music-assistant-librespot-wrong-account

name	music-assistant-librespot-wrong-account
description	Fix for Music Assistant Spotify playback failing with "librespot does not support free accounts" even when the Spotify account has Premium. Use when: (1) Songs load for 1-2 seconds then auto-pause, (2) Music Assistant logs show "librespot does not support free accounts" followed by FFmpeg "Invalid data found when processing input" exit code 183, (3) Spotify provider shows "Successfully logged in" but streaming fails. Root cause is stale librespot credential cache pointing to a different (free-tier) Spotify account.
author	Claude Code
version	1.0.0
date	"2026-02-21T00:00:00.000Z"

Music Assistant Librespot Wrong Account / Stale Credentials

Problem

Music Assistant (MASS) Spotify playback fails immediately — songs appear to load for 1-2 seconds then auto-pause. Every track is marked "unplayable". The error log shows librespot rejecting the account as "free" despite the configured Spotify account having Premium.

Context / Trigger Conditions

• Music Assistant addon on Home Assistant (tested with v2.7.8, addon d5369777_music_assistant)
• Symptoms: Song starts loading, pauses after 1-2 seconds, skipped as "unplayable"
• Log pattern (all three appear together on every play attempt):

  WARNING [music_assistant.spotify] [librespot] librespot does not support "free" accounts.
  WARNING [music_assistant.audio.media_stream] Error opening input: Invalid data found when processing input
  ERROR [music_assistant.streams] AudioError while streaming queue item ... FFMpeg exited with code 183
  

• OAuth login succeeds: Successfully logged in to Spotify as <Name>
• But librespot streaming fails with the "free" account error

Root Cause

Music Assistant uses two separate auth mechanisms for Spotify:

1. OAuth (PKCE flow) — for browsing, search, metadata. Uses access tokens refreshed via the Spotify Web API. This is what produces the "Successfully logged in" message.
2. Librespot — for actual audio streaming. Uses cached credentials stored in /data/.cache/spotify--<id>/credentials.json inside the addon container.

The librespot credential cache can become stale or point to a different Spotify account (e.g., if another family member logged in, or credentials were cached from before a Premium upgrade). Librespot uses these cached credentials to connect to Spotify's internal API, which returns a ProductInfo XML packet containing the account type. If the cached account is "free", librespot calls exit(1), killing the audio pipeline before FFmpeg receives any data.

How Librespot Determines Account Type

Librespot reads the type field from Spotify's ProductInfo server packet (librespot-org/librespot, core/src/session.rs):

fn check_catalogue(attributes: &UserAttributes) {
    if let Some(account_type) = attributes.get("type") {
        if account_type != "premium" {
            error!("librespot does not support {account_type:?} accounts.");
            exit(1);
        }
    }
}

The check is an exact string match against "premium".

Solution

Step 1: Verify the Problem

Check Music Assistant addon logs for the "free accounts" error:

# Via HA API (from a machine with the HA token)
python3 -c "
import os, json, requests
url = os.environ.get('HOME_ASSISTANT_SOFIA_URL', '').rstrip('/')
token = os.environ.get('HOME_ASSISTANT_SOFIA_TOKEN', '')
headers = {'Authorization': f'Bearer {token}'}
r = requests.get(f'{url}/api/hassio/addons/d5369777_music_assistant/logs', headers=headers)
for line in r.text.split('\n'):
    if 'free' in line.lower() or 'librespot' in line.lower():
        print(line)
"

Step 2: Identify the Music Assistant Container

From the SSH addon (ha-sofia: ssh vbarzin@192.168.1.8):

sudo curl -s --unix-socket /run/docker.sock http://localhost/containers/json | \
  python3 -c "import sys,json; [print(c['Names'][0], c['Id'][:12]) for c in json.load(sys.stdin) if 'music' in c['Names'][0].lower()]"

Step 3: Check Cached Credentials

Exec into the container to read the librespot cache:

# Create exec
EXEC_ID=$(sudo curl -s --unix-socket /run/docker.sock \
  "http://localhost/containers/<CONTAINER_ID>/exec" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"Cmd":["cat","/data/.cache/spotify--5s3mSP8y/credentials.json"],"AttachStdout":true,"AttachStderr":true}' | python3 -c "import sys,json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['Id'])")

# Run exec
sudo curl -s --unix-socket /run/docker.sock \
  "http://localhost/exec/$EXEC_ID/start" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"Detach":false}'

Check the username field — if it doesn't match the expected Premium account, that's the problem.

Step 4: Clear the Cache

# Create exec to delete cache
EXEC_ID=$(sudo curl -s --unix-socket /run/docker.sock \
  "http://localhost/containers/<CONTAINER_ID>/exec" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"Cmd":["rm","-rf","/data/.cache/spotify--5s3mSP8y"],"AttachStdout":true,"AttachStderr":true}' | python3 -c "import sys,json; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['Id'])")

# Run exec
sudo curl -s --unix-socket /run/docker.sock \
  "http://localhost/exec/$EXEC_ID/start" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"Detach":false}'

Step 5: Restart Music Assistant

sudo curl -s --unix-socket /run/docker.sock \
  "http://localhost/containers/<CONTAINER_ID>/restart" -X POST

Step 6: Verify

After restart, check logs for:

• Successfully logged in to Spotify as <Name> (OAuth OK)
• No "free accounts" error when playing a track
• Optionally re-check /data/.cache/spotify--5s3mSP8y/credentials.json to confirm the username now matches the Premium account

Verification

1. Play any Spotify track through Music Assistant
2. The track should stream without pausing after 1-2 seconds
3. Logs should show Start Queue Flow stream without subsequent AudioError

Notes

• The cache directory name spotify--5s3mSP8y is an internal Music Assistant provider ID and may differ across installations. Use find /data -name credentials.json to locate it.
• The username field in the credentials cache is Spotify's internal user ID (numeric for newer accounts, text for older ones), not necessarily the display name or email.
• Spotify Family plan owners have account type "premium". Family plan members also report as "premium" when their membership is active.
• If the problem recurs, it may indicate that Music Assistant's Spotify provider re-caches the wrong credentials — check if multiple Spotify accounts are configured or if another user logged in via the Music Assistant UI.
• The SSH addon on HA OS needs sudo for Docker socket access (/run/docker.sock is owned by root:messagebus).
• The HA long-lived token typically does NOT have Supervisor API access (hassio endpoints return 401), so addon management must go through the Docker socket from the SSH addon.