Safari / Spotify Web Player Bug: Audio automatically plays in fast-forward with standard address bar audio icon appearing without user interaction

Hi everyone,

I need some deep technical help with a very specific and alarming audio behavior on Spotify Web Player using Safari on macOS.

The Issue:

Even when I am completely idle on the Spotify homepage and do not click anything, Spotify automatically starts playing random, highly accelerated, and glitchy audio snippets in the background. When this happens, Safari’s standard "This tab is playing audio" speaker icon appears normally on the right side of the address bar, meaning Safari genuinely detects a legitimate active audio stream from the webpage.

The audio sounds like a chaotic, fast-forwarded burst (like an "Alvin and the Chipmunks" time-stretch effect) that forces an audio buffer into the browser completely unprompted.

The Suspicious Background:

I recently made the mistake of sharing my Spotify ⁠sp_dc⁠ and ⁠sp_key⁠ session tokens with a third-party music downloader tool. I highly suspect my session has been hijacked and my account is being used as part of a background stream-farming botnet (to simulate fake plays). It seems like an automated background script is trying to force media playback tokens through Safari's Web Audio API.

What happens technically:

Safari normally blocks autoplay and restricts background tab execution unless there is a physical user gesture (a click). However, whatever has hijacked the session seems to bypass this or trick Safari into thinking it's a legitimate user-initiated playback. When Safari tries to enforce its power-saving policy, the audio buffer piles up, and then it dumps the accumulated fast-forwarded audio burst all at once, with the address bar speaker icon staying active.

What I've tried:

 Cleared Spotify's local storage, site data, and unregistered Service Workers via Safari DevTools.

 Deleted all cookies (⁠sp_dc⁠ included).

 Changed sample rates in Audio MIDI Setup (44.1 kHz / 48 kHz).

 Toggled Web Audio Experimental Features / Feature Flags.

Despite clearing local data, as soon as I log back into Spotify, this automatic, weird fast-forward playback restarts on the homepage without any interaction from my side.

Is it possible that a persistent malware/infostealer has infected my local Safari/macOS proxy settings, or is this a known exploit where compromised ⁠sp_dc⁠ tokens force hidden background playback that messes up the Web Audio graph? How can I completely block Safari from allowing a tab to self-trigger audio playback without human input?

Thank you!

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