You tap a song on Spotify and it either skips immediately to the next track, plays for two seconds and stops, or just shows a loading spinner that never resolves. Everything else on your phone works fine. Your internet connection is fine. But Spotify won't play anything properly.
This is one of the most reported Spotify issues, and it almost never means there's something wrong with your account or your subscription. Here's what causes it and how to fix it.
Why Spotify Skips or Refuses to Play Songs
The song is unavailable in your region Spotify's music catalog varies by country due to licensing agreements. If a song is unavailable in your region, Spotify skips it automatically rather than showing an error. This happens most often when listening to playlists created in a different country, or when a song's license expires mid-playlist.
A corrupted offline cache If you've downloaded songs for offline listening, the downloaded files are stored in a cache on your device. If any of these files become corrupted — which happens more often than Spotify acknowledges — the app tries to play the corrupted file, fails, and skips to the next track. This can happen even when you're connected to the internet, because the app prioritizes local cached files over streaming.
Spotify's audio focus is being interrupted by another app On Android especially, other apps competing for audio focus — navigation apps, notification sounds, other music apps running in the background — can cause Spotify to pause or skip repeatedly. The audio focus system is designed to pause one app when another needs to play sound, but it sometimes misfires and never properly returns control to Spotify.
A bad app data state after an update After a Spotify update, leftover data from the previous version can conflict with the new version's playback engine. The app opens and navigates normally, but playback silently fails.
Step-by-Step Fix
Step 1 — Check if the problem is limited to specific songs or playlists
Play a few songs from different sources — your Liked Songs, a Spotify-curated playlist, and a friend's playlist. If only certain songs skip, those specific tracks are likely unavailable in your region. If everything skips regardless of source, it's a device or app issue.
Step 2 — Clear the Spotify cache
Open Spotify > tap Home > tap your profile icon in the top left > Settings > Storage > Delete Cache. This removes the offline files without affecting your saved songs or playlists — they'll simply re-download the next time you play them. After clearing the cache, try playing a song again.
Note: "Delete Cache" and "Delete Downloads" are two different options. Delete Cache only removes temporary files. Delete Downloads removes your offline songs. You only need to delete the cache for this fix.
Step 3 — Close all background apps and restart Spotify
On both iPhone and Android, fully close every app running in the background — especially navigation apps, YouTube, and any other media players. Then close Spotify completely and reopen it. This clears any audio focus conflict and gives Spotify a clean start.
Step 4 — Log out and log back in
Open Spotify > Settings > scroll to the bottom > Log Out. Wait 30 seconds, then log back in. This refreshes your account session and playback license data, which resolves issues where the app can't verify your subscription status in the background.
Step 5 — Reinstall the app
If none of the above works, uninstall Spotify completely and reinstall it from the App Store or Google Play. This clears all app data including any corrupted files from a previous version. Your saved songs, playlists, and account data are stored on Spotify's servers — nothing is lost when you reinstall.
Pro Tip: Turn Off Hardware Acceleration on Desktop
If you're experiencing this issue on the Spotify desktop app (Windows or Mac) rather than on mobile, there's one setting that fixes playback issues in a surprising number of cases: turning off hardware acceleration.
Open Spotify on desktop > click your profile name in the top right > Settings > scroll down to Compatibility > turn off "Enable hardware acceleration." Restart Spotify after changing this setting.
Hardware acceleration uses your GPU to help with audio processing, but on some systems it conflicts with Spotify's playback engine — particularly after driver updates or OS upgrades. Turning it off forces Spotify to handle audio processing through the CPU instead, which is slightly less efficient but much more stable on affected systems.
Most people never look in the Compatibility section of Spotify's settings, which is why this fix goes unnoticed — but it resolves persistent playback issues on desktop that survive cache clears and reinstalls.
A Note on Free vs Premium Accounts
If you're on Spotify Free, some skipping behavior is intentional — free accounts on mobile can only shuffle play and have limited skips per hour. If you're hitting the skip limit, Spotify will stop letting you skip and may behave oddly. Upgrading to Premium or switching to desktop (where free accounts have fewer restrictions) will confirm whether this is the cause.
Last updated: June 2026. Steps are based on Spotify app version for iOS 18 and Android 15. Desktop steps apply to Spotify for Windows and macOS.
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