Spotify Can’t Play This Right Now: What To Do About It

Spotify is an audio streaming site from Sweden which launched in 2008 and now mega-popular across nations. It can be free and it can be premium with better sound quality, without ads, and with the capacity to play offline. Sometimes, when you play you may hit a wall of “Spotify can’t play this right now”. Why does that happen and how do you correct them.

Let’s take a look.

Spotify Can’t Play This Right Now: Possible causes/What to do

It is a glitch

You will be surprised at how much apps act like humans. Or you may not be but the point is that they sometimes encounter a glitch and would have to cough it out. Just close and reopen the app and the glitch causing the Spotify can’t play this right now error will go away. If you are using the browser to access Spotify, close the tab and open Spotify in a new tab.

Sometimes you may have to close the entire window.

Closing and opening your Spotify app or the browser tab or window may not do the magic. The issue could be with your operating system and you may have to shut down and restart your computer, tablet, iPhone, smartphone, console, etc. to correct the glitch.

You have not been online for 30 days

With Spotify, you cannot be offline forever and still expect to have your downloads the way you left them. If your Spotify has not been online for up to 30 days non-stop, you may not be able to play your downloaded music. Your coming online once in 30 days is your receipt to keep your Spotify working without an issue.

Error in the files

If your device tells you “Spotify Can’t Play This Right Now”, it may due to some error in the files where you have your downloaded songs. Just uninstalling the app then reinstalling it will do the magic. Sometimes, it won’t. When it doesn’t you need to do a deeper installing by removing the file in the local app data.

Because the song is no longer on the playlist

Sometimes, you have deleted a song from the playlist but somehow, the song is still seen in the playlist but because the song has been deleted the song cannot play. To take care of this, go to the Settings, access Display Options, then toggle on Show unavailable songs in playlists. You will see the songs you have no need of which are still in the playlist. Resync Spotify and the removed song(s) will no longer have anything to do with your playing.

It may have to do with crossfading

Crossfading is the system that controls the transition and the experience between songs on your Spotify playlist. Basically, this is the time between the end of one song on your playlist and the other. The default time is five seconds but it can be set to zero seconds.

This “Spotify can’t play this right now” is mostly caused by having this in zero. Set it back to five seconds. But this problem may also occur because the crossfading is set at five seconds.

To access this, go to Settings then Show Advanced Settings then Playback. Then do your thing.

You have run short of storage

As a premium subscriber of Spotify, if you are using Spotify offline and you begin to run short of storage, you will see this message. For Spotify to work well offline, you need to ensure you have at least 1 GB of storage space. Make space for Spotify, then close and reopen the app.

Image source: MusicTech