iphone 5s won't play local files.

[Bigshoguns]

So I have a few local files on my playlist, when i click them it "plays" them but no music and no green status bar.  I just went from a 4s to 5s and now the 5s won't play local files but the 4s is fine.

[Taylor · Accepted solution]

Hi, and welcome to the community!

Don't have a 5S at the moment, so can't confirm it, but a few things.

1) Try a quick reinstallation of the app just to see if that helps.

2) Are there any specific steps to reproduce it? Or do you just have to play a local file.

2) And if anyone else comes here with the same issue, please press the 'Me too!' button and post your device and OS.

Thanks,

Anthony 🙂

P.S. What do you think of the 5S? Been thinking about getting it but it's a lot of money to spend on the wrong thing!

[user-removed]

Reinstall works fine for me 🙂

Thanks 😉

[gazwalker]

reinstall doesnt for me i have a mixed playlists of local and spotify files the phones shows that the music has copied over but when you hit play just silence

[etinker]

Tagging. I'm having the same problem. I recently did the latest iOS update, so maybe that's why? Before I would get a message telling me to verify my local files by connecting to the same wifi as my computer hosting the music. Now I get nothing, and local files don't play.

[meahtenoha]

Hi @etinker - Just checking in here. Are you still having trouble playing those local files? 

If so, please confirm the app version you've currently got installed and we'll continue troubleshooting--thanks!

[BossaNova]

I've just moved to an iPhone 5S and am having the same problem.  Any local files will not play on the mobile.

[BossaNova]

I hadn't synced my music via itunes to the new phone (thought I wouldn't need it any more with Spotify).  So I synced via itunes, deleted spotify from the phone, reinstalled spotify, set the playlists to offline...and now the local files play!

[gnr8788]

I am having some problems syncing my local files to my Ipod Touch 5g (iOS 7.0.4). When I select multiple local files to import to the desktop app, the files will import, except that no matter how many files I import there is always exactly one file that will show a time of 0.00. The track will still play on the desktop, but when I move it to a playlist to make it available for offline listening on mobile, it will show grayed out and not play on the mobile app. For example, if I import 3 files and then add them to a playlist for offline, 2 of the files will sync just fine on the mobile app, if I import and sync 4 only 3 will work, etc.

I checked out the boards, but I didn't see any posts where people were having this particular problem. I don't know if this has anything to do with my problem, but the files I imported were wma files that I converted to mp3 using iTunes. However, I used this method to import and sync most of my local files and haven't had any problems until now. Would greatly appreciate advice. Thanks.

[Joe]

Have you tried reinstalling spotify on your touch?

[gnr8788]

Thanks for the suggestion, but i finally solved my issue. I reinstalled Spotify on my laptop and removed WMP from my watch folders and now I am only using my iTunes folder to import local files. Then I deleted the playlist on Spotify desktop app that contained all of my local files, created a new playlist and drag/drop my local files in the new playlist. Re-synced to my Ipod, offline and streaming works fine now.

I guess the original wma format on my old local files was causing some error, not sure. That is why I had to use iTunes to convert to mp3. When I used WMP to rip all of my CDs many years ago, I had no idea it would cause me such a headache now. I have spent countless hours trying to sync all of my music across different media players and formats. Now I intend to use Spotify as an all-in-one player and subscription service. I buy all of my music on Amazon and so far it has worked seamlessly with Spotify. I have to give kudos to iTunes and I will still keep iTunes on my laptop just in case. It would be nice if Spotify had a format converter like iTunes.

[Joe]

Spotify is primarily a music streaming service - handling local files at all is something of a bonus 🙂 I'm not sure why .wma files would have caused a problem since spotify just ignores them but I'm glad to hear everything is working for you now 🙂

[IanMo]

Reinstall worked great : )

5S is great esp in a Otterboxx Commuter box.

[jakecourtney]

hi meredith,

the local files still wont play on my iphone 4s. Ive tried every single solution posted on this forum and others. do you know what the problem is ? dont know why it hasnt been fixed.

[Adro87]

I've just switched from an iPhone 4 to a 5 and have run into the same problem - all files synced, local files won't play. They appear in the playlist, have a green arrow showing they're synced, but when I press one to play it's just silence.

I will try reinstalling the app later today but come one, the original post here is a year old - fix this problem already Spotify!

It seems they leave bug resolutions/work-arounds to the community and don't actually fix anything.
I wish I could love this app - such a great concept - but the execution is severely flawed and not improving.