Songs are not showing in playlist on phone app for Windows Phone 8 (WP8)

[ishtarroux]

I have a Nokia Lumia 920 WP8 and many of the songs in my playlists are not coming over to the app on my phone. I attempted to remove the app and reinstall then got even less songs in my lists than before. In looking at the message boards there are several other complaints on the app for Windows Phone, though largely for the 7 but the app for the 8 doesn't work either. When is this going to be fixed? I'm paying for a subscription to a service that can't play the lion share of my music (including items I already own that are resident on my phone locally in my own playlists).

[Peter__]

Hey! Welcome to the community 🙂 

When you say songs are not showing on your phone, what is missing, is it certain tracks from playlists, just newly added tracks, or even whole playlists that are missing? 

If its tracks throughout your playlists, are those tracks stored as local files on your desktop Spotify? If so they might not be playable on the Windows Phone App since it does not support local file synching like the iOS and android apps. 

Peter

[ishtarroux]

Hi Peter - thanks for your reply. Several songs from my playlists are just plain missing from the app. For example one of my playlists has 32 songs in the Spotify program on my computer, but on my phone it had only 26 songs. I removed the app and reloaded thinking maybe that was the problem and now the list has only 11 songs in it on my phone. 😞 The list is mine and is set to be available offline.  The songs were originally there and just 'vanished'. Also of note for this list most of the songs in it are music I own that is available on my phone as a locally stored file.

Another list from a friend shows 36 songs and available offline. My phone app shows 29 tracks for that same list. Another 29 on the computer, 25 on the phone. Another 41 and 38, etc.

Sadly if you go to the windowsphone site my problems don't seem to be unique, though I'm not sure how many others that have posted have both the premium account and the wp8. It's very disappointing since my main reason for using Spotify was to have all this available on my phone.

[ishtarroux]

Hi Peter - this just happened again, and with the same playlist. In Spotify I have 34 tracks on it currently. On the app earlier today it only showed 27 (I think). I closed/restarted and no help. I uninstalled and reinstalled and now that list is down to 12 on my phone. Again no real 'logic' behind what shows and what doesn't show (i.e. it's not picking just items I actually have resident on the phone as my own music, or not just items I have starred, etc.). I'm attaching an image so you can see. Items highlighted in yellow are on the phone app, all others are not. Items in the green circles I actually have the music files locally, others just in Spotify.

BTW you should probably read the feedback on windowsphone.com - others have similar experiences.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/spotify/10f2995d-1f82-4203-b7fa-46ddbd07a6e6

[Joe]

As Peter said, the WP8 app doesn't synch local files and this is causing the issues you are seeing. From the image you posted, all spotify content has synched, as expected. Additionally those of your local files where spotify could match artist/track/album have also synched. So the result you see is what I would expect.

There are tracks in your playlist which are available on spotify but weren't matched because they're on a different album and you could find and add these by manually. (for example Alabina/Alabina/Alabina is on spotify on a Very Best of album.

Hope this helps.

[ishtarroux]

So I guess next question would be is there a timeline to fix this? Per Peter's response the apps for iOS and Android don't have this issue.. only the WP8 app. While I can search and use the workaround for some of the content that is, in essence, a bandaid.

[Joe]

Spotify tend to say nothing about developments they're working on or plan to work on unfortunately. The other issue you face with WP8 is that Spotify can only store music in the internal storage as MS don't allow 3rd party apps to use the external SD card.