Spotify Player showing up in Quick Panel and no idea how to get rid of it. Help??

I had uninstalled the Spotify App last night just to rid of the issue and will tell ya, that definitely stops the player from showing in the dropdown after reboot.

But since people were helping (thank you) I thought I'd reinstall the app and play with this more and try to give more detailed info if I can. So, FYI what I've done with screenshots below...

Like I said, uninstall Spotify and restart and no more player in the dropdown so we know it's the Spotify app and not some other player the media console is trying to push on me. As long as I don't open the app and play a song the player doesn't show. But I play a song from my list and exit the app and even close the app and reboot... the player shows up (1st pic).

Interesting note, the first time I long press the media player after a install of the app, it WILL show a Settings option that takes you to Spotify's Notification Setting in Apps and you can toggle off Notifications (2nd pic). After turning off Notifications (3rd pic), you long press and choose to Remove it because it's still there and it's gone. I close all apps in the background again so no Spotify running (4th pic). I reboot the phone and the player shows back up (6th pic).

But interesting note #2, long pressing the player in the dropdown, you no longer get the Settings option for the player(7th pic)... Only Remove and Cancel.

I'll choose Remove (for the 100th time) and it's gone from the dropdown. No Spotify app running in background at all because I never re-opened it and restart the phone. The player is back after restart.

The 5th pic was for Mr Bojangles1 who asked earlier what my dropdown showed fully pulled down.

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