Anyone Else Having Spotify Playlist and Playback Issues?

[PhilDavid]

After year's of having issues with USB audio not resuming playback when I get back in the car, I thought fine, I will switch over to Spotify, even with the quality degradation compared to the lossless music in the USB drive.

I've spent dozens of hours setting up my playlists only to discover there are serious issues with the Spotify music player as well

Anyone else having these issues with the Spotify audio app? *sigh* I wish they would devote some resources to fixing the USB audio and Spotify music apps. Music playback is the most used application for many of us...

• The Tesla Spotify music player only seems to play around 8 or 10 songs in a playlist. I've spent hours putting together playlists of several dozens songs each and it seems each time the music player keeps playing the same handful of songs and starts repeating them. I listen to songs in playlists in random order and the only way I can listen to other music in the playlists is to manually select a different song and then you have another handful of different songs that keep repeating.
• Spotify music player completely stops playing music after paying the current song in a playlist. Sometimes I can pres the Next Track button and it will proceed to the next track and other times I need to manually select the next song.

If anyone else has figured out a solution to get the Spotify app to reliably play music in a playlist, please let me know.

It just sucks to not be able to listen to music reliably in the car whether it is USB audio or Spotify Music playback is the most useful app in the car and I wish there is some priority given to fixing some of the USB Audio and Spotify app issues that requirement manual intervention to resume music while driving.

 

[Chaserr]

It could be a sign of EMMC failure. I have the same problem and was just reading they cache music on the chip that fails, and in fact streaming audio can cause it to fail faster by writing to the chip more often.

USB is just broken now, they "updated" it without testing weeks ago and removed the feature. This is Tesla now, your car will remain more functional if you just never update.

 

[PhilDavid]

It could be a sign of EMMC failure. I have the same problem and was just reading they cache music on the chip that fails, and in fact streaming audio can cause it to fail faster by writing to the chip more often.

USB is just broken now, they "updated" it without testing weeks ago and removed the feature. This is Tesla now, your car will remain more functional if you just never update.

Why not have an option to cache the music in he USB drive? I have many gigs of extra space in the USB drive.

For all the advanced featured of my car, why does the music experience both with USB audio and also Spotify have to be so awful?

Are you sure the Spotify playlist only playing a handful of songs over and over again is an EMCC issue?

 

[Chaserr]

I'm not sure. It's just been suggested as a symptom.

Tesla could make many aspects of out cars better, but they rarely fix old problems and the media player has only gotten worse for years.

 

[f-stop]

I too have been using Spotify in my Model S the past several months, after basically giving up hope that Tesla has any interest or ability to fix bugs in the USB music player that have persisted these past 5+ years.

I don't have the specific Spotify playlist problems you mention, however I will say that generally I find Spotify to be unreliable in the car.

When it's working, it plays the songs and playlists as expected. But often when first getting back in the car after parked overnight, Spotify won't load for the first minute or two (can't even navigate the playlists), until I first select something to stream on Slacker, and then go back to Spotify. Then after driving a while after listening to Spotify, at some point it will sometimes just stop playing - either a "loading error" or simply it stops playing. Again can't get it to resume unless I first select Streaming (slacker) and go back. Slacker itself is only slightly better, if I'm listening to that it will on occasion just stop. So generally frustrating to have the media player in general be unreliable - especially since getting it working again while driving involves taking eyes of the road, sometimes making multiple attempts to poke at icons and relocate the playlist I was on until something starts streaming again. As you say music is the thing normally on all the time in the car and wouldn't it be nice to just simply work without fussing with it.

As has been suggested, I assume such problems *might* simply be an indication of impending emmc failure (my MCU1 car seems to be starting to show other possible symptoms). However I recally that early on when Spotify was first only available in Europe, and then even when it started to appear in N.American cars, there seemed to be a lot of reports that Spotify app in the car was just buggy. So there's that, plus the general inability of Tesla to make a working music player that could be factors.

 

[PhilDavid]

I too have been using Spotify in my Model S the past several months, after basically giving up hope that Tesla has any interest or ability to fix bugs in the USB music player that have persisted these past 5+ years.

I don't have the specific Spotify playlist problems you mention, however I will say that generally I find Spotify to be unreliable in the car.

When it's working, it plays the songs and playlists as expected. But often when first getting back in the car after parked overnight, Spotify won't load for the first minute or two (can't even navigate the playlists), until I first select something to stream on Slacker, and then go back to Spotify. Then after driving a while after listening to Spotify, at some point it will sometimes just stop playing - either a "loading error" or simply it stops playing. Again can't get it to resume unless I first select Streaming (slacker) and go back. Slacker itself is only slightly better, if I'm listening to that it will on occasion just stop. So generally frustrating to have the media player in general be unreliable - especially since getting it working again while driving involves taking eyes of the road, sometimes making multiple attempts to poke at icons and relocate the playlist I was on until something starts streaming again. As you say music is the thing normally on all the time in the car and wouldn't it be nice to just simply work without fussing with it.

As has been suggested, I assume such problems *might* simply be an indication of impending emmc failure (my MCU1 car seems to be starting to show other possible symptoms). However I recally that early on when Spotify was first only available in Europe, and then even when it started to appear in N.American cars, there seemed to be a lot of reports that Spotify app in the car was just buggy. So there's that, plus the general inability of Tesla to make a working music player that could be factors.

Yeah it's a bit funny that after a couple of years of hoping they would fix the USB music playing bugs, mostly the bug that does not resume music when you get in the car, I too decided to switch over to Spotify and spent many days rebuilding by music library and playlists on Spotify.

Only to find how broken the Spotify music player is I receive lots of loading errors and sometimes music just stops playing. Other times when playing a song from a playlist, it just only plays the one song.

The biggest issue is I made a playlist of over 100 songs and the Spotify music player in the car seems to want to keep playing the same 5-10 songs over and over again although the music player is on random mode

Can someone else load a Spottily playlist of at least 50-60 songs, turn on random, and let us know if it plays all the songs or just 5-10 songs over and over again?

 

[andrewsjra]

When is Tesla going to listen to its customers and fix these issues? I could care less about all the video games they are adding. Just fix what’s there now. Slacker works better but unfortunately it’s not on the same level as Spotify. Why give the US Spotify if it doesn’t work right and they refuse to fix it. I filed bug reports but don’t think Tesla even listens to them. If they did they would have listened to their customers and fixed these issues by now.

 

[P100D_Me]

Where I am from we've had Spotify for years and yes it has always been flaky and intermittent, what you are experiencing is par for the course unfortunately.
We were 'lucky' enough to get an update a while back when you tried to use Spotify at least 70% of the time it would freeze the MCU and a two wheel reboot was required, took about two or three updates to fix that properly.
I always do the playlists etc on a computer, just log in with the same account as the car, it is so much easier. However I don't use the Tesla account by the way, I added the car into our family plan.
But even so I still regularly get the spinning wheel of 'loading error' nothingness when I try to use it, I've essentially given up and just use the USB port for audio (which as we know is another can of worms).
I know I cannot be using Spotify when the car is connected to WiFi and then leave the WiFi range and have it switch to 3G, that usually causes Spotify to become unresponsive.

When is Tesla going to listen to its customers and fix these issues?

I think we know how it all works by now, software stability is not a priority, dumb ass useless gimmicks to tweet about is where the focus seems to be.
Imagine what could be achieved if the MCU code was open sourced (or open in any form), I guarantee you all these pathetic bugs would be fixed because the people working on the code have a vested interest to fix it, not sure that is the case within Tesla.

 

[PhilDavid]

When is Tesla going to listen to its customers and fix these issues? I could care less about all the video games they are adding. Just fix what’s there now. Slacker works better but unfortunately it’s not on the same level as Spotify. Why give the US Spotify if it doesn’t work right and they refuse to fix it. I filed bug reports but don’t think Tesla even listens to them. If they did they would have listened to their customers and fixed these issues by now.

Are you having the same issue where Spotify playlists play the same 5-10 songs over and over again?

This just sucks because it is making me almost get sick of some of my favorite songs because the car keeps playing the same songs over and over again.

I wish someone could plead with Elon to please ask the developers to fix the music player. It's the one app that is always on and used the most often. I keep reading about new games they are adding while there are major bugs with the USB and Spotify music players

 

[KArnold]

Interesting. My MCU1 car has similar problems when starting like f-stop described. At home I wrote that up to switching from WiFi to mobile data - I have gotten into the habit of stopping at the end of the driveway to re-select my Playlist. And at my office I park in underground parking without data - so again I re-elect my Playlist when I have signal. Of course, I'm guessing that is the cause. For me it's a relatively small bug, but definitely a bug regardless of the cause. I am using my own account with spotify premium which I think you need for playlists.

But once on the road I've not noticed the "same songs" problem described. I listen almost exclusively to various playlists while driving.

Not the best but you could use spotify on your phone and Bluetooth it.

 

[f-stop]

Interesting. My MCU1 car has similar problems when starting like f-stop described. At home I wrote that up to switching from WiFi to mobile data - I have gotten into the habit of stopping at the end of the driveway to re-select my Playlist. And at my office I park in underground parking without data - so again I re-elect my Playlist when I have signal. Of course, I'm guessing that is the cause. For me it's a relatively small bug, but definitely a bug regardless of the cause. I am using my own account with spotify premium which I think you need for playlists.

But once on the road I've not noticed the "same songs" problem described. I listen almost exclusively to various playlists while driving.

at times I've thought the fail-to-start problem with Spotify might have something to do with switching between wifi at home to LTE when first leaving my garage - it might be one factor... but the same problem can occur when parked outside away from home where there was a good solid LTE signal. Other days Spotify may start up perfectly where it left off leaving the garage & wifi. Also doesn't explain why sometimes when driving the music playback just stops, and Spotify refuses to respond to any press without switching first to Slacker and back. You'd think if it were a momentary cellular signal loss that buffering would easily handle it (besides, all my driving is within the city, with pretty solid cellular coverage).

as for the mentioned problem with playlists playing only the same 5-10 songs over and over - I've never observed that, specifically. *When* Spotify is working properly, it seems to play through a long playlist just fine - I almost always have it on shuffle and am often playing one of the "made for you" playlists e.g. Daily Mix 1, Discover Weekly etc. I have a Premium account.

I think we know how it all works by now, software stability is not a priority, dumb ass useless gimmicks to tweet about is where the focus seems to be.
Imagine what could be achieved if the MCU code was open sourced (or open in any form), I guarantee you all these pathetic bugs would be fixed because the people working on the code have a vested interest to fix it, not sure that is the case within Tesla.

^This

p.s. an aside - I'm wondering if people with MCU2 cars have the same problems with Spotify, or are these MCU1-only issues?

 

[andrewsjra]

at times I've thought the fail-to-start problem with Spotify might have something to do with switching between wifi at home to LTE when first leaving my garage - it might be one factor... but the same problem can occur when parked outside away from home where there was a good solid LTE signal. Other days Spotify may start up perfectly where it left off leaving the garage & wifi. Also doesn't explain why sometimes when driving the music playback just stops, and Spotify refuses to respond to any press without switching first to Slacker and back. You'd think if it were a momentary cellular signal loss that buffering would easily handle it (besides, all my driving is within the city, with pretty solid cellular coverage).

as for the mentioned problem with playlists playing only the same 5-10 songs over and over - I've never observed that, specifically. *When* Spotify is working properly, it seems to play through a long playlist just fine - I almost always have it on shuffle and am often playing one of the "made for you" playlists e.g. Daily Mix 1, Discover Weekly etc. I have a Premium account.


^This

p.s. an aside - I'm wondering if people with MCU2 cars have the same problems with Spotify, or are these MCU1-only issues?

I’ve also noticed that if I get to my destination before Spotify begins loading my library such as play lists or albums and exit the car putting it back to sleep, when I get back in the car the items still don’t load. So I’m not sure if it’s necessarily WiFi to LTE that’s the issue. It’s just waking up in general it has an issue reconnecting to Spotify right away. I’m not sure about songs replaying in my playlists as I only play ones that I searched and followed. I haven’t made my own personal playlist before. With all the updates Tesla pushes it would be an easy fix. Maybe we need to start some kind of petition or have someone big tweet to Elon to fix this.

 

[P100D_Me]

I'm wondering if people with MCU2 cars have the same problems with Spotify, or are these MCU1-only issues?

Interested in this as well, we might start getting fed the excuse "sorry sir, your hardware is too old, you need to update to run the latest software", but my car is only 3 years old....'yes, yes it is'

 

[DCEV]

Interested in this as well, we might start getting fed the excuse "sorry sir, your hardware is too old, you need to update to run the latest software", but my car is only 3 years old....'yes, yes it is'

I am very sad to report that Spotify is also broken on MCU 2.0

I have the same annoying issue that makes Spotify unusable as the OP. Basically the car keeps playing the same few songs over and over again even if a playlist has over 100 songs.

Has anyone been able to get the Spotify music player to play a playlist in random where it plays all the songs on the playlist rather than keep playing the same few songs over and over and over again?

 

[andrewsjra]

Didn’t realize I was in the model S forum but I have a MCU 2.0 in my Model 3 and yes the issues are there. I just saw the new early release of 2020.20 includes the Fallout Shelter game. That’s what I’m talking about. And the previous release they fixed a bug in one of their games. That’s what I mean, fix other things that aren’t important and leave Spotify broken. I wish they had their priories straight. I only really listen to music while I’m driving and would like a great experience using it. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. A redo for the entire media player as a whole is needed as well.

 

[P100D_Me]

Well that is good to know (good, but sad) that it isn't hardware specific.

 

[andrewsjra]

I contacted Spotify technical support today and they stated it was Tesla who needs to be contacted to fix this issue.

 

[PhilDavid]

I contacted Spotify technical support today and they stated it was Tesla who needs to be contacted to fix this issue.

That's a GREAT idea!

Could you please share how you contacted Spotify support?

We can all perhaps use the same way to contact Spotify support and ask for some help with this. Maybe if enough of us contact Spotify, someone at Spotify might reach out to Tesla about what they could do to help their customers. I bet there was some integration between Tesla and Spotify for the music player in our cars so perhaps Spotify can help coordinate a resolution so we have a functional Spotify music player.

I spent several weeks putting together all the playlists I created and it just sucks that the car keeps playing the same 5 or 6 songs Other times it just plays the same song over and over again and sometimes it refuses to play anything until I go to another audio source and then reopen the Spotify music player.

This is the most advanced car I've ever owned with the least advanced and buggy music player of any car I've owned

 

[andrewsjra]

I went to their support page: Support - Spotify and selected “Techbical Issue”. It eventually routes you to a web chat. Worth a shot I suppose if enough people do it.

 

[andrewsjra]

I also emailed Tesla support under firmware apps section. Let’s see if I get a response.