engineers looking into this issue as a whole?

 

Like I said, I switched to Apple Music just to avoid the skips, but after a week with AM, I very much prefer Spotify services.

@claimed4all I have the same issue and Sonos Support have confirmed a known issue between Sonos and Spotify that’s being investigated in partnership with Spotify.

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@Richard F.

 

I keep reading about more and more people having issues with only the Spotify service on these forums. Is there any chance the issue is outside of my network, and the issue being with Spotify or Sonos servers And they way they talk to each other? Any of the engineers looking into this issue as a whole?

Look at the amount of posts on this for the last year or so but especially the last couple of months. I'd bet it's a problem with Sonos/Sonos-Spotify ‘relationship/handshake’/Spotify.

There are hugely conflicting responses on this forum where claims are made that it is recognised and being investigated and others that it is local interference etc.

Sonos (and Spotify) need to make an official response on the issue so we have the official position on it. It can only help customers and indeed the Sonos Support as they don't seem to be fully in the picture either.

Mine has started skipping multiple tracks now.  I just let it get on with it as it's more casual listening and no biggie - but it's a real pain when the listening is more social, again much less so currently.

I’m also not saying that all issues are with the same thing either - some users may well have issues with their setup and Sonos needs to troubleshoot which are which - BUT the evidence is overwhelming that there is something amiss somewhere in the chain and, as above, official acknowledgement (or refutal) would help/clarify.

@sjw 

An official response would be great, and would probably prevent me from cancelling Spotify. 
 

I will say my issue all started when Sonos has their big outage a month or so ago. Ever since then, it just been unreliable. I have reworked my home network for better coverage/interference. I have moved to Sonosnet. I have rebooted equipment enough that I am contemplating putting smart plugs on each speaker to make it easier. Issue persists. 

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Hi @Richard F. 

I like many other posters am having issues with Spotify tracks skipping mid-way through playback, or being skipped entirely.

There seems to be issues with losing connections to Spotify and songs “not encoded correctly”. Some of the encoding errors appear in the Windows controller for the next song BEFORE the current song finishes playing, so I assume that it pre-loads the next track as the current one is finishing.

All my speakers connect wirelessly to an access point. Nothing on the network has changed recently. The wireless channel is 13, to avoid intererence as much as possible and it has been set to this channel for years.

The ONLY thing that has changed recently is the S2 upgrade to the system.

I have captured a diagnostic and the errors below. Can this please be investigated?

Thanks

----------

Diagnostic ID 1463350762.

Errors in Windows controller

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 3:25 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'Just Looking' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 4:04 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'Indian Summer' - the connection to Spotify was lost.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 4:39 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'Mr. Writer' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 4:43 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'Mr and Mrs Smith' - the connection to Spotify was lost.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 4:57 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 5:03 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'Bust This Town' - the connection to Spotify was lost.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 5:13 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'Step On My Old Size Nines' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 5:19 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'Song for the Summer' - the connection to Spotify was lost.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020 - 5:31 PM Greenwich Mean Time : Dublin, London
Unable to play 'White Lies' - the song is not encoded correctly.

 

I am at the same point recently with Spotify and Sonos, haven’t sent in diagnostics yet, but all my services are working fine and my network is the same, no changes, and just issues with spotify.

 

 

Same here. Mine stops during the song and skips the next song. It’s been happening for a couple of months now. Hopefully they get it figured out, as I much prefer Spotify to Apple Music

I’ve had the same problem with Spotify jumping tracks and been through the various solutions without any joy. Support confirmed to me that this appeared to be a growing issue and would investigate further - still awaiting an update on this. 

Playing music through the Spotify app and using devices available option appears to be working for me without any issues which suggests the issue is with the Sonos apps - both S1 and S2.