Songs from personal library suddenly unavailable

[Antisanta]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

Samsung Galaxy/PC

Operating System

Android/WIndows 10

My Question or Issue

Hello. A couple years ago I imported some tracks from my personal music library on my PC over to Spotify. Up until now this has been successful, I have been able to listen to the tracks and add them to my other playlists both using the PC app, and the mobile app.  Yesterday however, I noticed that these tracks are suddenly greyed out, unable to be played either via my PC or my mobile device, the only reason given being an incredibly vague "This track is unavailable" for each song that I had transferred over. 

So what gives? These tracks have worked for years up until this point. Why are they suddenly unavailable, and how do I get them back? I curate my playlists very carefully to be thematic and flow well together, and it would be frustrating to me if some of these playlists were now ruined because Spotify for some reason decided to remove songs from my personal library - songs that I assume no one else besides myself can even access through the app, unless they owned the tracks as well. 

Anyways, I hope yall can help me figure this out, thanks for your time!

[Mihail]

Hey @Antisanta,

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the Community.

What you're describing indicates that there may be a caching issue issue on your PC that prevents the synchronization of local files across devices. Could you give the steps here a go and perform a clean reinstall of the app on both devices?  They are more thorough than a regular reinstall and make sure that no corrupted files remain that might be the reason for such behavior.

We understand how this could cause some inconvenience, but you should also remove all the imported files from Your Library. Afterwards you can start the process of importing them anew using the instructions in this guide. It's a good idea this time to do it over another internet connection, e.g. a mobile hotspot, if that's an option.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on how it goes.  

[Antisanta]

Thanks for your reply @Mihail! Before I begin this process I just want to make sure - does doing a clean reinstall using this method allow me to keep my playlists, or will I have to start them over from scratch? If I have to rebuild my playlists I think I'd rather cut my losses and move on. Let me know, and thanks again for replying!

EDIT: Not sure tagging you in this message worked... maybe you could fill me in on how to do that properly as well? XD

[Mihail]

Hey @Antisanta,

Thanks for getting back to us.

Following the steps posted above will result in only the imported local files getting removed. All tracks and playlists, compiled and followed using the Spotify catalogue will remain intact after the reinstall.

As for the tagging - once you type the @-symbol and start typing a username, you should be able to select it from a drop-down list that appears bellow 🙂

Hope this is useful. Let us know how you get on.