Having a house full of wirelessly connected devices and streaming services like Spotify is great until things don’t work and you find interesting solutions.
One of the benefits of using Spotify to listen to your favorite music is it is available on virtually all platforms. However, like any software, sometimes you run into issues where it isn’t working right. The other day I was using Spotify on my Windows 10 PC and found it wouldn’t play any songs. In fact, I would get an error: “Can’t Play the Current Song” (shown below) at the top of the app. Here is my geeky troubleshooting adventure that led to fixing it.
Fix Spotify “Can’t Play the Current Song” Error
The first thing I did was restart the app, but the error kept coming up, and I really didn’t want to reboot my computer. Sometimes I would briefly hear some audio for a second or two, but then the error would pop up again.
Now, in my case, I am a Premium Subscriber, and my set up is a bit different than just listening through headphones or connected speakers. My PC runs into an A/V receiver and I have a couple of cables and adapters in between my PC and the receiver. So, what I did was double check the cable connections. Sometimes it is as simple as one becoming unplugged. When I worked in IT, if I had a dime for every time the issue was an unplugged cable…but I digress. I thought it might be a hardware problem, so I connected a set of headphones to the computer and still wasn’t getting any audio.
I then turned to my home network. I have Spotify on several devices connected throughout my home. I double checked that Spotify was playing on the right one. Both on my phone and the computer under the “Devices Available” section. I was even able to send the signal from my phone to the PC, so that was working correctly. I went back to the PC and tried to play a song again, and it worked. For whatever reason, playing a song from another device through the PC fixed the problem.
I am assuming that because I have so many different devices, some connect via Bluetooth, some Wi-Fi, and some hardwired. In fact, in this case, I am blaming Alexa. I was able to recreate the error by playing Spotify on my main Echo which is connected as a group for multiroom audio. I did end up rebooting the Echo and haven’t had a problem since.
I did some digging and it appears that this Spotify error happens to a lot of Spotify users. And solutions vary depending on a person’s setup. One successful fix I saw a lot was changing the music quality level in Settings. For example, if you were a Premium subscriber and switched back to a lower tier, or vice versa, a lot of times that will fix the issue. So weird.
Because we so many devices connected to our home networks these days, there is room for error. We have different devices running on different platforms connecting via different wireless standards. It can be hard keeping track of what is connected to what. It is inevitable problems will occur. And sometimes you’ll find some strangest “rub your belly and pat your head” troubleshooting works. By the way, a great tool for finding everything connected to your network is the free app called Fing.
Have you had a similar issue with Spotify or another service? What is your geeky tech troubleshooting experience?