topic Re: Spotify repeatedly loses downloads in Your Library

Spotify repeatedly loses downloads

StillAlive — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:58:38 GMT

Plan Premium

Country UK

Device Pocophone F1

Operating System Android 10

Hi,

Periodically Spotify 'loses' most or all of my downloads. I run Spotify Premium on a Pocophone F1 on Android 10, with the app and downloads saved to my SD card. The files are still there on the SD card, but Spotify no longer recognises them and they don't show in my library (showing with an empty circle and down arrow symbol instead of the green infilled circle for downloaded). Spotify then automatically starts downloading the whole lot onto my already almost full SD card. The only way to stop it is to delete all the data in the app, delete the Spotify folder on the SD Card, uninstall the app and reinstall, then download everything again.

It used to do this every 9-12 months, which was irritating but I could just about live with. However it's getting increasingly more frequent, and has just happened twice in one week. I've just used up my entire mobile data allowance re-downloading, and it's then lost everything again after 4 days.

I've contacted Spotify Live Chat many times about this problem over the years. Their "support" extends only to telling me to uninstall and reinstall the app and hope that it doesn't happen again, which it always does. As soon as the Spotify staff realise it's more complicated than that, they usually disconnect the Live Chat. They are consistently disinterested and unwilling to escalate the problem to their technical team, and some are downright rude. When I complained to one worker that they were not attempting to solve the problem, they threatened to delete my entire account so I would lose my library and playlists. It's pointless contacting their Customer Support anyway as they never know what to do, and I can't take the risk of malicious staff deleting my account.

Googling this problem, I've found dozens of threads reporting this problem over the past 11+ years, usually ending with the poster deciding that they need to move to another streaming service as Spotify know all about the problem but refuse to offer any real solutions. The only other solution I've read is to root the phone and disable Spotify from startup, but that is beyond my technical skill, poses security risks, and requires access to a PC which I don't have.

Surely there must be some way to get the Spotify app to recognise that it's already downloaded those files? Has anyone found a way to do this?

I'm posting this out of desperation, in the hope that someone out there has found a solution to this long-running problem. I live in a rural area with very poor mobile signal and WiFi, so Spotify is off little use to me without the functionality of downloads.

Re: Spotify repeatedly loses downloads

Novy — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 23:22:46 GMT

Hey there @StillAlive,

Thanks for reaching out.

Sorry to hear your experience hasn't been the best. We can add some other suggestions to try and fix this.

Since you mention the issue is related to your SD card, make sure that it has at least 1GB of free space and that the app has all relevant permissions to access the external storage in Android settings. These suggestions seem to have worked for other users with similar issues in the past.

If the above doesn't do the trick, you can try formatting your SD card if possible. We understand this might not be ideal, but it usually helps with this kind of issue.

Let us know how it goes.

Re: Spotify repeatedly loses downloads

LORD-AKUMA — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 15:06:43 GMT

My SD card has a free space of 18gb uet the same thing happens and it's becoming frequent recently, i already drop my review

FIX the SD CARD ISSUE!!

fugggoff1o1o1o1 — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 15:52:44 GMT

Please....for the love of God Please....!!!

Fix this silly SD Card not found issue!!
This could be extremely easy and fast to fix I do NOT understand why you dont do it???!!

I only found some cumbersome workaround non of them are possibel!

Every reboot Spotify "forgets" that there is a SD CARD where ALL!!! the offline Media is there!!
and > because it "comes to early" before the SD CARD IMEDIATELY!! starts to want to move every thing to the internal stoage

PLease fix this!!

-either delay spotify till the sd card is mounted
- just be a a patient!!!! and check later if the sd card is there or becomes available???!

- moving 10 or 20 GB of music just because you "think" the SD CARD is not there is not the absolut first and urgent thing to do...

jesus....please fix this suuuuuper annoying Issue..

> never had any app with such a issue > except spotify

all the workarounds are not possibe.
> move spotify to sd card, take out spotify from the startup items etc etc... it is EVERYTHING completely silly fixed....wouldl be sooooo easy to fix so please do it!

Re: FIX the SD CARD ISSUE!!

fugggoff1o1o1o1 — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 15:52:44 GMT

I could not find a way to "ask"...to conntact support, to submit a issue etc etc.....so I just do it hear to hope than someone will a) Fix it (should be douable in 10 min.) or b) someone in the community have a WORKING workaround

Re: Spotify repeatedly loses downloads

fugggoff1o1o1o1 — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 11:35:40 GMT

*UPDATE* after it worked for some weeks..and 20 or more restart.the issue is here again so this does not help unfortunately (no updates happened or anything was done differently)!*
*UPDATE 2: maybe it works stable if you just always wait a bit before starting up Spotify after a restart and after you unlocked the device....maybe (??) immediately opening spotify also triggered this behaviour

Solution: Device needs to be locked/secured somehow > fingerprint or faceID, locking Pattern, Pin etc.
I post this here so maybe others might find this here.... (update: ok I see it is not the exact same situation/problem...but anyway)

I contacted support about this and was (I hope permenantly!) able to solve the issue:

Background: The device I used is a (then still) completely unlocked > swipe to open Android 13 DAP/MP3 Player (WIFI only) > HiBY M300 with a SD-Card I wanted to use for Spotify downloaded / offline content.

Issue: you can NOT prevent spotify to launch immediately, or the SD Card mounting before, or tell spotify to check later IF/WHEN the SD-Card is again available and and and... > Spotify IMMEDIATELY!! forgets it just used the SD Card 2 minutes before and it might be stil/again "there" already....and starts IMMEDIATELY!! to change the storage location to the internal Storage without ANY option for the User to intervene!

Solution! What worked for me: -> Enable some sort of locking (PIN or Pattern) for the device
This seems to ensure that...after unlocking the Smartphone/Device...the SD CARD starts up FIRST! and/or with the right permissions etc.. and only THEN Spotify.

So far it seems stable... I did many (real) reboots... turn off and on again etc. and it was persistently working...also with a lot of content saved offline. Maybe worth checking out if the same situation might apply to you.

what I also did....but not sure if this is really relevant:
- I formatted the > 1 TB Samsung EVO Plus microSDXC Card from the device itself again before (this formatted it to FAT32 and put some default Android folders there already.

Re: Spotify repeatedly loses downloads

Kumikardo — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 20:30:47 GMT

I have the same problem un s20fe pls fix

Re: Spotify repeatedly loses downloads

fugggoff1o1o1o1 — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 23:42:52 GMT

to add to my previous post and suggestion... I would recommend doing the following in the following order:

(*I have close to zero idea what steps really help > the goal is always (I think) have the SD Card ready mounted and with file access/rights to it beforeSApotify starts up)...but maybe better try to do it this way...?!! or try it out with a different/better SD Card

In case you do not want to do all steps:
my guess (...guess only!) is that the following things are most relevant:
a) have your device locked with fingerprint, face ID, patter or PIN b) have the SD Card formatted by the phone/Android System c) start from scratch with everything

0) maybe you have this enabled anyway...but IN MY CASE having the device secured (via PIN / Lock pattern was the most (only?) relevant thing!..maybe?

1) go to Settings/Apps >then Spotify and clear Cache and Data there
2) (maybe do the same INSIDE the Spotify app too again) then uninstall Spotify
3) format the SD Card inside your device with the native Android Tools > so via Settings/Storage and Format it there
(my card was previously formatted with macOS Disc Utility as exFAT and contained only my folders first / Formatting the card IN the device did format the card as FAT32 AND! put already some default Android folders in there (Alarms, Android, DCIM, etc....it basically had the same/similar files and structure then as the internal storage)
4) maybe reboot now and see if the card mounts correctly
5) then install Spotify
6) maybe (hopefully) Spotify automatically defaults then to the SD card...it seemed to be this way for me...
7) test, reboot a few times to see if this helps