Hi All! I recently leased a new BMW 300i with ConnectedDrive and BMW Apps Integration. At first Spotify worked properly and I was able to browse Spotify stations/playlists/etc. directly from iDrive. After an update to Spotify that all has stopped working and Spotify has been looking into this issue since early December with no end insight other than to blame BMW. When I contact BMW, the "Genius" that I spoke with while friendly and wanting to be helpful really does not have much to say other than to contact Spotify, essentially passing the buck. The problem is that both Spotify and BMW are blaming each other and that leaves the customer stuck in the middle and unable to resolve the issue. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I can't be of much help since my newest bimmer is almost 6 yrs. old now, but, it would seem if everything was working okay and the only change was the spotify update and now it's not working, then something in the spotify update was obviously changed that didn't maintain the previous idrive compatibility/functionality. So that falls on spotify, except that doesn't help you any now where update bugs are newly discovered and need time to be resolved, if they're resolved at all. You'd think things like this shouldn't happen, but such is the nature of technology and complicated software coding these days where any changes have the chance of unpredictable consequences. Charlson, our resident tech, may have some suggestions, but I wouldn't expect a resolution to come from BMW's side with any expediency, I find it unlikely somewhere in the bowels of BMW's engineering department there's a whole cadre of programmers tackling a spotify update broken compatibility in an emergency fashion. Probably not much different at Spotify either. Frustrating though I'm sure since app/car integration and functionality is what connected drive is supposed to do - keeping pace with oft & rapid-changing tech must be a steep challenge for all car makers. Surely you aren't the only one to experience this though, so I'd say do some google searching and see if you find anyone else with the issue or coming up with a workaround. The only thing I could suggest to try otherwise is search on whether it's possible to undo the update somehow and go back to the previous Spotify install that was working. Otherwise I guess you're stuck with the less-optimal and danger-of-potential-distraction-while-driving of fiddling with Spotify on the phone & streaming the content.
How are you using Spotify thru bluetooth or the usb cable? Sadly this is common issue since apps update way faster than the cars do. You can go to Bmw.com/update to check and see if there is a media update for your vehicle.
