Spotify Can’t Play This Right Now? Working Fixes

Spotify is a great app for listening to our favorite songs from our favorite musicians, curated to fit our listening tastes and preferences, and for many of us, it’s our go-to place for all our music needs. One of the most popular issues with the app right now is the “Spotify can’t play this right now” issue. In fact, in the last week of working on this article, we have seen a couple of Reddit posts on the Spotify subreddit of people complaining of having to deal with the “Spotify can’t play this right now” issue on Android, iPhone, laptop and TV.

Spotify Can’t Play This Right Now Working- Recommended Fix

For those who are having this issue on a computer, a quick fix for the “Spotify can’t play this right now” issue is to:

Open the File Explorer on Windows >> select This PC >> then search for “Spotify” >> you select the one that has the file image next to it >> select Users >> select your username >> and then delete the file with the name localfiles.bnk.

Fix 2: Block Spotify’s Ads via Window’s Hosts File

For some, this issue has been fixed by blocking the Spotify ad in the Windows 10 host file. To do this, you can go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc >> open the host file >> search for the term “Spotify” >> you can then put a “#” in front of what you don’t want blocked (it will probably look like this “127.0.0.1 http://audio2.Spotify.com”.

Fix 3: Change Default Sound Device

In case the other fixes don’t work for you, here is another one that could fix things for you. Go to the Control Panel on your PC >> select Hardware and Sound >> click on Sound >> click the Default Device >> open Properties >> Advanced >> change the format to something higher or lower >> click Apply >> from here, you can just set the quality to the highest possible for improved audio quality.

This made Spotify work for some users.

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Fix 4: Disable Hardware Acceleration

In some cases, the fix that worked was disabling hardware acceleration. To do this, go to Settings >> scroll down and select Advanced Settings >> scroll down again and disable Hardware Acceleration. You should retry Spotify and see if it works now.

Fix 5: Do A Thorough Reinstall Of Spotify

If you received the “Spotify can’t play this right now” error after updating the app, or after some time of not updating the app, we recommend doing a clean uninstall of the Spotify app to see if that fixes things for you. This entails deleting any remaining traces of the current Spotify installation and setup and trying a clean installation of the Spotify app again. It did the trick in so many cases.

To do a clean and complete uninstall of Spotify, go to the Windows Start search bar >> type %AppData% in the area and click Enter to open the AppData\Roaming >> look for anything like Spotify in the window that opens and if there are any remnant files, delete them >>  go to the AppData\Local or C:\Users\*USERNAME*\AppData\Local\Spotify\Storage, check for any Spotify folders and delete them >> you should run a search on your PC for any leftover Spotify folders and delete them >> you restart your pc and see if it works from here.

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Fix 6: Reset Default Device To Below 192000Hz

For some users this fixed the issue: go to Control Panel >> select Sounds >> click on the Advanced tab, adjust it to anything below 192000Hz and see if it works. We have noticed that for desktop users, if the frequency of the sound goes above 192000Hz, Spotify starts misbehaving.

Fix 7: Download From the Windows Store

While this isn’t the case for a lot of people, simply deleting and downloading the Spotify app directly from the Windows App Store instead of the website fixed things pretty quickly, so we would recommend that you try it if other fixes don’t work.

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Fix 8: Change the High-Quality Music Streaming Setting on Android, iPhone, and Computer

If you are getting the “Spotify can’t play this right now” error after downgrading your membership, or after moving to another country, chances are that the songs in question are not available in your country and/or the songs are not available on your subscribed plan.

To change the quality of the music streaming on your computer, open the Spotify app >> click on your name in the top-right corner menu >> select Settings >> under Music Quality, select Streaming Quality >> change the streaming quality to Automatic or something lesser >> restart the app and see if it works.

To change the quality of the sound on iPhone and Android phones, open the Spotify app >> go to Settings >> select Music Quality >> under streaming, select Automatic >> exit the app and see if the problem is fixed.

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