Spotify connection issues on every drive

[dgaultiere]

This has been bugging me for months but I'm finally getting around to posting about it.

Basically, it goes like this:

1. Come home from wherever after listening to something on Tesla's built-in Spotify for a while
2. Park car, car connects to home Wi-Fi, go inside
3. Sometime later/next day/whatever...
4. I get in my car and drive away
5. Music player shows blank as if it lost connection or something
6. Car disconnects from Wi-Fi once I'm about 100 yards from my house
7. Music player still shows blank (even if I drive around for several minutes)

This is only consistent method I've found to fix it and get it to reconnect to Spotify:

1. Expand the music drawer to full screen
2. Tap the streaming/slacker radio/whatever it's called icon
3. Wait a sec while you see a loading spinner
4. Tap the Spotify icon again
5. Wait a sec while you see a loading spinner
6. Suddenly the music drawer shows the song/playlist I was previously listening to and it works like normal

This seriously happens every time I get in the car from my house. It seems worse when I'm coming from somewhere that I have Wi-Fi (like home or work) but I'm pretty sure it's happened other places too. Yes I have premium connectivity and whatever.

I've done some searches and I can't find a conclusive answer if this is a known issue or if there is something wonky with my car.

Anyone else have this problem?

 

[Shortmanz]

I have noticed this exact problem as well and have been using the same solution you described. It is very annoying. I also have a similar issue with the FM radio where it sometimes fails to switch to the selected station. Sometimes it will switch to the station, but not to the HD2 channel. I have to go into the radio menu and list all of the available stations and then select the HD2 station that I want. It seems like the last two software updates have made both the Spotify and FM radio problems worse.

I have a Model 3 with software software build 2020.12.1. I just got my FSD HW3 upgrade last week, but the problem still remains/

 

[SilverSp33d3r]

Log out of Spotify on all other devices. It seems to help resolve the issue.

 

[jmaddr]

Same issue, same resolution. As @SilverSp33d3r says if you have a bunch of devices constantly taking over the single stream, that seems to exasperate the issue. I also see this issue when using voice control to search for a song. It won’t find anything until I do the work around you have posted, then voice control works just fine.

It’s not a huge issue to me but admittedly is rather poor coding for exception conditions. Still, I’d rather they refine the interface and support podcasts on Spotify, keep the playlists ability to show the entire list of songs through a turn on/off of the car, etc.

 

[Shortmanz]

Thanks @SilverSp33d3r for the tip. I have noticed that when I want to use Spotify on my PC that I have to manually switch the playback device from the Model 3 to the PC. It makes sense that the Tesla MCU would have a similar issue when going the other direction. It would be great if they would fix this though.

 

[SilverSp33d3r]

Thanks @SilverSp33d3r for the tip. I have noticed that when I want to use Spotify on my PC that I have to manually switch the playback device from the Model 3 to the PC. It makes sense that the Tesla MCU would have a similar issue when going the other direction. It would be great if they would fix this though.

I Agree with that as well but nuance fixes seem to be low on Tesla’s priority list. Maybe someone with a ton of social media following could tweet him and get the famous “coming soon” response.
I’d also like them to fix the connectivity issues with the LTE connection dropping and stopping the music. They could easily allow the app to have more than a few seconds ahead downloaded.
One more item that exasperated my problem was if I lowered the volume to 0 at the end of the last drive, this seems to not allow the mcu to connect to streaming services without switching to FM raising the volume and then switching back to Spotify or streaming.

 

[jeremymc7]

I only started having this issue with the last sw update that "improved bluetooth" when entering the car.

 

[dgaultiere]

Thanks for everyone's responses. Glad to hear I'm not the only one with issues.

For those of you who mentioned signing out of other devices, are you saying doing this once fixes the issue? Or do you mean that having multiple Spotify devices causes issues generally?

 

[jeremymc7]

I usually have Spotify active on 2-4 devices. However, previously Tesla would seem to force priority when entering car. Unlike say my home or work computer which would say it's active on the Tesla and I would have to manually switch it over. I don't actually sign out anywhere I just select the active device. I don't think Tesla's version (dumb) of Spotify allows you to choose the playback device like the phone or desktop versions. But that's fine as long as Tesla forces when entering each time, but that's no longer the case. I've only played with things so much but a couple notes on my side.

It now takes about 5 min each time to get Spotify up on the car. It says it has no data. Then says loading error. Then sometimes starts playing only to start over part way through first song. Often it stops playing after first song.

Switching the Tesla to an input other than Spotify and then back to Spotify seems to resolve things faster.

It was never this way before.

 

[Kilotango74]

I have had this issue several times since the last update. I can pull into the garage listening to Spotify, get out, jump back in later and no Spotify. It actually says “no connection” on the screen bit i will clearly have both wifi and cellular signal. Also the whole log out of Spotify on other devices to fix has no real bearing on the issue in my experience. I use Spotify in my Tesla. No other devices. I will say of i switch to radio then back to Spotify that usually clears it up.

 

[golfcart]

I have had the issue described above with spotify from time to time. It usually fixes itself if I switch to a different source then switch back. I have also noticed that spotify requires me to log in fairly regularly since the HW3 updgrade where as before I would log in once and it would stay logged in for months at a time. I am not sure what changed since then but it is very noticeable. Of course I only had my HW3 upgrade for a couple weeks before everything got locked down and I basically stopped driving... so it is a small sample size.