Synced local songs will sometimes become unavailable

[BSoD38]

Plan

Premium

Country
France

Device

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G

Operating System

Android 12, app version 8.7.42.943

My Question or Issue

I have several tracks on my phone that are synced from local files on my computer. But since a few weeks ago, I've been having an issue where some songs display an error message along the lines of "This song isn't available" when I click on a synced local track. This happens randomly it seems. And once this error message has appeared, the track will become greyed out until I unsync and re-sync my local tracks.

I can still listen to the song if I manually click on the track in my playlist, but the song will get skipped over if the song is in queue when I autoplay my playlists, and disables most of the normally available actions for this song (add to queue, for example).

This seems to happen to any synced local song I click, in a completely random manner. I cannot really give reproduction steps for this. Perhaps this happens in situations where the internet connection momentarily drops? I don't really know.

In this screenshot, the first track got the error message when clicked on, and became unavailable and greyed out (despite still being shown as downloaded), while other synced tracks still work fine. I can still listen to the now-unavailable song if I click on it.

[Yordan]

Hi @BSoD38!

The way local files work has been changed recently. There is no syncing between devices anymore, meaning you can no longer sync local files from your PC to your phone. The files have to be uploaded to the phone manually in order to be played by Spotify. More on how local files work can be found in this article.

Hope this clears things up. Cheers!

[Steelerferdi]

This issue still occurs to me even when the files are on both pc and mobile storage. Sometimes a resync makes them available again, but shortly after others go unavailable. Any insight on that? 

[Vasil]

Hey @Steelerferdi,

Could you try removing your cached data as shown here?
If the issue persists after that, you may want to try doing a clean reinstall or you can also check your account for potential errors with our support folks.
We're here for you if any further questions arise 🙂
Cheers!

[sjju]

Same issue with local files which were downloaded and playing fine, and newer ones from the past few days being greyed out. Clean reinstall actually made it worse: now none of the local files play.

There have always been issues with Spotify being unable to play local files. This latest one appears to be insuperable. Spotify need to address this and produce a platform which is robust and fit for purpose.

[Steelerferdi]

All procedures which have been suggested have only been temporary fixes. Clearing cache, performing clean reinstalls, even going through chat support have not permanently fixed this problem. The only thing I'm not sure has been tried was support checking my account for errors, even though I did ask for something similar. 

[Vasil]

Hey @sjju & @Steelerferdi,

As already mentioned, you need to have your local files on your mobile device in order for you to sync them on the mobile app.
If the sync doesn't work even after a complete clean reinstall, there might be something off with your account, so we'd suggest doublechecking backstage with our support to confirm if that is the case.
Let us know how it goes 🙂
Thanks!