One song stored on two different devices not recognized as the same song

[Cherish-]

Device

iPhone & Windows Laptop

Operating System

Windows 11 & iOS 17.6.1

My Question or Issue

I've recently started using Spotify's local file's function. When I made a playlist on my computer with files stored on my computer, I wasn't able to access them on my phone until I uploaded those same files to my phone's local files storage. This is working as I expected it to.

My issue is that of the three MP3 files I uploaded first to test things out, two were understood by Spotify to be the same song stored in different locations, while one was not. Is there any way for me to tell Spotify that one song is the same as another, they're just stored in different places if it doesn't do it automatically?

I transferred my files by uploading them to google drive from my PC and then downloading from google drive to my iPhone. 

The file names were not changed between being moved from my computer to my iPhone, but Spotify says that the version on my phone is a second shorter than the version on my computer. Is this why they aren't recognized as the same song?

Any help or info would be appreciated 🙂

[Dessi]

Hi there @Cherish-,

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the Spotify Community!

Could you make sure the files are added to the Spotify folder, which is located in the Files app > On My iPhone? If you have any subfolders in it, check if taking all files out of the subfolders does the trick. Something else that's worth trying is using iTunes to upload the files on your iPhone. You can find more info about how to do that in this article. 

Keep us posted.

[Cherish-]

Neither moving the songs from the subfolder they're in nor replacing them with Apple Devices / iTunes has caused them to be recognized as the same. Moving them out of the subfolder actually made Spotify stop recognizing the cover art even once they were returned to the subfolder on my phone (where the cover art is stored). Replacing the file with Apple Devices did cause the cover art to be recognized again.

Of the three songs, Extended, Live-Acoustic, and In-Game, all three are in the same subfolder in the Spotify folder stored in my Files app > On My iPhone. They also all show up in the Local Files folder in my Spotify App. But of the three, Extended is not recognized in playlists as referring to the same song. When checking a playlist made on my computer with the Spotify App on my phone, the first example of Extended is greyed out, and when I added my phone's version of Extended to that same playlist, the second example of Extended is greyed out when viewing it on my computer (I attached an image)

Thank you for your quick response.

[OscarDC]

Hey  @Cherish-,

Thank you for keeping in contact.

Taking into account that 2 out of 3 songs worked properly, it's possible that the 3rd audio file may have a different audio compression or bit rate that could be affecting its proper behavior within the app. So in this case, would you mind downloading the extended version of the track from a different source to see if it makes any difference?

If the issue persists, and in case you haven't tried already, we'd also recommend performing a clean reinstall of the app on both devices by following the steps mentioned in this article as this process can be helpful in getting rid of any cache that might be causing trouble. 

We'll be waiting for your response.