Synced songs deleted when SD card is dismounted (and mounted again).

[pji101]

How to reproduce the error:

1. Set storage to SD card and sync some songs.
2. Turn off the app.
3. Dismount SD card.
4. Mount SD card again.
5. Change storage back to SD card (as storage apparently defaults back to device storage if you dismount the SD card).

Even before step 5 (when storage is set to device storage), all synced songs have already disappeared (the green "synced" icons are gone).  After switching back to SD card storage (step 5), synced songs are still missing. 

The solution appears to be to transfer synced songs from SD card to device storage before dismounting the SD card. When you mount the SD card again you just need to switch back to SD storage to transfer the synced songs back to the SD card.

I don't know if this is the "correct" way of doing or if this is even an issue at all as Spotify didn't even bother to give me a warning that dismounting the SD card will remove all synced songs if the SD card was the selected storage. The solution seems pretty decent but is there a way to retain the synced songs in the SD card without having to move them to device storage first? My library is quite large and I'll probably run out of free device storage to store the synced songs if I ever need to dismount my SD card.

Spotify version: 8.4.26.770 armV7

Android version: 7.1.1

Phone model: SM-C710F/DS

[Joe]

What happens if you force stop spotify before unmounting the SD card?

[pji101]

When I force stop Spotify, unmount the SD card and mount it again before opening Spotify, then the synced songs remain intact. If I ever open Spotify while the SD card is unmounted then I run into the same problem of the synced songs suddenly disappearing. I tried force stopping it again but the synced songs are still missing. However, the SD card option under settings does show the same amount of storage space occupied in the SD card, although Spotify doesn't seem to recognize it as all my synced songs are still unsynced. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app but that seemed to have completely erased that space in the SD card suppoedly occupied by my synced music as shown in Spotify settings.

Any thoughts? The solution of temporarily transferring your synced songs back to device storage before unmounting the SD card seems to be the best option.

[Joe]

Spotify runs a background process an it's this process which will creates a new empty cache in internal storage when it fails to detect an existing cache (because the SD card has been removed). Once the new cache has been created, the cache on the SD card will no longer be recognised even though it still takes up space.

Until they improve the app's cache handling, I'd be inclined to force stop spotify and not run it until the SD card has been reinserted.