Batch Searching greyed out songs

[s0nicb00m]

Plan

Premium/Family Plan

Country

Canada

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

How do I batch search, or force, spotify to find a whole bunch of songs?

I have a playlist (~5000 songs) where a number of them are greyed out. Some are local files, others just aren't "self-populating".

I know certain songs might not be able to be found. However, when searching, I can find almost every song. And I have to do it 500 times... ugh.

I moved all of the songs to a new playlist and am hoping to figure out a way to force spotify to lookup all the songs and find them so they are not greyed out and I can add them back into the original playlist.

Help please.

[Peter]

Hey @s0nicb00m.

Thanks for reaching out to us about this.

Have you already tried changing the source file for local files in your Spotify app settings and seeing if the tracks become available again in your Local Files folder on desktop? 

Keep us posted 🙂

[s0nicb00m]

90+% of the songs are not local files, they are available on Spotify. It’s just that I have to search them, add them and delete the old instance. I don’t want to do this with 1000 songs. 

[Peter]

Hey @s0nicb00m,

Thanks for getting back to us and for clarifying that.

If it's a case of an old song version which has been replaced by a new one, then this is something that the artist is responsible for. 

Just to be sure, do you mind sending us a few examples of the old, greyed-out version that appears in your playlist and the new, updated one which you are replacing it with? If you could send us the URIs of each, that would be great.

Thanks! Looking forward to your reply 🙂

[s0nicb00m]

Not sure how to get the URI for each one. How do I do that?

Three examples are: Adam's Song - Blink 182; Afternoon Delight - Starland Vocal Band; and Ahead By A Century - Tragically Hip.

I think when I started with Spotify, these were local songs I loaded. I remember back when I started, I would load them and Spotify would search for them or something. I guess I'm trying to force this to happen again. The problem is, I don't have the local songs anymore as my laptop was stolen. Between selling off my CDs and moving to Spotify, and losing my old computer, I'm back to these 1000 songs left to "bring in" to spotify.

Thanks, @Peter

[NajNaor]

Hi, 
Check this link on how to get the URI of a track 🙂

[Peter]

Hey @s0nicb00m,

Thanks for getting back to us and for clarifying those details for us.

Even though we match up your local files with the Spotify version of the track when it's available, Spotify still considers it as a local file (rather than replacing it with the Spotify version). As a result, when you remove a local file, it will appear as greyed out in Your Library.

Unfortunately the only way around this is to add the Spotify versions back manually to the playlist. Apologies for the inconvenience!

Let us know if you have any other questions 🙂