"This track isn't available on your device" for some local files

[edichez]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

Asus Zenfone 9

Operating System

Android 13

My Question or Issue

I have a playlist with several hundred tracks unavailable on spotify. These local tracks are available on my PC and I can play them with no issue. Several years ago I followed a Spotify guide that's no longer available to have these available on my phone (Create a playlist on the PC, connect to the same network on both devices, and then download the playlist on my phone). 

Recently I've had an issue where some of these songs are unavailable, despite others working perfectly. Sometimes even on the same album, some will work and some won't. You can see in the attached screenshots that some of the songs work and some don't. All files are mp3s.

Steps tried:

Clean install

Redownloading while on the same network

The problem persists with the same tracks not working

[Werfer404]

Final comment to the above:

On a fresh Spotify reinstall and fresh phone restart with no audio files whatsoever anywhere on my phone, Spotify will download the current local files to my phone:

Example Song Title <added to the playlist, is greyed out, and does not work in Spotify (but plays from my phone using a different audio player)
ExampleSongTitle <not added to the playlist, but will play in Spotify
ExampleSongTitle(1) <not added to the playlist, but will play in Spotify

It's worth noting that a combination of 1, 2, or all 3 of those files are created, seemingly randomly, for about 20% of my local files now.  They did not used to be an issue.  Also some local files that contain spaces work just fine.  I can't find any pattern to it, except that it's always the same files.  For example "Song Name 01 Test" and "Song Name 03 Test" might play just fine, but "Song Name 02 Test" will always break after deleting / redownloading everything.

Simply put, it's kind of a mess lol.

[PetrMiksik]

Many users reported this issue, including me. See this thread for example (last 10 posts):

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Local-files-not-syncing-to-android-anymore/m-p/5817205

[ICELED]

I'm also getting this issue. Spotify has broken local files once again. Why am I even paying for this?

[edichez · Accepted solution]

Hello everyone! I managed to fix this on all of my songs, I can't be sure what the original problem was, or what's causing this on spotify's side but it looks in my case like it was an issue with download/detecting the local files if there's various options. Given Werfer404's findings, I'm guessing the algorithm the app uses is flawed in several ways, but what fixed it for me was to have clearly separated and demarcated folders meant entirely for spotify to detect in. These folders include only the files spotify is meant to add and play (ie, only mp3 files) and I kept all my other tracks elsewhere.

I hope this helps someone out there having this issue!

[PetrMiksik]

Hello,

Sorry, but I cannot accept this as solution, or even a workaround. Because it does not solve the main issue - synchronization with the desktop application on PC / Mac. Of course I can add the files from the "Synced files" folder to playlist and they are working, but If I copy exactly this "Synced files" folder to PC, the desktop application does not recognize them as the same files. So I must have 2, or sometimes 3 versions of the same file in the playlist to be able to play them across all platforms. That really sucks ...

[Jonathan_Maack]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Samsung Galaxy A25

Operating System

Android 14

My Question or Issue

My local audio files show in the Local Files playlist as they're supposed to, but I get an error message saying "Can't play current audio file - This file is in your Local Files but can't be played right now". I tried different suggested fixes, reinstalled the app several times now, I only managed to make it worse for a while when the audio files didn't even show up anymore. The same files already played a few weeks ago and I only realised because some of them never played on any playlists.
I'd like a fix for this that doesn't include any more clean reinstalls or moving my files around, the same thing worked before and now it doesn't and I haven't changed anything in the meantime.

The app is also extremely slow, means that if I open it, it takes maybe a minute until I can actually use it. Might be related to me having 3-4GB of downloaded music, but I wonder if there isn't a way around it, it gets very annoying, and I already tried different things, even wanted to download Spotify Lite but it's not available anymore. If these things aren't fixed soon, I'm gonna be looking for other streaming services, I've used Spotify for ages, but it only got worse to use for me. Just 2-3 years ago, everything worked fine, now not even new phones etc can change anything.