Unreliable playback on external device

[ghost]

Issue found on May 14, 2019.

Endpoint(s):

• PUT /v1/me/player/play

Scope(s):

• ['playlist-read-private', 'streaming', 'user-read-private', 'user-read-email', 'user-library-read', 'user-read-birthdate', 'playlist-read-collaborative', 'user-read-playback-state', 'user-modify-playback-state', 'user-read-currently-playing']

Steps to reproduce:

1. Call PUT /v1/me/player/play passing ?deviceid=ID of an external device and { uris = ["spotify:track:____"] } with a track of your choice.

Expected behaviour:

Playback starts.

Actual behaviour:

progress_ms starts advancing, and API behaves as though it is playing back, but no sound comes from device. This almost never occurs on Web Player, but often occurs when playing through an external device. I am testing using Amazon Echo Dot 3rd generation. Once it starts happening, the problem happens with every track, on that device, that is attempted to be played from that same browser via JavaScript. Sometimes, asking Alexa to play a certain song via Spotify clears the problem. Happens worst when playback initiated through Mac/Safari. Problem started around 2 weeks ago, and is regular occurrence now. Prior to 2 weeks ago, this problem did not exist or was rare enough to be freakish. Now, it makes the API effectively unusable.

[ghost]

Spotify's own web player site (https://open.spotify.com) exhibits the same bug, I just noticed.

[victor-paumier]

Still having this issue, today. I can see the progress_ms advancing from the /v1/me/player/currently-playing endpoint, but the value of is_playing stay at false and no sound from the device. Then if I open the Spotify App on my phone (Android) I see the same problem, the progress bar is advancing but the play button is on pause mode...