Local file support is still terrible after all these years. Why not fix it?

[raffishtenant]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Macbook Pro 2021

Operating System

macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

My Question or Issue

Has anyone actually gotten Spotify to work properly with local files on desktop? It's supposed to be so simple: add a local directory in Settings, and the songs in that directory become searchable and addable to playlists. They're not transferrable between devices, which would be nice, but I can live with that. Literally all I want is to be able to search, add, and play those songs on a single device. It seems like so little to ask, but it just doesn't work.

Okay...it sort of works. I have playlists with local files on them, and when I first launch Spotify, those files will play. But within half an hour, they either become grayed out or are silently skipped, and I have to relaunch to get them to work again. Why should this be? How in the name of responsible programming can Spotify correctly identify that a song is available, then decide within minutes that it somehow isn't?

I also can't seem to find local files in a search, ever. I can only browse Local Files (which at least is sortable), add them to my playlists, and wait for them to become unusable until relaunch as described above.

This has been driving me nuts on and off for years. I've finally given up and switched back to Apple's Music app when I want to make a playlist for an artist whose coverage on Spotify is, er, spotty. But that's not an ideal solution, since I'm forced to either subscribe to a second service or acquire every last song as an MP3. Thank heaven for the Russians and YouTube, but that does nothing for the artist. At least with Spotify they're getting paid some fraction of a cent for every time I play a song.

Thanks for hearing my little rant. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.