[Android] Local files randomly turn unplayable eventhough still downloaded

[milanstaf]

Plan

Premium (Family)

Country

Germany

Device

HTC One A9s

Operating System

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

My Question or Issue

After synchronising songs from a desktop device over the same WiFi network some of the local songs have randomly been greyed out. They still have the green "downloaded" icon but will not be played in a playlist (no matter if shuffled or not). Instead, it will be skipped as though it was never downloaded. The context menu for these files only displays "I like this song" and "remove from playlist", nothing else. Clicking on it will play the song, both in online and offline mode. However, it cannot be played any other way (as it is not played in playlists and cannot be put into the play queue) and as soon as it ends, skipping back to it does not work.

Completely wiping Spotifys Cache and downloading all songs again fixes the problem temporarily until the next few songs are greyed out again. It seems to happen to different songs (in the attachment, the first picture was the first time it happened. The two other pictures are from the second time - the songs are different. The songs affected the first time were not affected the second time.)

I was not able to reliably reproduce this behaviour yet.

[Peter]

Hey @milanstaf,

Thanks for reaching out to us about this and for providing those screenshots.

Just to make sure, could you try connecting to a different network and seeing if that changes anything?

If not, then could you try removing the problematic songs and readding them on the desktop app before syncing them with your mobile device?

Let us know how it goes! We'll be here in case you need any further help 🙂

[milanstaf]

Thank you very much for your reply!

I have had my mobile device connected to another network before (while the problem occured for the first time and also while it occured the second time), both alone as well as at the same time as my laptop with the desktop app open. Without any further steps, this did not solve the problem. I must admit though, I have not tried any explicit steps to ensure Spotify synchronises (e.g. restarting on both devices, changing playlists etc.).

I have also tried your other suggested approach. Since I wasn't sure how exactly you wanted me to do it, I just did both possible ways:

Method 1:

I removed the files from the directory I use for the Spotify desktop app, then started the desktop app. The songs were unplayable on the desktop app. I then started the mobile app. The song was still greyed out with the "downloaded" symbol, the problem persisted. I shut down both desktop and mobile app, added the files again, restarted the desktop app. The songs were playable on desktop. When starting the mobile app though, the problem still persisted. Restarting both apps yielded the same result.

Method 2:

I closed both apps. Then I removed the files from the directory again. I started the desktop app. The songs were unplayable. I removed the songs from all playlists which they were in (almost, see below), then started the mobile app and made sure they also disappeared from the playlists there. Then I closed both desktop and mobile app, re-added the files on desktop again and opened the desktop app where I could play the songs again. I added them back to their playlists. On starting the mobile app, the three songs were downloaded. After that, they were normally accessible and could be played normally. They were no longer greyed out, either.

Afterwards I realized that it was sufficient to only remove the songs from playlists marked to be downloaded as one of the three songs was actually still in a playlist the whole time - however that particular playlist was not set to be downloaded.

While this is a sufficiently good work-around, I hope this information can help to find and fix the problem if it occurs for other people, too! 🙂

[Peter]

Hey @milanstaf,

Really glad to hear that removing and readding the songs from the source folder on desktop resolved this issue for you!

Let us know if there's anything else that we can do for you 🙂

[zvdm]

Kinda obvious....

@Spotify: Make a real bug fix in the spotify software since the current implementation is broken badly. Pfff....  There is a reason we download a song for offline purposes.... unchecking it for download and downloading it is not a fix.

Its a design flaw.

FIX IT.

[milanstaf]

Another update in case anyone at Spotify tries to fix or recreate this: the problem seems to happen multiple times - recently I had this happen again to two songs. Just now I noticed that two more songs were newly affected, eventhough they were fine at the time I noticed the first two cases. One of the four songs is a song that has been affected before, the others have not been affected before.

[milanstaf]

Hey, just a question: is Spotify working on this at all? I just had to do the workaround again, for the third time in the last two months now and this time it didn't properly work. I'll try again in a few minutes, but honestly: I'm sick of having to manually remove the songs every time - especially since they are in a lot of playlists, usually.

[milanstaf · Accepted solution]

After trying again twice: I can now confirm that the workaround no longer works. Removing the songs from all playlists, including those that are not set to download does not solve the problem. Only completely wiping the mobile apps cache and downloading all songs again solves the issue. With more than 4500 songs to download however, this is not acceptable as a solution. I will probably open a new post about this since I cannot mark this problem as "not solved".

[vicar]

Have exactly the same issues. Local songs randomly greyed out, and are unable to play on playlist. However they are still able to be played when directly choose them. Very annoying - day after day new songs are being greyed out, making live albums (which I put there) not useful at all

[Twuggs]

I have the same issue and I have found the only way to deal with it is to just keep removing the local file, deleting the song from the play lists, then readding it to each place. It's super annoying and I hope it gets fixed

[UnknownEntity00]

You can re download the file but it's still a reoccurring problem, eventually some do get grayed out. I still have to re download local files daily and even then songs from local files still don't get played consistently and reliably.

Thanks,

[Ver]

Hey folks,

Thanks for reaching out to us 🙂

We'd suggest you click here and give the steps mentioned there a go. If that doesn't help, you can check if the option Show unavailable songs in playlists is turned off. If it is, you can turn it on.

Let us know how it goes. If you have questions, we are here for you.
 

[applemightbebetter]

Completely useless and generic response. I know how to show local files in the app, the problem I've been having for years now is that they are greyed out and won't play, even though they are saved on my phone. I'm not blaming you, you're a forum moderator not an app developer or Spotify exec, but I hope you can see how your reply only adds to our frustration.

[Dian]

Hey @applemightbebetter,

Thanks for the reply.

There were a few changes with how the Local Files are being handled by the app. Could you first make sure to go through the steps on this page? If the issue is still present, we advise you to perform a clean reinstall of the app to make sure no old cache files are causing an interference. Here is how to do it. 

If there is no success afterwards, could you try reproducing the issue with a different account on your device and with your account on a different device?

Let us know how that went,

Cheers!