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Bug: Android app crashes on startup with too many playlists

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Bug: Android app crashes on startup with too many playlists

There appears to be a limit on the number of playlists supported in the Android app.  The bug manifests itself by causing Spotify to crash on startup leaving the user no choice, but to wipe the app and all sync'ed data, remove the additional playlists from a desktop app then re-install and re-sync.  It's been around for over a year and has even been acknowledged by a Spotify employee.  Sort it out.

 

https://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/android_app_crashing_due_too_many_playlists

 

And

 


These might be also the same problem:

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65 Replies

I get this a lot. I have a lot of playlists and I don't intend to delete them.

 

It's only a problem for me when syncing to the phone. What I do is just keep trying to log in and eventually it works (after maybe 6 tries).

 

After syncing, I can just use the offline/airplane mode.

 

Another thing which seems to work better is to open Spotify in offline mode and then switch to online mode. It seems to crash less often this way.

Another possible way of mitigating the effects of this problem, since it seems fair to say that it's hard to fix, would be to make album playlists shortcuts to the album on spotify rather than making a whole new playlist. I get the impression that Spotify don't want you to make albums as playlists, but people do tend to use them as bookmarks to favourite albums.

It won't let me log in with neither facebook or spotify pass. Do you recommend we change our facebook password? Or the spotify one? Or both?

THIS IS HOW I STOPPED MY SPOITFY FROM CRASHING EVERY TIME I OPENED THE APP ON MY ANDROID !!!!

 

The other day I tried to sync Spoitfy with iTunes playlists. And shortly after, everytime I logged into Spotify it would crash. I saw a thread that said something about to many playlists crashing Spotify. What I did to remedy the situation for me was

 

1.log in to my "premium account"

2. Delete all non spotify creadted playlists.

3. Log back into spotify on your phone. 

 

 As it updates you will see the playlists that you deleted on your computer start to disappear from your phone also. 

This also fixed my playlists not lining up alphabetically with the ones on my computer. 

 

I don't know if this will fix it for you, but after this happening to me at the absolute worst time possible, I am just happy that it has fixed my BS issue. 

 

BTW did tech support email anyone else back???

 

PHONE HTC SENSATION-- SPOITFY VERSION NOV 2011

Didn't change anything for me.Smiley Sad

Said this on another thread here, and many times on Get Satisfaction and it is obviously, blindingly clear that Spotify have nothing but contempt for Android users. They also have, by some considerable distance, the worst Customer Service of any company I have ever dealt with. And I get my mobile phone form Three!

 

Development on the android app is pretty much non existant, they don't give any news to us about what is happening. And they add all sorts of features to other Mobile OSs (most annoyingly Windows Phone with a tiny user base) that just don't come to Android.

 

They are a dreadful company which is such a shame because the actual product is amazing. I love it. But if what is essentially a tech company is not able or willing to deliver the tech then ity is a fail.

Only troubles, both with Spotify on my computer and now on my phone. I'm getting fed up...

Absolute BS. I didn't want to delete my custom playlists, but ended up resorting to deleting all them.

 

Reinstalled app... started it... crashed, even quicker than last time. Restarted phone, reinstalled. Nothing, nada... first few days of being a premium user and I'm highly p'd off!

 

Would be looking to get a refund and trying out Grooveshark instead. I can't believe this... You pay for something, you expect it to work. If they can't promise that they shouldn't charge for it! 

Now I'm not sure if it has anything to do with Playlists. Like the above users, after removing all of the non-spotify originating playlists, it still crashes. On Galaxy Nexus and the Xoom - just closes.

 

And I wanted to listen to music today while driving - May cancel subscription.

This is insanely annoying. App is unusable and I have purchased 5 1 year premium accounts for family and friends. I feel like this garbage company has screwed me. Now I have to convince everyone to move to rdio. Do you hear us Spotify???? You should be ASHAMED!!! Pathetic

I've heard good things about grooveshark's sound quality. Anyone know if the service is any good? Considering a switch because of this issue.

 

What's grooveshark's catalogue like compared to Spotify? Is their android support any good?

Ok, seems grooveshark doesn't have an android app. Are there any alternatives to Spotify out there that have a working android app and which work in the UK?

Grooveshark's app can be found here:

http://mobile.grooveshark.com/android

 

Works great for me, been using it for about month. Finally had enough of this stupid problem and Spotify's complete ignorance of it. Grooveshark seem to actually care about their app by updating it once in a while.

It has tons of music, I've found a lot of rare and weird stuff that isn't on Spotify.

 

It's pretty cool that you can do surveys to pay for your subscription.

Napster's just this week been taken over by Rhapsody. Their new Android phone app isn't a patch on the legacy Napster one (which had the wonderful facility to take albums offline without having to save as playlists, and which also cached the last 100 songs offline), but does work.

 

Their new tablet app does run on ICS, and looks gorgeous, but at the moment, for me, it won't stream (*). However, I can browse the music and save albums offline, which then play, so it's workable.

 

The new Napster desktop software is eye candy, a copy of the web client in a local Adobe Air interface, and also seems to have some issues. Again, it works, but feels beta in places. It's a step backwards though from Napster's previous desktop software, which was similar to Spotify's.

 

So, Spotify has the better desktop software, by a long way now. Their phone apps are about equivalent on Gingerbread, though Napster's doesn't seem to have the bugs reported here for Spotify's, and if you're on ICS Napster at least provides a proper tablet application which takes advantage of the screen, though at the moment you need to save playlists offline before playing. Napster streams (and downloads) using 192 kbps AAC. Custom radio stations are available on the Napster apps.

 

Napster also has a web client which works from the tablet browser as long as you don't switch away, or let the screen go off, so you can at least stream while looking for music to save.

 

However, Spotify's catalogue is better. Whole chunks of Napster's seem to have disappeared since Rhapsody took over at the weekend.

 

It remains to be seen whether Rhapsody will quickly move to update the desktop and android apps to fix the teething issues from the relaunch, but Napster is a working alternative, particularly if you're on ICS, while you're waiting for Spotify to update their apps. It's just a shame that the new Napster phone app is a big step backwards from the one that we had only last week!

 

I've been a Napster subscriber for over 8 years, but have been trying out Spotify's apps just this week, so please update me on Spotify facts if I got any comparisons wrong.

 

* EDIT: After re-installing the tablet version it now seems to be streaming fine under ICS.

 

Spyke

awesome, thanks

This looks potentially useful to ease the transition: http://groovylists.com/

 

Imports Spotify playlists into grooveshark

@Richard

 

This is starting to drive me mad.... first thoughts was to knock up a quick app to externally manage playlists, and be able to push them into spotify as needed.

 

A bit of scratching at the surface looks heavyweight (I assumed there was a web based api for creating playlists, using libspotify seems like a sledgehammer).

 

If there was an intent for adding songs to queue (rather the stop the current playing song and starting the selection as happens with open.spotify.com/track/x or spotify:track:x urls).

 

 

The forced close bug and lack of persistence within a palylist across app closure definetely make the spotify app frustrating, although now I know it's a known bug I'll try remember not to hit "Report" when the app force closes.

 

 

Adam

Seriously... It's been two years with this bug. I know working for a startup that bugs are subjected to prioritizing, but after having a known bug for this long, it doesn't seem like you're very keen on serving your long time users.

 

The problem here is of course that there's no proper way of managing your library. I was happy to see the folders in the desktop client, but basically this bug has rendered the mobile app useless. I can't even boot the **bleep** thing. Can't you even give some sort of estimate. I know it's hard to give one, but how long do you intend to keep us users waiting without a shedding light on the issue? I mean, I'm not going to delete my playlists. How on earth am I supposed to keep track on my Spotify library otherwise and it's kind of **bleep**ed up that I have to do the work on changing my behaviour to accommodate your buggy software and not vice versa. I don't even have a playlist per album, but playlist per artist. You're basically saying that I'd have to write a script that converts my artist playlists to a single playlist that has all the artists.

 

I've been paying you guys now about 240 euros all together so I know that it doesn't really cover the development costs and I know that even if I take business elsewhere, it doesn't really bother you, because this is an edge case that doesn't affect a lot of people, so I'm basically left on my own with this. I could of course seek for reimbursement through legal ways in Finland since in here the consumer rights are pretty good, but that would be only good for me and not really worth my time or money either.

 

As a good service company it would be only fair if you would provide the users who have this problem premium account for the money of unlimited, because then I won't lose the premium sound quality and still get the service I'm now paying extra for, since I'm also not generating you traffic for mobile, so it would actually pretty fair deal. What do you say?

 

--

 //

 Tarmo Aidantausta

Somehow overfloater's comment got accepted as the solution to this issue. Could that be undone please? It's a great comment, but it is not a solution!

 

EDIT

 

I've removed it myself now (had to do it from a PC browser, not a mobile browser).

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Mobile-Android/Spotify-Crashing-on-Droid/td-p/40157

 

Solution in this thread that worked for me on my galaxy nexus

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