Every Ad Spawns a New PipeWire Node

[JustALawnGnome7]

As indicated in the image below (from qpwgraph), Spotify's built-in ad service spawns a new PipeWire node every time a new round of ads starts playing. In the example shown, the newest node (i.e., "spotify-5 [Spotify]") is the only one that actually plays anything.

[TingPing]

This is something to report upstream: https://community.spotify.com/t5/FAQs/How-can-I-get-an-issue-fixed/ta-p/5182588

[JustALawnGnome7]

Per your suggestion, I checked with the Spotify community and discovered that the issue had already been raised. I've added my own comments to the raised issue, which can be found using the link below:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux/Linux-desktop-client-creates-a-lot-of-sinks/m-p/5632019

[JustALawnGnome7]

Per the suggestions from the Spotify Community, I've tested the officially supported Spotify packages (i.e. Snap and DEB), and the issue doesn't appear there. This seems to be an issue with the Flatpak specifically.

[Erick555]

Maybe pipewire folks would have some advice on this? I use pulseaudio and there are no such issues.

[JustALawnGnome7]

It seems that an additional "Spotify" audio sink only gets created after a video ad plays, which also plays in its own "Chromium" audio sink (see below).

With Chromium Video Ad:

After Chromium Video Ad: