Migrating from the Windows Store to the downloaded client

[Greybird]

Plan

Premium

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

I've got the Windows Store version of Spotify installed.  I have multiple playlists that include local files, each one of which took hours to sort.

I want to switch to the downloaded client and get rid of the Store version (because of the absurd blocks Microsoft puts around it.)  How do I do so without losing all of my playlists?

[kaworu_bloodpaw]

Hey @Greybird

I'm not sure about your Local Files question, as I don't use that feature.

I am curious about why you want to switch to the .exe version instead of the UWP version. From my experience, they're almost exactly the same.

[Greybird]

Simple - I want to set up a launch shortcut that requires pointing something to the .exe file.  UWP blocks access to said file, as it does with every other UWP application.  It's caused me issues many times over the years (being unable to point things to .exe files, being unable to delete folders, being unable to add files by hand, being unable to mod games, etc), and I'd prefer to just get away from it and to a version that doesn't lock up the install folder.

[kaworu_bloodpaw]

Fair enough.

I believe your Local Files' positions and organization within Spotify are saved to their servers (since others can see local files, just not play them.) I'd like to think that your current Local Files would remain where they are within the client. However, I don't know for certain. I'll see if I can find anything.

[Greybird]

Thanks.  I did some searching, but I didn't find anything.

[Greybird]

Updating this for the next person (nothing is worse than finding someone else asking your obscure question and never offering the final solution.)

I never did find an answer, so I took a chance.  The standalone installer required uninstalling the Store version, then installed normally.

It did not retain my settings, so those had to be put back in manually.

Once I finished the install, all of my playlists were there (naturally), but any songs in them from local files were unavailable (grayed out.)  Once I went in and redirected it to show local files and set the source to my music storage folder, though, it repopulated my playlists with the original local songs.

FWIW, I know a lot of people don't use the local files option.  I had a ton of CDs of obscure music from years ago that just isn't on Spotify.  I ripped the last of them  probably 15 years ago and have them all as files, which I mix into my private playlists that share that particular style.  Manually adding them in takes forever (I have 2,000+ songs), so I didn't want to have all of my work erased.