New Android update destroyed my playlists

[jhs39]

I have a Virgin Mobile Optimus V which was working perfectly with Spotify until the latest update.  Now it's not.  I can only use Spotify on the phone with downloaded tracks.  Some of my locally stored playlists have all of their tracks.  Some are missing individual tracks.  Some are missing all tracks--everything is greyed out.  I tried uninstalling the playlists and resyncing them but they came out the same way with the exact same tracks missing.  The playlists that were all greyed out before are all greyed out again.  I haven't tried a clean install because a) numerous users on these threads have said they've tried clean installs after the latest update and that it hasn't done any good and b) multiple users have said that if you do a clean install you can no longer use your SD card to store music.  Does anyone have a workaround for this problem or a suggestion?  I wish there was a way to just go back to the previous version which worked perfectly.  Too bad Android doesn't allow you to restore the phone to an earlier state like Windows restore when an App causes problems like this.  

[Joe]

Let me put your mind at rest regarding reinstallation. As long as you carry out a clean reinstall and make sure there are no remaining spotify folders/files on your external card, spotify should default to using it. The problem can happen when you reinstall without clearing out the old data first.

These greyed-out tracks - are they local files on your desktop or tracks you downloaded from spotify? Have you tried logging out and back in?

[jhs39]

They are tracks I downloaded from Spotify.  I tried adding a local version of one of the albums from files on my computer and it ended up greying out the exact same tracks.  I also tried hitting the available offline on the Spotify computer program and it only downloaded the tracks that weren't greyed out on my phone.  Have I tried logging out on the phone or computer or both?

[Joe]

Hi. Can you please check that your account page shows a current premium subscription.

With spotify running on your android, does it show under devices in the desktop client?

What exactly do you see when you try to resynch one of the missing tracks? Any error messages?

Oh, and I meant logging out of your android 🙂

[jhs39]

Yes, it does show that I have a premium subscription.  My phone showed up under devices on the desktop application until I logged out of the android app and then logged back in.  Now my phone no longer shows up under devices.  There were no error messages--some tracks were just greyed out and no longer playable offline even though they had been before the update.  I tried downloading one of the albums directly from the Spotify android app and it froze at 80%.  Spotify should let you roll back updates considering how buggy they sometimes are.  A week ago I was a happy camper.  Now I'm wasting a ridiculous amount of time trying to get Spotify to work again like it's supposed to.  I've never paid for any other service that had so many problems.  It makes me wonder if the Spotify programming department consists of two college kids in a dorm room.  How could a professional company keep screwing up people's service like this?

[Joe]

I do sympathise with you. I guess I've just been really lucky so far but I've had no issues yet (guess I shouldn't really be tempting fate). Anyway, I know that the android app is pretty slack about warning if you have insufficient storage and will often just hang when downloading. If you still have the original cached music on your device, this could be why it hangs when you dowmload.

I'm puzzled that it doesn't show under "devices". Did you log in using the correct credentials? Try relogging into the android app.

I hate to say this but I think the answer is going to be a clean reinstall following the instructions here 😞