Red Arrows

[Intonacja]

Plan

Premium

Country

Poland

Device

(iPhone XR)

Operating System

(iOS 15.1,  Windows 10)

My Question or Issue

Hello!

The other day all of my downloaded songs just stopped working, all had the red arrow next to them which means that they didn't download/sync with my PC.

I've tried literally everything, deleting my anti-virus, deleting the IOS app, trying different PC, different WiFi networks and nothing worked. On my playlist it looks like they aren't even here and in my liked songs they have that red arrow next to them. I'm so lost at this point, please help.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @Intonacja,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community.

Can you confirm that you followed the steps that's provided in this article? There's some more steps to help thoroughly uninstall the app from your phone so if you haven't, we'd highly suggest it since the steps will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

If that doesn't do the trick, we suggest that you contact our customer support and ask them to remove any possible corrupt device.

Let us know how everything goes 🙂

Take care!

[Intonacja]

That also did not work, I have contacted the support team and I'm awaiting a response.

[Jeremy]

Hi again @Intonacja,

Thank you for your reply.

Let us know how everything went after you've been in contact with our customer support.

Cheers!

[jsintax]

same problem. no solution...

[t-trichard-fr]

i'm in the same situation

[3mmanueI]

Seems like Spotify has a serious bug. Songs are skipping, my music isn’t downloading after reinstalling the app and turning off my phone etc. and it is showing that red arrow for me as well. I’m on 5GUC

[Eni]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this here in the Community. 

Could you let us know if this happens across devices or only on a specific one? Also, could you let us know the exact make/model, operating system and Spotify version of your affected devices?
 

On another note, would you mind giving a different internet connection a go to download your content to see if the issue persists?

Keep us posted on how it goes.

[Orange_Galaxy]

Yeah, I've been experiencing the same problem for a week or so now, which is quite annoying. 

I've messed with all the settings and it still doesn't seem to work. 

I'm on an iPhone Xs. I have tried multiple networks and data and nothing. However, the issue is absent while on my computer, which plays perfectly fine.

Another thing, however, is I have tried redownloading the songs on my phone multiple times, and It appears the song downloads because the icon switches from not downloaded to the loading icon to nothing, just greyed out and red download icon in other locations. 

Hope some of this information helps slightly

[Lyubka]

Hey @Orange_Galaxy,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

We'd recommend that you try logging out and then logging back in twice in a row on your iPhone. This will force a sync between your device and the account.

It's also a good idea to try performing a reinstall of the app by following this guide. We recommend this step since it gets you the latest app version and removes corrupted data from previous installations that could be causing issues with the app's performance on your device.

After reinstalling the app, we'd suggest that you check out this FAQ and redownload the songs again to see if you'll still experience this.

Hope this helps. If you need anything else, the Community is here for you 🙂 

[Orange_Galaxy]

Hi there @Lyubka,

Thank you for your response.

Despite trying each of these steps, I still had no success. Still looking for the answer.

However, I did manage to find a partial solution. By externally downloading the songs through a direct connection or cloud-based service, I was able to use local files to appear in Spotify, however, I noticed only ~60% of the songs had the same identities (not sure what to call it). But I recognize this may be a different issue. (Please find attached pictures)

Secondly, I had a theory that Spotify may be unable to download the songs on a low-security network. I currently reside at a post-secondary institution with a semi-public network and I wondered if this may be one of the reasons causing my issue. I have tried using data, but no personal networks yet where I used to be able to have this work. 

Still looking for answers if anyone is available! Cheers.

[Vasil]

Hey @Orange_Galaxy,

Thanks for letting us know!
I'm leaving a link to an article one of our Stars @MattSuda wrote about importing local files with iOS.
It's very thorough and I'd suggest following the step-by-step guide to see if that would make any difference 🙂

Keep us posted on how things go! 🙌🏼

[Orange_Galaxy]

Hey all, Update;

Came home for a family event and everything worked perfectly. I think something about insecure or abnormal protocol networks prevents Spotify from downloading songs from local files on the computer and syncing them with the same data. 

It suddenly worked like a charm, red arrows, undownloaded and unplayable songs: all of them.

So for anyone still experiencing this, what worked for me was downloading my songs on a family member's personal and secure Wi-Fi network, NOT school/public/networks with a username and password. 

If you don't have access to that at the moment, I just used iTunes to import the mp3 files and synced them to my phone in the meantime, however, some of the data of the songs did not align but it works temporarily.

Hope this helped anyone still struggling 👍

P.S. Don't! redownload spotify on your phone if you can avoid it because it will reset any songs you already have and won't help for this particular problem.

[JEngland93]

I have a iPhone 15 pro max a one song had this that I have noticed an I’m not to sure what to do about it someone help ! Or give me advise 

[TFromThaSix]

I'm having this issue too now. Been using Spotify since 2016 and never had this issue until yesterday. It's weird because when I check the playlists on my MacBook, the songs aren't there - but most of them are on my phone.. I had to airdrop the files from my Mac to my iPhones settings app though. Glad I don't seem to be the only one suddenly having this issue.

[Intonacja]

Contact support, clearing cache and reinstalling the app doesn’t help at
all.

[AlejaR]

Hey there folks,

Thanks for posting here and welcome. 

Just to confirm, have you stored the files on your devices, and are you using the local file discovery feature? Keep in mind that the old Sync local file option is being gradually deprecated. You can try to use it by creating a playlist with files from your desktop app and then downloading it from a mobile using the same network and disabling the firewall while doing this. However, if this option doesn't work for you, then it might not be available for you anymore.

If the files are stored on the affected devices, we'd like to gather some additional info to better understand what is happening on your side. Please send us:

• The make/model and OS of the affected device.
• The exact Spotify version you're running there.
• All the troubleshooting steps you've tried so far. This info will help us avoid repeating any steps.
• Did you notice if this started to happen after a specific event such as an OS update?
• Some screenshots of the mentioned behavior.

Keep us in the loop!