How to get around Spotify's one device at a time limitation that results in this error message: "Spotify has been paused because your account is being used somewhere else."

You will see this error when you try to play Spotify music from more than one device at the same time:

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“Spotify has been paused because your account is being used somewhere else.”

The reason they do this is so that people don’t share account credentials with their friends. That all good, but I often want to listen to my music at the same time my kid wants to listen to his music. There’s no way I’m going to pay for additional account so we can both listen at the same time. I recommend that Spotify change to IP based restrictions to allow people to authorize multiple devices for their account.

The way around this limitation is download all the tracks you think you’ll listen to ahead of time and put one of the devices in Offline Mode.

1. DOWNLOAD ALL THE TRACKS YOU THINK YOU’LL LISTEN TO AHEAD OF TIME

From desktop app, select your playlist and hit the “Available Offline” toggle button. That will download all the tracks in the playlist for offline listening.

From within the Spotify iPhone app, tap the “Available Offline” toggle switch.

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2. PUT THE APP IN OFFLINE MODE

From the desktop app, just go to File –> Offline Mode

From within the Spotify iPhone app, just go to More… –> Settings –> Playback and turn Offline Mode on.

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You don’t have to put both the iPhone and the desktop apps in Offline mode…just one of them will work.

You can now use Spotify on more than one device at the same time. If the above doesn’t work then just turn off Wi-Fi and Cellular data on your phone.

Jon