Is spotify searching and playing slow, or have i done something wrong?

[krasatos]

Say i search for a song on spotify, it takes about 30-40 seconds to load results.
Then if I ask to start radio from said song (from MAss player card) another ~30-40 seconds to load the list and start playing.
Is this normal? can I somehow speed this up?
Or is it normal behavior?
Thanks!

[OzGav]

This is not normal. You should try and work out where the bottleneck is. Start by trying the search in the MA UI. Then try using the music_assistant.search action in HA. It might be a problem with the card,

[richardwonka]

I am (and have been) experiencing the same. Equally slow also for any play actions involving spotify. Using native ui almost exclusively.

[OzGav]

You should set the Spotify provider to debug and see if that reveals anything. Spotify plays within a couple of seconds for me.

[ascha191]

I’m experiencing the same issue here.
Search and any play actions involving Spotify are very slow (30–40 seconds), even when using the native MA UI.

I enabled debug logging for the Spotify provider and I’m consistently seeing rate limiting errors:

2025-12-15 11:37:47.250 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Attempt 1/5 failed: Spotify Rate Limiter
2025-12-15 11:37:47.250 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Retrying in 7 seconds...
2025-12-15 11:37:54.287 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Attempt 2/5 failed: Spotify Rate Limiter
2025-12-15 11:37:54.288 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Retrying in 1 seconds...
2025-12-15 11:38:05.385 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Attempt 1/5 failed: Spotify Rate Limiter
2025-12-15 11:38:05.386 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Retrying in 19 seconds...
2025-12-15 11:38:24.467 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Attempt 2/5 failed: Spotify Rate Limiter
2025-12-15 11:38:24.467 INFO [music_assistant.spotify] Retrying in 1 seconds...

This seems to explain the long delays.
Let me know if you need more logs or specific reproduction steps.

[ascha191]

I added Spotify via the developer token. Playing music directly via the Music Assistant UI also works with this, and the performance is noticeably better, but your blueprint “LLM Script for Music Assistant voice requests” no longer works:

Ausgeführt: 15. Dezember 2025 um 13:37:54
Fehler: No Music Provider found that supports requesting similar tracks.
Ergebnis:
params:
  domain: music_assistant
  service: play_media
  service_data:
    media_id: The Eels
    media_type: artist
    artist: The Eels
    radio_mode: true
    entity_id:
      - media_player.voice_assistant_media_player
  target:
    entity_id:
      - media_player.voice_assistant_media_player
running_script: false

[marcelveldt]

Radio mode needs to be false then

[marcelveldt]

Were working on a more elegant solution for this issue

[ralphmaman-dot]

Hi ascha,
I just recently started setting up my Home Assistant Green hub and I stumbled upon the music assistant integration and server. I think I have it set up however I am experiencing the same issue with navigating within Home Assistant. It is extremely slow loading and search and even operating something as simple as volume slider you mentioned adding a token can you explain to me how to go about that?

[OzGav]

@ralphmaman-dot Look for personal client ID here https://www.music-assistant.io/music-providers/spotify/#configuration

[schmurtzm]

Same observation of slowness here when trying, for example, to retrieve an artist’s album list — “Spotify Rate Limiter” → it takes more than 20 seconds.

The LMS Spotty plugin does not seem to suffer from the same slowdowns. Is that because it has fewer users, or because the implementation is different?

[OzGav]

In 2.7.0 and 2.8.0beta there is now the option to have both the normal authentication and also add a developer client ID that should solve this for you. https://www.music-assistant.io/music-providers/spotify/#configuration

[ralphmaman-dot]

Hi, thank you for the response. I actually played around with this for a few hours. I am trying to use music assistant and because it's very slow. I tried to add the developer token, for Spotify api I got it authenticated but then when I click on a few artists or certain playlist, it will fail to load kept giving me error message . So I am just using it is as is

…

On Tue, Feb 17, 2026 at 8:13 PM OzGav ***@***.***> wrote: @ralphmaman-dot <https://github.com/ralphmaman-dot> Look for personal client ID here https://www.music-assistant.io/music-providers/spotify/#configuration — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4410 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/BW6G26C2GQFYSG3Q6P26RP34MO4EXAVCNFSM6AAAAACL7LTZ2GVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKOBUGE3TOMQ> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.*** com>

[OzGav]

You might be victim of Spotify's crack down on new accounts. Many users cant use Spotify at all through third party applications.