POSSIBLE SOLUTION!!!
I just realized that this is the Android Section! Sorry about that. This was the only thread that described my exact issue when I did a google search so when I got my playlists to work, I posted it by replying here. I'll look to see if there is a similar issue with IOS devices and if so, I'll repost there. I'll leave it up in the meantime in case this helps anyone else.
Hi guys,
I was having this exact same issue for a good few months as well. This morning, i thought i would give it a try again (I attempted it for a few hours a couple of days ago with no success) but I am happy to say that today I got my playlists to sync manually again!
I'm not sure why it started working but I thought I would share exactly what I did in case it works for any of you. Also, since i do not know why it just started working, i am listing EVERY little step i did that is related to Spotify. Maybe none of what i did this AM actually solved it, maybe the bug got fixed, who knows, but it works now. I've included some of my observatinos at the bottom of the post. Also, I would be curious to see if just step 3 below would correct the problem, specifically, toggling the "available offline" option in the Inbox to ON from your phone and then looking into your desktop app under your device and seeing if that forces the "Inbox" to be checked. Sorry ahead of time for any typos. Its early and I was so excited that I got this to work, that I was rushing to post all the steps before they were forgotten. Good luck mates.
1. Opened up the Spotify desktop app and phone app (for me, windows 7 and iPhone 4s) and waited for the two to detect each other.
2. On my phone, within my Spotify app settings, I made a few changes. Under "music quality", I enabled syncing over 2G/3G. I usually don't prefer to sync over data, but i was thinking that may have been a chance that wireless syncing wasn't working due to some weird bug that helped detect whether you were on the same wifi network or just some random router issues (This doesn't really add up being that in the original issue, it seemed to want AND be able to sync ALL my Spotify music to my phone just fine). Also wanted to mention that in the social section, i signed into my Last.fm account. I'm 99% sure that has nothing to do with it, but again, since we and Spotify haven't been able to offically address/fix this issue, who knows what random act did it. Oh, it may be helpful to know that during this time, i was connected to my home network's wifi.
3. This is when my memory is a bit hazy. I'm pretty sure I did this step before the steps below but if it doesn't work for you, try this step after. While still looking at my iPhone’s Spotify app settings, i noticed that in the inbox section, at the top (you may have to pull down), my toggle for "available offline was OFF. I toggled this to ON. From what i remember, in a matter of a few seconds, that is when i noticed that it was syncing ONE file a friend had shared with me within that inbox. Note that the file it synced was one i already had in my local collection on my PC in one of my music folder. I let out a small gasp and quickly checked my other playlists on my phone wondering if I there was an "available offline" option that i had missed for each one and, at the same time, hoping that my local tracks on those playlists would start syncing. Unfortunately, neither was true. However, i think something in this step is key (which is also why i believe i did this before the next steps).
3. On my Spotify desktop app, I went into preferences and removed my local music files that I had synced with Spotify by unchecking the boxes next to my music sources. For me, this was unchecking iTunes and one folder i designated for monitoring all my music for Zune (yes i have a Zune and i love the app).
4. I waited a few minutes to make sure that all my music was removed from the Spotify desktop app by selecting "local files" under "collections" and making sure I had no tracks in there. I had tracks in the “library" category under the "collections" section, but that was fine as Spotify adds tracks that you've starred, shared, and have in playlists there. Note that i didn't clear my cache (though that would have been what i did next had this not worked).
5. I re-added my music sources again on my Spotify desktop app.
6. I waited just a few minutes after it started syncing my local files. I then navigated to the devices section and selected my iPhone. The option at the top was already selected at "manually choose playlists to sync". However, this time, I noticed that the “inbox” had a checkmark next to it and it was the only one selected! Finally, at this point, i was able to select each playlist, one by one, to sync to my phone and when i glanced at my phone, it was syncing! Yah!!!!
I hope this works for you all! I was so frustrated with this bug and really wanted to like Spotify. After having it be useless to me for a few months, getting this to work feels like a giant triumph. However, i wish that i didn't have to go through the numerous re-installations and hours of googling to get it to work...but what else can you do right?
Notes/side thoughts: I should mentioned that at one point, I did the spotify premium trial thing. This was long ago and I am pretty sure I didn't have any issues when my trial ended. I think i was able to sync playlists manually just fine afterwards but I can't confirm that. I don't have spotify premium now. While writing this, I had a thought that the original issue could be related with Spotify's desktop app's user interface. Somehow, when you try to select one playlist to sync, there probably is some glitch in the interface that makes it believe you are clicking on the "sync all music..." function. Maybe having the option to select your inbox to be available offline from your phone some how forces the desktop program to resolve this glitch and then allows you to select the remaining playlists individually. If you haven't tried any of the steps above, just try to select that option on your phone (hopefully it was already off but if not, maybe toggling it woudl work as well) and see if that does the trick. I'm sure the syncing over 2g/3g and local music sources had nothing to do with it but i dont' want to mess with this fragile balance that spotify has going on now that it works for me. 🙂
Also, when I was re-adding my music sources from my desktop app, i was clicking on some of my playlists (desktop app) and noticed that some tracks would start to re-appear on them. My guess is that it seems like if you added a track to a playlist from your library, Spotify removes it if you remove your library. Apparently, it can add it again if you re-add your library. I assume that because i didn't clear my cache/exit the app and/or my file paths were the same that this is why that happened. Also, it seems like the tracks in my playlists that I added by searching in Spotify's search engine were not removed at all, even if i had them locally. Rather, they were unlinked from my library (doesn't seem to matter if it was a track that Spotify was able to link to my library on its own or if I had to manually link it). Just something interested that could affect how I decide to add tracks to any future playlists. I'll have to mess around with it more to confirm that info.
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random