A few questions regarding

[Gimano]

Just go to questions if you don't want an introduction 🙂

I was subscribed to another service but I'm planning to leave.

For the moment I'm testing Spotify and Deezer, but I'm in large favor of Spotify because it seems to have much more classical and world music. And the quality seems to be a little bit superior maybe.

Anyway, the main feature I use is offline listening on Android, this is for me very important. And I seem to have issues. Tracks stop being available offline, as if the track is bugged, or not present anymore, even though it has a green color.

Questions:

• Is there a limit on how big the SDcard can be? Mine is a 64GB.
• Is there a limit on how many tracks you can have per playlists?
• Is it ok to spread tracks over several playlists?
• Do you HAVE to go offline to listen to your downloaded tracks? Or is the program smart enough to just use the downloaded track, even though you're online?
• What does it mean when the two eigth notes in front of a playlist has a dot in front of it and has a green colour?

My spotify installation dates from a few a week ago or so.

I already formatted the SDcard and restarted and all looked fine untill a certain point.

I really hope I can get some answers so I can get this going. Spotify looks awesome, many albums I want.

I'm very grateful for you help.

[Peter__ · Accepted solution]

Hey! Welcome to the community 🙂 

To answer your questions:

• I don't think there is a limit of SD card size, although you would be doing well to fill 64GB with Spotify content! 
• There is no limit on the number of tracks per playlist, however very large playlists (a few thousand tracks) might have performance issues on the mobile apps. Also, be aware that the maximum number of tracks you can offline sync to a device is 3,333 (and you can have this many of 3 devices). 
• Yes, you can spread tracks over multiple playlists, and mark those all as available offline providing you don't exceed the offline track limit. 
• The app "should" use the offline version of the track, even when you are online. That being said there is an open bugs topic about the android application using too much data here. 
• The special symbol you are referring too stands for a collaborative playlist, meaning anyone is free to edit that playlist. 

I hope that answers you questions, if you need anything else let me know!

Peter

[Gimano]

Thanks for your answers, if you don't mind I want to know a few additional things.

When you say there is a maximum of 3333 tracks, do you mean you can only have that number of tracks downloaded locally on a device? So my android phone can't have more than 3333 downloaded tracks? Is this a matter of licensing or is it a technical issue?

In that case it makes my 64GB card unnecessary right?

When track 1 is in 3 playlists, I don't have to download the track in each playlist I supose?

This is what I'm planning to do with playlists.

Playlists:

Classical Piano

Classical Wind

Classical String

And all tracks of above playlists will be in one general "Classical" Playlist.

Is this a good practise or is there a better way to obtain this comfort?

Many thanks, I'll check out the link you provided, it may be directly related to my problem.

[Peter__]

Yes, unfortunately just like most things in the music industry the 3,333 track limit is enforced as part of the licensing Spotify have with the record labels and that is the maximum number of tracks you can have stored offline on a device. There is no limit on how many playlists and tracks you have in those playlists, since if you are online you can listen to as many as you like, the restriction only applies to things you have marked for offline use. 

Tracks should only need to be downloaded once when in multiple playlists, providing it is exactly the same track in both. On occassion the same track will turn up in the Spotify database more than once, on different albums which will have different URIs meaning they would get counted twice, but those are fairly rare! 

As for storage space, doing the maths 3,333 tracks at Extreme Quality (320kbps) with an average track length of 4 minutes equates to about 30.5GB of storage space, so you might want to go for the bigger one just to be sure! 

Peter

[Gimano]

I edited my previous post at the same time as you answered to it.

Can you read the additional comments I made about playlists?

When I reach 3333 tracks I supose I'll get a message telling me I reached the cap?

In any case, you're answers have been very helpful. I'm a little dissapointed by the number of tracks (why does all good things also have downsides *cry*) but all it requires is some track management. I'm far from hitting 3K tracks but I'm far from having a complete music library, I'm still in test phase.

[Peter__]

I know on the desktop client you can put playlists into folders (File > New Playlist Folder) so there is no need to have duplicated playlists but I am unfamiliar if that is possible on android or not. 

When you reach the limit, I would imagine the client will either give you an error message or simply stop synching tracks (I don't own an android device to test!) 

Peter