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[Michel]

Today I noticed that spotify won't play a lot of my mp3 files which I've bought at Beatport. I haven't noticed if it was able to play them before now -so I don't know if its a new problem...

- The files are as stated above, legally bought at beatport.com

- They are defenatly not corrupted

- They are of 'mp3' file type, and bit rate is over 160 kbps

- the folder in which the files exist is added to 'local files'

- When I attempt to play them I get prompted with "Can't play the current track"

- Windows media player plays all my files just fine

- I am using windows

- Files bought at beatport are named funky stuff like: [some arbitrary huge number]_'song_title'.mp3 (eg. "3225538_Inspector Norse_Original Mix.mp3")

I normaly prefer not to let any program manage my local music files* (with that I mean meta-data, physical location on drive, folder structure etc.), -so I don't THINK that has a role to play in this context. However, I've recently (god forbid it) been forced to install Zune, because I got a Windows Phone, so it might be that this (overbloated)program has done some (fancy-pancy-auto-'clever'-'magic')stuff to my files metadata. I also have itunes installed, but have only used it once to download some online lectures 1-2 months ago.

I'm guessing this is just a bug. But if this can't be fixed then I'm totally done with spotify, and back to using winamp or just windows media player :(. It's sad cause I actually started to like spotify...

(*In case you were wondering why I don't let programs handle my files:

First  of all, most of the programs which handles and plays music now-a-days are totally overbloated and non-intuitive.

The programs (Zune/itunes/winamp/windows media player etc.) only seems to be able to build up a 'artificial' structures which ONLY can be used in this particular program.

If the developers could just agree on a standard playlist format, standard way to arrange files(eventually just use the operating system folder structure '-_-), standard ways to add metadata, standard way to compress files -everything both in windows, linux (and IOS)... THEN I wouldn't have any problem letting them mess with my stuff...)

[George]

I don't have any experience with beatport.com, but do you know if they use ANY kind of DRM on their files?

[Michel]

Nope there should'nt be any DRM on the files as far as I know, unless that information is well hidden in the file somewhere.

I have always been able to add mp3 files bought at beatport.com to my mp3 player devices and mobile phones with no problems, as well as copying them back and forth between my laptop and desktop with no problems. (my experience is that you can't do such things with DRM protected files)

[David]

I just had a quick look at their website - Doesn't appear to be anything that suggests that the tracks were subject to DRM.

Are these tracks located on an external hard drive at all?

[Michel]

I only have one hard drive in my desktop, so no external hard drive. Though I have partitioned into two partitions, but spotify has no problems with playing other mp3 files from both partitions. It seems like it is just this arbitrary set of mp3 files from beatport which it can't play. There are even mp3 files bought and downloaded at the same date at beatport which spotify is actually able to play..

[Michel · Accepted solution]

I've had some more time to investigate in the problem, and believe I've found a solution to the problem -which I will now post so that others with same problem wont have to pull out their hair :)...

I tried experimenting with converting the files to wav and just re-encoding the files. The wav files did'nt work (guess spotify doesn't support wav, -I'm a bit puzzled over that), however re-encoding the files seemed to help!

During the experimentation I played the files in windows media player, and then I noticed something interesting about the old files that spotify can't play... There are no 'time' information for these files! (WMP shows no time duration etc when playing these files), and then I noticed that spotify stated that there was a time difference (like 10 secs or so) between an old 'non-playable-in-spotify-file' and a fresh new re-encoded version of the exact same file.

So my conclusion is that there is an issue with some of my files, but there must also be a bug in spotify since ALL other programs and devices seems not to have any problems playing these files. 

For those who are curious or have same problem:

I used CDeX to convert and re-encode the files, -this is a brilliant free opensource program, go get it!