Owntone problem playing Spotify (browsing OK)

[LadnerJamie]

version of owntone 28.11
platform Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
docker container docker.io/owntone/owntone:latest
Spotify Account Premium Family

I have a new install of Owntone that I have been having some weird problems with. I am experiencing the same issue with being able to authenticate, browse and search my Spotify account within Owntone, but am (mostly) unable to play anything. This appears to be very similar to this issue [#1842].

After much toubleshooting I seem to be able to replicate the problem and have discovered that Owntone works as expected with the Spotify being able to read, search and stream tracks as long as I have used my 'main' Spotify account. As mentioned above, I have a 'premium family' account and if I attempt to authenticate Spotify within Owntone on another (I tried on 2 different family member accounts) family account I can not stream any tracks, although I am able to see all the playlists from that specific account and use the Spotify search function within Owntone (but not stream any of the results). I have switched back and forth between my main account and other family member accounts and this is 100% reproducible.

In all cases once the Spotify account is authenticated in Owntone the username appears correctly in the "access granted" field of Owntone's web interface. Also the "Manage Apps" page of the individual Spotify account shows the 'owntone-server' app.

The error I receive on the Owntone web interface when I attempt to stream a song with a 'family' account is:

Request failed (status: 500 Internal Server Error http://owntone.local:3689/api/queue/items/add?clear=true&playback=start&playback_from_position=0&shuffle=false&uris=library:playlist:15)

I would normally guess that this is a Spotify API issue and not an Owntone issue, but I am fairly certain that my previous install of Owntone on RaspbianOS was able to authenticate to Spotify with another family member's account and function properly. Unfortunately I do not still have the previous server with Owntone still functioning, but I think I may be able to revive it to confirm my suspicion.

On a side note, it seems the same family accounts with the above issue also have the issue of being unable to complete the authentication process without restarting Owntone. I am able to resolve owntone.local to my local owntone installation, but when I attempt to use one of the 'family' accounts to authenticate Spotify I receive an "Invalid Token" message on the Owntone Webpage after I press the "Authorize Web API Access" button. If I refresh the web page I then see a "Could not find access token in Spotify reply (see log)" message. If I then navigate back to the Owntone online-services page, I see the "Authorize Web API Access" button again. If at this point I restart the server and return to the online-services page the "Authorize Web API Access" button is gone and I can see the correct authorized user, but am unable to stream anything from Spotify. I do not experience any of this 'weirdness' when I use my main account.

Here is the log file from authenticating a 'family' account until the "Invalid Token" web page, and then from 06:49 is refreshing the browser and seeing the "Could not find access token in Spotify reply (see log)" message on the Owntone webpage.

I hope this is helpful, and if you'd like me to attempt to resurrect my previous server with Owntone (that I'm pretty sure didn't have this issue) please let me know.

Thanks again for all your time and work on this project.

OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]      web: OAuth request '/oauth/spotify?code=x' in worker thread 346
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]  spotify: Received OAuth code: x
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]     http: Parameters in request are: grant_type=authorization_code&code=x&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fowntone.local%3A3689%2Foauth%2Fspotify
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [ INFO]     http: Making request for https://accounts.spotify.com/api/token
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]  spotify: Token reply: {"access_token":"x","token_type":"Bearer","expires_in":3600,"refresh_token":"x","scope":"playlist-read-private playlist-read-collaborative streaming user-library-read user-read-private"}
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]       db: Running query 'INSERT OR REPLACE INTO admin (key, value) VALUES ('spotify_refresh_token', 'x');'
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]  spotify: Making request to 'https://api.spotify.com/v1/me'
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [ INFO]     http: Making request for https://api.spotify.com/v1/me
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]  spotify: Got JSON response for request to 'https://api.spotify.com/v1/me'
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [DEBUG]  spotify: User 'heritagehouseinteriors', country 'CA'
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:47:01] [  LOG]      web: Could not parse Spotify OAuth callback '/oauth/spotify?code=x': Invalid token
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:49:05] [DEBUG]      web: OAuth request '/oauth/spotify?code=x' in worker thread 346
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:49:05] [DEBUG]  spotify: Received OAuth code: x
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:49:05] [DEBUG]     http: Parameters in request are: grant_type=authorization_code&code=x&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fowntone.local%3A3689%2Foauth%2Fspotify
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:49:05] [ INFO]     http: Making request for https://accounts.spotify.com/api/token
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:49:05] [DEBUG]  spotify: Token reply: {"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"Invalid authorization code"}
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:49:05] [  LOG]  spotify: Could not find access token in reply: {"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"Invalid authorization code"}
OwnTone  | [2025-01-30 06:49:05] [  LOG]      web: Could not parse Spotify OAuth callback '/oauth/spotify?code=x': Could not find access token in Spotify reply (see log)

[LadnerJamie]

I resurrected my old Owntone install on my Raspberry PI 3 (Raspbian 10 Buster), it is Owntone Version 28.10.

I have confirmed that I am able to authenticate the same family accounts to Spotify with Owntone and am able to read, search and stream tracks using these accounts.

I do still have the 'weird' "Invalid Token" message on the Owntone Webpage after I press the "Authorize Web API Access" button with my 2 tested family accounts and this does not happen when I authenticate Spotify using my 'main' account. I'm thinking this isn't related, but who knows.

When I get the chance I'll try a 'bare metal' install of Owntone on the Ubuntu server that the Owntone docker container is running on and see if that makes any difference..

Cheers,
Jamie

Update: I have tried the bare metal install on Ubuntu 22.04.05 and also on a RaspberryPi running Bookworm. Both installs were Owntone version 28.11 and exhibit the same problem with family accounts being unable to stream from Spotify.

[ejurgensen]

I haven't tested with a family account, and it sounds like it doesn't work entirely like a normal account. I will try to upgrade my account to see if I can reproduce and hopefully add support for this.

I suppose you were planning to run multiple instances of OwnTone, since you wanted to use different Spotify accounts? It's tricky to do the OAuth authentication with multiple instances, since Spotify redirects to owntone.local, which could be any one of those instances. The easiest way to avoid that is to only have one instance running during the OAuth authentication step.

[LadnerJamie]

Thanks for the reply ejurgensen.

I don't normally use multiple Spotify accounts in Owntone. I have the family account due to all the varying musical tastes in my household. I have my account (which was the original Spotify account) that works as expected in Owntone, the other accounts were added to my account when I upgraded to the 'Family Plan', 1 for my wife, 1 for each kid (2 accounts) and a 5th account that I use for Owntone. I use the 5th account for Owntone so some playlists and liked artists can be combined for everyone's musical tastes but no one person has to sacrifice their own Spotify account and have everyone elses musical taste polluting their account ;) .

I only tried various other Spotify accounts authenticated to Owntone when the 5th account (for all family) was having issues with streaming in Owntone, and that is when I discovered that only my original account was able to stream in Owntone.

I would like to try reverting back to the previous version 28.10 and see if the problem exists with a new install of that version. Ideally I'd like to revert to that version in a docker container on my Ubuntu server, but if it's easier I could install 28.10 on the 'bare-metal' of the Ubuntu server or a Pi with Bookworm. Maybe this would narrow down where the problem lays.

Do you have a suggestion on the best way to revert to the previous version for testing?

[ejurgensen]

I don't think it's worth testing with older versions, the implementation of Spotify support is exactly the same.