Android app with large amount of downloaded content is slow and crashing

[mstublefield]

Plan

Premium Duo

Country

USA

Device

Pixel 7 Pro

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

I have observed that, the more media I have downloaded in Spotify for offline play, the slower the app gets at launch and search. As of today, at 58.25 gb stored, the app won't open. Similar to https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Android-app-crash-at-startup/m-p/4503685?search-action-id=3... it opens to a black screen for a few seconds, then crashes. 

I use Google Fi for our data so I pay for the data we use. I want to use offline mode to reduce our monthly bill, but using Spotify with a downloaded library is a terrible experience.

[mstublefield]

Hi there @mstublefield,

Thanks for reaching out.

The app can support a lot of content, but a very large library, including saved and created playlists as well as liked songs, and a large quantity of saved content can lead to various issues. Exactly how much the app can handle smoothly depends on the specific device and setup. Ultimately, the more content the app has to deal with, the more the performance will likely degrade. Having almost 60 GB of downloads is quite substantial, so we advise you try and downsize this however you can, that is sure to alleviate some of the issues.

Hope this clears things up.

[Joan]

Hi there @mstublefield,

Thanks for reaching out.

The app can support a lot of content, but a very large library, including saved and created playlists as well as liked songs, and a large quantity of saved content can lead to various issues. Exactly how much the app can handle smoothly depends on the specific device and setup. Ultimately, the more content the app has to deal with, the more the performance will likely degrade. Having almost 60 GB of downloads is quite substantial, so we advise you try and downsize this however you can, that is sure to alleviate some of the issues.

Hope this clears things up.

[FiftyOne]

Just fix the app! It never ran high performance for me but it was fine, my phone is no flagship so what. But since latest update app doesnt even open! You telling deleting offline library is the solution seems like a big joke to me

[FiftyOne]

People still have this issue after reinstall, so pls just fix this bug

[#6]

My Spotify liked songs playlist has so many songs in it now that it will not start playing. I noted that over time as the playlist size increased I would have to wait longer and longer for playback to start which I could deal with, however now that I've hit around 3,500 songs I can't use this playlist at all except to scroll through and add things to the queue. I think that as a dedicated music app Spotify should allow me to like and enjoy as much music as I want and it's a shame to have spent hundreds of pounds on this app and such a time curating a large collection only for it to become inaccessible on my mobile device. I'd really like this issue to receive some attention and be rectified.

[2jl30sc-8_bm8]

If I start Spotify and want to play music, it takes a very long time before the controls are shown. (I mostly listen to downloaded songs)
If I've paused the music and resume after a while it also takes a while before the music starts playing. While I'm waiting the duration bar is loading but my songs are downloaded so it should be able to play immediately.

Oneplus nord 3
9000 liked/downloaded songs

Here is a link to my google drive of a screenrecording
https://photos.app.goo.gl/xWgmucqJfFBGpiAe6

[ShaneSmiskol]

I have the exact same problem! I have about 12k songs downloaded in my main Liked songs playlist on Pixel 8 Pro w/ Android 15 beta, and the app is completely unusable. It takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes to start playing in most cases (but using Google Assistant on Android Auto, and the AA app seems mostly fine).

I tried Spotify on an iPhone 15 Pro Max and songs loaded instantly. This feels like a horrible optimization problem for Android specifically. Please fix! And please let me know if any bug reports are needed.

Here's a recording of the issue, you can see it's unusable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3hOR2eaEBI

[mya_666_]

What's ridiculous is that we have to be the ones to fix our issues by getting rid of stuff that Spotify gives the us the choice to have the amount of songs and lists we have. When in reality if the app cant handle it then it shouldn't have allowed it in the first place. Its ridiculous that an outdated version of the app can handle it better than a newer version. I am frustrated with paying nearly 20 dollars monthly for something this problematic.

[mya_666_]

It worries me to see how long this has been happening, I've recently updated my app (haven't updated since early 2023 or maybe slightly later) and using it as it is now is driving me crazy, its ridiculous. A music app should be able to support thousands of songs. If yours is doing that around 3000 then I cant imagine how many songs it could handle without lagging. Seems like 1000 is an ok number for this joke of an app.

[marcjuhl]

Plan

Premium

Country

Denmark

Device

Samsung Galaxy A55 (Android 14)

Operating System

Android 14

Issue

I am experiencing significant performance issues with the app when attempting to download my entire library of 3,000 liked songs onto my Samsung Galaxy A55, a relatively new and capable device. After completing the download, the app becomes extremely slow and unresponsive, rendering it nearly unusable. This lag persists even after restarting my phone, which suggests the problem is tied to the app’s optimization for handling large local libraries.

Given the A55’s hardware specifications, this level of performance degradation is unexpected. The app frequently freezes, takes excessive time to load tracks, and struggles with basic navigation (e.g., scrolling through songs or accessing menus). This severely impacts my ability to enjoy offline listening, a core feature of the service.

I kindly request the development team to investigate this issue, as it appears to be related to how the app manages large datasets locally. Potential fixes could include improved caching mechanisms, background process optimization, or a toggle to limit resource-intensive operations. Until resolved, this bug undermines the app’s reliability for users with extensive music collections.

Please address this in a future update—thank you for your attention to this matter.

[mya_666_]

How dumb instead of helping all they did was merge your post with one similar to it. I literally talked to customer service about this issue but they could only do so much. The stupid development team needs to see this and actually do something. Its ridiculous. I tried moving to other apps but 10000 songs is a lot to lose.

[ShaneSmiskol]

This is still an issue on Pixel 10 Pro. Does Spotify not care about the experience on Android?

I can provide a bug report if a Spotify employee needs

[Lauren_Ipsum]

Plan Premium

Country Netherlands

Device Oppo A98

Operating System ColorOS CPH2529_15.0.0.1350(EX01V120P02)

My Question or Issue

The app is EXTREMELY slow. I already did a full clean reinstall and tried to download certain playlists. The slowness occurs for example when I start the app, when I want to start playing from a certain playlist, or when I try to search for something. The main issue, however, is when I want to add or remove songs from playlists. I sometimes have to do this up to four times before a song is actually added to a playlist. This drives me insane and I am seriously considering to move to a different streaming service.

I think it's important to note that I have a very large library. I tend to carefully collect the songs I listen to and I have been doing this for over ten years now. I've recently deleted some really big playlists that I didn't need, but this didn't help a thing. Also I've deleted the majority of my liked songs, but this didn't help either.

What's also good to know, is that this problem doesn't occur when playing from my Macbook. But then I bump in to another problem: the playlists don't seem synced. I've had some of my newer playlist not show up in my Mac library, although they were on my phone.

Something else I've encountered, is podcast episodes not playing, but I'm assuming that's a different problem, since that started when I was on my Mac. Just mentioning it, for the sake of completeness.

[Lauren_Ipsum]

Maybe to give you some perspective: I create about 10 playlistst each year that contain 500 to 1700 songs each, and I also have a wide variety of other playlists, of which the biggest is about 8000 songs.