Music Assistant 2.10.9 Fixes Spotify Queue Stalls and Truncated Snapcast Audio
Music Assistant released stable version 2.10.9 on October 30, addressing 26 bug fixes and introducing one new feature, as smarthomeassistent.de reported. The update resolves an annoying bug where Spotify playback stopped before track completion when using the Soloist engine with disabled autoplay, alongside fixing audio clipping issues in multi-room Snapcast announcements.
Why Spotify Playback Stalled at the End of Every Track
The most disruptive bug originated in version 2.10.8. When streaming Spotify through the Soloist engine, queues halted just a few seconds before a song finished, failing to trigger the next track. The underlying cause stems from how the engine handles end-of-track signals. Version 2.10.8 attempted to cleanly recognize intentional pauses originating from the native Spotify application, but mistakenly interpreted normal track transition signals as manual user interruptions. This affected users who disabled the Spotify autoplay feature. Active autoplay bypasses this issue by immediately pushing the next algorithmic recommendation without registering a pause state.
Spotify expands its AI push with a ChatGPT-like music assistant https://t.co/r6x70xmPuX
Version 2.10.9 introduces a two-second grace period after an apparent pause signal is detected. Music Assistant now waits two full seconds before halting the queue. Intentional pauses triggered directly inside the Spotify app still work immediately, albeit with a brief buffer delay. Developers verified this patch against running instances of the Soloist engine under both active and inactive autoplay configurations.
How Snapcast and Squeezelite Handled Truncated Announcements
Multi-room audio distribution over Snapcast suffered from premature group tear-downs. Short audio clips—such as a 1.5-second chime triggered by a Home Assistant automation—cut off after roughly 0.77 seconds because Music Assistant snapped the playback group back to normal operation while downstream clients still held buffered audio in memory. Version 2.10.9 forces the software to wait until connected clients finish rendering the buffered clip. Volume levels now reliably snap back only after announcements fully clear the speakers.
External Snapservers lack exposed buffer size metrics, meaning this specific timing adjustment does not apply to third-party server instances. Additional Snapcast fixes ensure the playback queue skips cleanly to subsequent tracks without lingering on old audio after a “next” command, while preventing voice prompts from stepping over music tracks. Players lacking native pause handling—including certain Snapcast configurations—no longer restart tracks from the beginning following prolonged pauses. Meanwhile, Squeezelite integration now correctly reintegrates silent group-joined speakers, and the UI no longer displays disconnected players as simultaneously available and actively playing.
Automatic Sendspin Pairing via Home Assistant
The sole new capability in version 2.10.9 is automatic device pairing for Sendspin hardware through Home Assistant, eliminating the manual entry of pairing tokens. This feature requires specific architectural counterparts residing in the Home Assistant 2026.11 beta release, omitting it from the current stable 2026.10.4 release. Hardware nodes must run ESPHome 2026.10.0 extensions. Manual pairing remains fully supported if automated discovery prerequisites go unmet across the local network ecosystem.
