Songs downloaded from Youtube work on Spotify app for laptop but not mobile

[Calibrations39]

Hi, Pretty explanatory. I downloaded a bunch of songs from Youtube using a Youtube-Mp3 converter, moved them to my Spotify app for my laptop, but they will not transfer/play over to my mobile app. Some songs will transfer over to my mobile app, but if I try to play the songs I get the "Song cannot be played" error, and the song is greyed out. The songs work perfectly fine on my Spotify laptop app. I have both devices on the same network and same log in information so I don't know what's wrong. Please help.

[Guido]

Hey @Calibrations39.

Thanks for getting in touch!

You'll need to hit the 'Download' switch on mobile, while being on the same network. That should move all tracks over. Keep in mind that you need a Premium account to have this feature.

Note: Files or downloads from illegal sources are not permitted.

Spotify supports the following file types: 

• .mp3
• .m4p (unless it contains video)
• .mp4 (if QuickTime is installed on your computer)

If you checked these things but it's still not working, let us know if you are using MacOS/Windows and Android/iOS.

Looking forward to your reply. Have a nice day!

[Calibrations39]

Hi, I have already hit the download button multiple times, clicked it on and off. It says waiting to download but does nothing. They are on the same network and I have premium with hulu. For your reference I am using Windows with an Android.

[Zerkian]

Hello ! Does it look like something described in this post ? https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Mobile-quot-You-ve-discovered-a-Premium-feature-quot... I have both problems, maybe they're related 😕 I downgraded and it works so it's probably a bug from the latest version ?

[Calibrations39]

Yes, it's similar to that. I actually went ahead and deleted some files from my storage. Now the "waiting to download" message says "Go to settings to download using cellular". I went to settings, turned on download using cellular but it's still not downloading...

[Calibrations39]

Hello, is anyone still helping me with this...it's been almost a week.

[Katerina]

Hey there @Calibrations39,

Thanks for getting back in touch and adding those details.

We'd recommend trying a clean reinstall of the app on your mobile device by following the steps here.

Once you've installed the app again, you can follow the steps below:

1. Make sure your local files are imported on the desktop app and included in a playlist (see "Desktop" instructions here).
2. Log in on your mobile or tablet using the same WiFi network as your desktop app.
3. Select the playlist containing the local files.
4. Switch on Download.

If that still doesn't do the trick, it'd be helpful to create a new playlist for your local files on the desktop app and try syncing the new playlist on your mobile instead.

Let us know how things go! We'll be right here if you need more help.

Have a lovely day 🙂

[Calibrations39]

I followed all of your instructions and none of them fixed it. Uninstalled and reinstalled the app, synced up a separate playlist with the songs in it, hit download on my mobile app but nothing is happening.

[Katerina]

Hey there @Calibrations39,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop with this!

In this case, we'd suggest first making sure that Spotify is set as an exception on your device's firewall.

If it is and you're still having troubles, could you give it a try to connect both your mobile and desktop devices in a different network connection?

Once both devices are connected to another network, log into the app on each device and try downloading the playlist on your mobile device once more. 

If that does the trick, we'd recommend making sure that Bonjour is supported and enabled on the router of the original network you were on.

Keep us posted 🙂

[Calibrations91]

I don't have a firewall on either of my devices. I tried connecting the devices to different networks and there was no difference in downloading them. Bonjour is an Apple product, I have an Android?

[Calibrations91]

Waiting on a response again.......

[Jemi · Accepted solution]

Hey @Calibrations91,

There's no guarantee that all files will work as local files, but we'll make sure to help you out as much as possible. 

First, it's a good idea to divide the tracks into different folders and then synchronise them. This is to check if there's only one file which is troublesome. Have a couple of tracks in each folder.

After that, make sure to connect both your devices to the same mobile hotspot. 

Let us know how that goes, and send screenshots of any error messages you get.

All the best!

[Calibrations39]

I finally have gotten it to work! I have my local files from Youtube on my laptop's Spotify. I set up a mobile hotspot on my phone and connected my laptop to the hotspot. Then I moved each song individually to a playlist, downloaded the song and then downloaded it on my Spotify for mobile. Don't delete the songs from their individual playlists, just move it to a playlist with the rest of the local files. Otherwise the local file songs will not play. 

Thank you!

[ErikaMoon]

Hi Calibrations39! If you still cannot solve this problem, try downloading audio files with a Youtube to mp3 converter. This will work 100% and it's easy to do. This method is available for both Android and iOS phones. You can copy-paste MP3 files from your PC to iTunes, did you know that? It's kind of boring if you want to download a bunch of audio files, but it's easy to get used to it.