Android app not showing album art

[wickedninja]

Plan

Premium

Device

Oppo Find X2 Pro / Lenovo P11 Pro

Operating System

Android 12 / 11

My Question or Issue:

Album art stops being displayed in library. Reinstalling the app temporarily fixes the problem, but it returns after a couple of days. Artist artwork and playlist covers seem to keep working just fine. I have quite a large library of saved albums/artists, so maybe this a contributing factor.

There is a previous thread about this, but it has been marked as fixed, and clearly the issue is not fixed. The same problem occurs on my tablet and phone.

[quimerinha]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'm gonna give that a shot.

[quimerinha]

So even thou support resetted my offline data the problem still persists, I guess the only way out of this is paying a 3rd party service and migrating to other streaming platform huh

[huzzahforalex]

Hi again, 

Would just like to add another data point to my previous (and thank you to the OP for replying to my last). The suggested 'fixes' didn't provide a lasting solution for me (although yet to do the contact support step), everything carries on for a day or two and then loses artwork after clearing cache/reinstalling/etc.. However, I got bored of clearing the cache and persevered and after a while (a few days again) the artwork came back. Was pretty happy, assumed you guys fixed it, and then a few days later is disappeared again and a few days after that it came back again. Really not sure what's going on - in a bit of a rut right now so library isn't changing or anything like that - but maybe your developers might be able to use this information. Do you do any automatic refreshes/clears after 48-72 hours for stability/performance reasons? Presume this refresh isn't syncing up with another service (I suspect in the interface update last year) that depends on that data. That's where I'd want to look if I had access to the source code. 

Alex

[quimerinha]

Well, since there's no solution to this I paid for Soundiiz and migrated to Apple Music.

[wickedninja]

I have some new details which I think shows the issue is a combination of account, library, and the mobile app.

Trying to determine if this was a library size issue, I culled a number of saved albums from my library, taking it to less than 400 saved, and I estimate between 6000-7000 songs. I then reset the app again, but the issue still occurred after about 3 days. However, this time I noticed the following:

1. While most album covers had disappeared, there were a handful of albums that were still showing the cover art.
2. One of the albums still showing cover art was Audioslave's debut, but I noticed an oddity with the version of the album I had saved in my library. If you look at the screenshot below, the album cover shown in the "Popular" section is different to the album cover shown in the "Discography" section, and it turns out there are actually two different versions of the same album.
   
3. The version of the album I had in my library originally was the one with the writing. But the version in the discography doesn't have the writing. So I removed that saved version I had and resaved the album from the discography section. As soon as I did this, all my albums started showing the cover art again in the mobile app.
4. After I had resaved the album from the discography, I used the "Go to album" option from one of the "Popular" songs, and it clearly showed that this album was no longer saved to my library.
    
5. But the discography version clearly shows that it is in my library.
   
6. I then took a look at another album by Anthrax that had displayed the same sort of behaviour, and exactly the same situation had occurred...the version I had saved to my library was not the same as the version being displayed in their discography.

So what it looks like to me is that there are multiple versions of the same album within the Spotify repositories, and something is occurring that is causing a display/art cache issue in the mobile apps where there is possibly some sort of conflict.

It's important to note that both these albums have been saved to my library for quite some time, but this issue has only started in the last few months. However, the fact that fixing up these discrepancies fixed the album art for the rest of the library I think shows there is some kind of conflict occurring.

Whether this permanently fixes the problem for me is yet to be seen, but maybe this information can help the developers narrow down where the issue is.

[drob316]

I'd like to chime in as having the same issue as previous users here - I reinstall the app and clear cache and the problem returns after a few days. I'm on a Pixel 3a using internal storage. None of the proscribed fixes so far have resolved the issue. I consider this a serious problem because it makes browsing take several times longer.

[Dian]

Hey there,

Thanks for posting in the Community.

This can very well be due to the number of albums saved in the library. Could you remove the saved albums from the library and see how the app behaves?

Keep us posted,

Cheers!

[svendsvin]

I have the exact same problem as others have described in this thread. I tried the solutions but to no avail. Album art disappears again after some days. And it is not account connected since the problem does not happen on my other phone.

[csy9]

wickedninja's solution worked for me. I removed the Loscil album "coast/range/arc//" and added the older "Coast / Range / Arc" and all the art instantly came back. Re-adding the broken album does not instantly remove the art, so it seems like it only breaks after a few days because it interrupts some caching mechanism or something.

The broken album is actually separate from the older one too, it has an additional song, and one of the songs has a character that isn't supported in the title (it renders as a box). Hope this helps

[csy9]

The problem has come back though. Ugh this is absolutely infuriating, it makes it extremely difficult to pick music. And I need to have a lot of stuff downloaded because I don't have cell reception at work, so reinstalling every 3 days is a huge time sink.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @csy9 and @svendsvin,

Thank you for your replies and for trying the troubleshooting steps that's been provided in the thread.

We're sorry that you experiencing this so let's take a closer look.

To start with it would be great if you can let us know how many songs/albums/playlists you have saved?

We'll be on the lookout for your replies. Have a great Friday and start of your weekend!

[csy9]

Hey,

Thanks for trying to get to the bottom of this! There are 4216 songs in
"liked songs" but I don't really like individual songs, just albums. So it
looks like maybe in the past, Spotify would automatically add them in if
you liked an album. If there is an easy way to clear that out without
affecting saved albums I'd be down to try it. Interestingly the album art
loads fine on that page, it's only in the Library view that they don't load.

There are a lot of albums, not sure how to count them. And 15 playlists now
but 10 of them are pretty small ones I made.

[AndresM]

Hey @csy9,

Thanks for your reply. 

In order to check this further, could you send us over the make/model, OS version and Spotify version installed on your device?

Additionally, tell us if this is happening when logging in with a different device or with the web player.

We'll be here standing by. 

[csy9]

Hey,

I'm on a Samsung Galaxy s10e with android 12. It does not happen on my
other devices (Samsung smart tv or Linux desktop client). Spotify version
is currently 8.7.32.1554.

Thank you!!
Casey O'Neill

[AndresM]

Hey @csy9,

We recommend that you check if you have the Samsung Device Care app installed (Settings > Device Care). 

If so, adjust the settings in order to exclude Spotify from any optimization that may affect your downloads. Since the Device Care app optimizes the device's performance by managing tasks and clearing cache and info, its functions may generate conflicts with Spotify. 

Keep us in the loop.

[svendsvin]

I have less than 500 songs/albums/playlists. But the following has worked for me and I haven’t had the problem with missing album art for like 3 weeks. I have a work phone running Spotify v. 8.6. Never had the problem there. My own private phone has Spotify 8.7. I downgraded Spotify 8.7 on my private phone to 8.6 and it works perfect.

So I will say it is defiantly connected to version number.

[csy9]

Thanks for the advice I really appreciate it! This may have solved the
issue. It did not immediately fix it, but last Friday when I opened the app
all the art was back, and it's still working. I'll let you know if it
happens again.

I should also say that it seems tied to leaving or entering wifi somehow,
maybe that's just because when the caching is triggered. Usually when I
would notice the art being missing for the first time, I had just left my
home wifi or something.

[wickedninja]

@csy9, I had the issue occur once more after my post, but found considerably less albums had lost their artwork. Based on how the breaks in displaying album art were occurring in my library, I ended up finding 3 more albums that fitted the same criteria of the original anomalies I found.

Since then, which was about 3 weeks ago, the issue has not occurred again. However, there have also been a couple of app updates in the last few weeks, so who knows which change has fixed the bug. For now though, it seems to be back to normal again.