Spotify is re-downloading all of my songs!

[eschurr]

I have almost 5K songs in a number of playlists, and many weeks ago I set them all to download so i could listen to them offline during an overseas trip I am now on. I set the Storage setting to use my SD card. Everything was great.  All of a sudden Spotify is telling me that it is downloading every song, and the Storage setting had been changed to internal storage. wth?  When it first starting doing this about 30 minutes ago the "downloaded" indicator on all of my songs was green, indicating that the songs were downloaded, so I was mystified. Now all the playlists and songs say "waiting to download" and it's 18% along. Any ideas why this happened? My internet connection here is not strong enough to download 5K songs!

I'm on a Galaxy S8+ with the latest OS and version of Spotify.

[eschurr]

Update: i just got a notification from Spotify that said something about how it can't move my data and i should check my permissions. I checked and i can't find anything relevant; "storage" is turned on. I can't find a permission setting specific to my SD card. BTW, before all this started happening my SD card can about 57GB of 120GB consumed. Now my phone says that there is 110GB free on the SD card....apparently all of the songs I downloaded to my SD card weeks ago are gone?  There's not enough space in internal storage to store all my files, so i need to use my SD card.  

I sure would welcome some help!

[eschurr]

Spoiler

This is now happening... AGAIN! wth? I'd just in a location with wreak wifi and Spotify decided to re-download all 5,000+ of my songs. This is riciculous! Honestly, I switched from iTunes to Spotify but I now have to wonder if that was a good idea. And I'm disappointed and frustrated that no one has replied to my post. How did a Spotify user get any help? 

[Henrickus]

I have similar problems. The green arrow means nothing. Just like the download progress bar means nothing. Spotify is in a world of its own. And it keeps disappointing for a simple search, collect and play application. The only thing that’s keeping me from switching to an alternative is the hassle it brings. 

[Ver]

Hey folks,

Thanks for getting in touch with us. This sounds odd and we'll do our best to help you out.

@Henrickus We'll need more information about it so we can investigate this further. Can you give us more details about the issue/issues? 

If you experience the same issue, we'd suggest you restart the device and then log out and log back in again. If that doesn't do the trick you can give these steps a go and run a clean reinstall. By doing that you can make sure the app is up-to-date and the cache is not causing any issues.

If you have any battery optimization or power saving apps, you can deactivate them for Spotify.

Does this happen on another device? That way we can see if it's a device-related issue.

@eschurr Are you still experiencing this? If so, give us a shout. We'll be happy to help you further.

Let us know how it goes. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[SirExcel]

This is the same issue many have reported prior. I have had to download my entire Playlist now a fourth time in September alone. Apparently there is a delay in androids where the SD card is not recognized and causes spotify to fault and to start download to internal memory and for some reason no one has explained why the downloaded songs on the SD card disappear.

[MrFishSWE]

This has happened to me too several times. The app doesn't recognize the downloaded songs and starts downloading evrything again.

Then I have to erase the songs i can't see in the app manually. Because otherwise it will take up twice as much space.

[Ivan]

Hey there @SirExcel and @MrFishSWE,

Help’s here!
 

We're currently investigating an ongoing issue causing the app to redownload offline contents. We suggest you add your vote to it by clicking on the +VOTE button and follow the steps under Status Update.    

It'll also be useful to Subscribe via the three-dots menu in the top right corner next to the title. That'll make sure you stay up to date with any relevant updates about this.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions.  

[SirExcel]

Yesterday I spent some time with a spotify agent on chat... he said it was an offline setting causing the issue. He said he had repaired it but I would have to do the clean install... which I did. Then I had to go thru all of my favorites, click the download toggle on each album/playlist and redownloaded everything (took a few hours). Looked good.. right? Sadly, wake up this morning, open spotify to see it start downloading songs again.. go thru my permissions and storage has been rest back and now the songs are being downloaded onto internal memory again and everything on the sd card appears to have been wiped out again. I set the permission back on, and now the option to change to the sd for storage is not even listed. I cleared cache, forced spotify to stop, restarted, still nothing. This is beyond frustrating.

[Henrickus]

Don't bother. All your suggestions are not solutions, they're just work arounds to cope with bad code and even worse design. The whole app, whether it's desktop or mobile is riddled with bugs. I must admit, some seem to have been fixed, like the disappearing friends and the clearing of a carefully selected playing queue. But usually the same problems come back in different shapes, it's just a matter of time. And this time it's just tough luck for the thousands of people going on holiday thinking they have their favourite songs safely downloaded on their phone. 

[Henrickus]

Wow, that's good news. So if we all vote to fix this bug spotify may be persuaded to fix it?

It's a crazy world. 

[user-removed]

I am having the same issue and it has been going on now for a couple of months. I download my playlists and a couple of days latter I am unable to listen offline and have to re download these same playlists.  I have done some of the suggestions in other posts uninstall - reinstall,clear cache all to no avail. This is very frustrating as I am on a metered network and I will run out of data with all the re downloading. This seems to be a common problem and this needs to be rectified.

A solution would be much appreciated.

[EarlPurple]

Settings: Storage: SD Card 68GB used.

It's the same whether Spotify thinks 38% is downloaded or it's fully downloaded as it is now. I need 68GB, my phone storage is 128GB and is using 38GB or 128GB so I do actually have enough space for the Spotify playlists.

However it makes sense to store 68GB of music on an SD card that has 512GB of storage and leave more space in my phone's internal storage.

The files are not disappearing from the storage, it is just that Spotify feels the constant need to downlaod them, which means Spotify

1. Is somehow losing the information of what is currently downloaded

2. It doesn't check it's already there before re-downloading.

Just do the latter before re-downloading and you've gone a long way already, and you can do that even offline so I'll be able to listen to them.

And you spend way too long starting the app looking for a connection when you could first load from memory then check later, as the vast majority of time I am listening to already downloaded playlists.