Downloaded podcasts won't play

[Donnieturtle]

I have downloaded a few podcast episodes to listen to when I am out of cell service range. However whenever I am out of signal the episodes won't play. I press the party button but nothing happens.

Yes, music plays just fine offline.

Yes, I am trying to play the past episodes directly from the downloaded tab in the Spotify app.

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Motorola Stylus

Operating System

Android 11

[Alex]

Hey there @Donnieturtle,

Thanks for the post.

First of all make sure that Offline Mode is enabled from the Spotify app settings when you're listening to content without internet. Sometimes if you don't have network access and Offline Mode is not switched on the app will try to look for network and won't load even content downloaded on the device.

If that doesn't help, and you are downloading the episodes to an external SD card, please switch to the phone's internal storage and try again.

If the issue persists, it's a good idea to clean reinstall of the app, as this one is more thorough than a regular one and can be helpful to get rid of any corrupted cache that might be causing trouble. Note that after this process you'd need to re-download all your music and episodes.

Let us know how this goes.

[SantiagoZb]

I Have this issue in 2 different phones, I do have offline mode activated and none of them have sd card storage, episodes appear to be downloaded when I have wifi or data but when I have no signal or in airplane mode everything disappears from the downloaded episodes as if I had not downloaded any

[Joan]

Hi @SantiagoZb,

Thanks for reaching out. This is a known ongoing issue and according to the post, the next update should address it. Keep your eye on that thread and if you have any info to share, feel free to comment it there.

Hope this clears things up.

[MattWorden]

I’m using Spotify version 8.8.38.508 and still am having this issue 

[mcw0933]

Same here - also 8.8.38.508 on an iPhone 11 Pro.  

The suggestion to go into offline mode doesn’t seem to help always.  On top of that - downloading the podcasts, and listening to most of it while in my car on CarPlay, it is a pain in the ass to stop for gas, get back in the car, and find out I don’t have cell service and so have to get my phone out and go into settings to mess around with offline mode.  Plus, Spotify often seems to decide I “finished” the episode and clears out my resume-point data if I’m within 10% of the end or so, which can be 20-30 minutes of remaining time on longform podcasts.

Managing the offline setting, and then scrubbing back through the episode to get to my place has to be done on the phone in the app.  Can’t safely do that through the CarPlay system.  

So this is not really viable as a workaround - you are making me repeatedly toggle something on and off after I already took the time to pre-download the episodes, taking my time to get back to my place, and keeping me off the road to be safe while doing it.  

The advance downloading for offline play experience is completely standard and solid on every other podcast app I have.  Please update the app to just check the local cache of downloads first, internet or not.  Thank you!

[CHEEDWEED]

Plan

Premium Family

Country

USA

Device

GALAXY S21

Operating System

ONEUI 6.1 ANDROID VERSION 14

My Question or Issue

Certain podcasts will not play. When you hit the play button, it acts as if it is buffering the podcast, however it does that indefinitely. This mainly happens on the Kill Tony podcast for me, however I have had it happen on others. 

This issue only occurs on my S21 when connected to WIFI. I have tried using different WIFI networks (completely different locations) with no change. If I turn off WIFI and use mobile data, the podcast will play. I have tried playing a podcast on my laptop that wont play on my phone, using the same WIFI network that causes my phone not to play, and the podcast will play fine on the laptop.  I have tried downloading the podcasts too. The app shows that they are downloaded, but they will not play back when you click play. They also will not play back after downloading, going into offline mode, and turning on airplane mode. This indicates to me that it never downloaded even though it shows up in the downloaded section. 

I have done multiple "clean re-installs" of the app on my phone. I have cleared all data and caches. I have logged out of all devices and logged back in. This also occurs on my wife's S23 on different podcasts that she listens to. 

I have checked my settings for any type of adblocker or other security protocol that may be causing an issue, but I don't notice anything abnormal. I'll reiterate that it only happens on certain episodes of certain podcasts. Very frustrating.