Play has been paused

Since a Spotify user can login to their account from any computer or device (”installation”), the service is programmed to only allow play from on installation at a time. When Spotify is played from another installation, play will be paused on the current installation. It can be started again simply by pressing the Play button.

If you receive the message, “Spotify has been paused because your account is used somewhere else”, it is possible that you have logged into your account on another installation, with the “Remember me” box selected, and have not logged out. In this case, another person with access to the computer can use the installation logged into your account.

Our apologies. This may have been a false detection caused by a bug…

We have received occasional reports of the “Spotify has been paused..” message appearing in cases where the user is absolutely certain that they have not logged into their Spotify account on another computer, and where it is highly unlikely that their password has been comprimised. It is possible that a rare system bug will create such false reports. In this case, you should be able to start play again, as usual, and should not suffer any more than one or two more pauses over a short period.

We apologise for this inconvenience, and will work to try to prevent this from happening. Please contact us again if you find that the pausing behaviour is more persistent than described above.

If you do suspect..

However, if you believe that this not caused by a bug in our system, and that someone else is actually using your account on another computer, the first step to take is to change your password. You can do this on your account profile page on the Spotify website. If you have forgotten your password, you can request a password reset token.

However, resetting your password will not exclude the user logged on with the other computer until they logout. If they do not logout, they will be forced to login again the next time we roll out an upgrade to the Spotify application. Currently, we do this every 2-3 weeks.

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