Can not sync local songs from Mac to iPhone

[joeblynch]

I upgraded my iPhone to the 12 Mini, and have not been able to sync local songs from my Mac since. This was working fine on my old iPhone.

So far I've tried:

- turning off the firewall on my Mac

- completely reinstalling Spotify on my Mac and iPhone per these instructions

- verifying both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network

- connecting both devices to a different Wi-Fi network

- connecting my Mac to my iPhone via a Wi-Fi hotspot hosted by my iPhone

- Ensuring the title, artist, and album metadata is included in the song data

- Moving the desired track to a different directory, changing the metadata in the file, including only that directory in the local files that are scanned, creating a new playlist with only that track, and marking that playlist for download on both my Mac and iPhone

Playing the song from my Mac, while listening on my iPhone results in the "Song Not Downloaded" error message. I follow the steps under "Learn More", but unfortunately at step 4, where the "song magically appears on your iPhone" never happens.

Anything else I can try? This was really easy to get working on my old iPhone, but nothing so far has worked after updating.

[Ver]

Hey @joeblynch,

Thanks for getting in touch with us 🙂

The troubleshooting steps you've tried so far are very good. We'd suggest you also give these steps a go. In case you get an error message, you can send us a screenshot of it. We'll look into this further.

Tip: Keep in mind that only files or downloads from legal sources are allowed on Spotify.

Keep us in the loop! We'll be right here if you have any questions.
 

[joeblynch]

Hi Ver,

Thanks for the response! Unfortunately trying those steps didn't resolve the issue. I did notice that after uninstalling and reinstalling Spotify, the iPhone settings for Spotify didn't initially show an option for local network access. However, once I selected the sources icon in Spotify, I was prompted to allow local network access. I tried playing the local songs again, but still receive the "Song Not Downloaded / If you own the song, you can sync from your computer." error message. The songs I'm trying to sync are from legal sources, and I also tried syncing a recording I made myself, but still no luck. Any other ideas of what I could be going wrong?

Thanks,

Joe

[Novy]

Hi again @joeblynch,

Thanks for getting back to us.

In this case, could you try adding some songs from our catalogue to the playlist as well as the Local Files? Make sure you have ‘Show unavailable songs in playlists’ turned on in Settings.

Additionally, if you play some music on the device that has the Local Files - do you see if it shows via Connect on the other device?

Keep us posted.

[joeblynch · Accepted solution]

Hi Novy,

Adding a song from the Spotify catalog helped resolve the issue. I also noticed the "Local audio files" option was no longer checked in the Spotify settings on my iPhone. I'm not sure if this setting wasn't transferred when I migrated to a new iPhone, or if it got reset by reinstalling Spotify, but I think what confused me was that the instructions under "Learn More" when the "Song Not Downloaded" error message appeared didn't include changing that setting in the instructions.

Once I changed that setting, I could play local songs on my iPhone by starting them from my laptop via Connect, but the playlist still appeared empty on my iPhone. Adding a song from the Spotify catalog to the playlist caused the local songs to appear on my iPhone as well.

Thanks for your help!

Joe

[jansell]

This is not a solution at all. I have legal songs on my macbook that i purchased from a musical theater company and i need to access them on my iphone and none of the suggested tactics work. They are specifically NOT available from the Spotify catalog. Please help!

[OscarDC]

Hey @jansell,

Welcome to the Community and thank you for joining the conversation.

The process for discovering local files on your device has changed recently. To make sure we're on the same page, have you tried the process mentioned in this article?

If so and the issue persists, would you mind including in your next response the make, model and OS version of your devices, along with the Spotify version you're currently running on, to continue investigating.

We'll be around.