Downloading Over OTG USB Drive

[h3adsh0t]

I have a Nexus 7 tablet with only 16gb of onboard storage and no SD Card slot. As such, I rooted my tablet with a kernel that enables OTG connections for USB drives. The drive shows up just fine in my settings, and I am able to access the drive from my tablet.  However, I cannot download my Spotify songs onto it. I also do not have data, and as such, I can't just stream the music when I'm using the tablet in my car. I obviously do have premium, and only my phone has the songs downloaded to it. As such I have two questions:

1) If anyone has the same setup, do you know if there is a way to download what files I can to my device and then move them onto my USB drive? 

2) Since I have all of my songs downloaded on my phone, is there a way to stream the songs off of my phone via Bluetooth or some other solution?

[itu_]

Hello and welcome to the Spotify Community!

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@h3adsh0t wrote:

If anyone has the same setup, do you know if there is a way to download what files I can to my device and then move them onto my USB drive?

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Unfortunately, I must inform you that what you are trying to achieve is illegal.

You can't download music to your device and transfer it to another (like a USB in your case).

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@h3adsh0t wrote:

2) Since I have all of my songs downloaded on my phone, is there a way to stream the songs off of my phone via Bluetooth or some other solution?

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You do can stream the songs from your phone to your car, with your phone! It's either through Bluetooth or through AUX connection.

You can download up to 3,333 songs per device (you have a maximum of 3 allowed devices, so that makes a total of a maximum of 9,999 songs permitted to download in total).

If there's anything else I can do, please let me know!

Have a nice day 🙂

[h3adsh0t]

Thanks Julian for the reply!

I don't know if I made it seem like I wanted to download the songs to my USB for use without Spotify but that is not my intent. I simply wish to store my downloaded Spotify songs on my USB drive for use on my tablet. Since there is no apparent way for me to do this through the Spotify app (as it doesn't display my USB drive as a storage option despite it showing up in my tablet), I was wondering if there was some sort of work around. Again, I don't intend on using these songs outside the boundaries of the Spotify app, I have premium, and plan on keeping it forever, but if there is no way for me to do this, I may have to switch to some other provider which enables me to download to the USB drive. In terms of Bluetooth, my car does not come natively equiped for Bluetooth outside of making and receiving calls. As such, I was wondering if I could use my tablet, since it is functioning as my headunit, to access the downloaded songs directly off of my phone through the tablet. This wouldn't be an ideal solution, but since I seemingly can't download the songs onto my USB drive, this seems to be the only workaround that I can think of. 

[itu_]

Hey, if you install Spotify in your tablet, you could use it as well as playback device!

If not, and if you have an auxiliary cable, you can use AUX instead of Bluetooth.

There are two ways of aux cables:

1. Comes out of the car player, usually is like a headphone plug.
2. If you have the old style car player (like many friends of mine have), with a casette player, you can buy a casette with an aux cable. It is cheap and works perfectly!

Please do consider that now these days streaming services are restricted from providing the actual music file because of pirating reasons. I am not fully informed about how other streaming companies take action about this, but at least for Spotify, they do not provide the file to avoid expansion of piracy.

It's understandable your situation, I am sorry about it but there's not much to do except the things I've mentioned previously...

Best of luck!

[h3adsh0t]

When you say playback device, do you mean that I can use my tablet to access the downloaded songs from my phone? I unfortunately do not have a data plan so just using my phone to provide data is not a feasible solution, hence the desire to download the songs. 

[itu_]

By playback device, I mean that you can download the Spotify app in your tablet, access your account, download through Wi-Fi the playlists you want and then use it in your car 🙂

This process does not require your phone at all!

[stevenascott]

These responses make no sense. I have a Nexus 7 2013 in my dash and I have this same issue. USB OTG works just fine on other devices running Spotify, like my S7 and S8, but not N72k13. It's something to do with how Spotify triggers the USB storage option in their settings menu.

[itu_]

How can these responses make no sense? I'm sorry but do you understand how common USB connections work? When you connect a common Music Player (dashboard, stereo, tc, etc) you can only stream music storaged in your phone as MP3, M4A, WAV, etc formats. Spotify does not store music this way.

The only way to stream music from Spotify to a car is through the following: MirrorLink, RockScout by MirrorLink, Android Auto or CarPlay if you have iOS. I don't know about Nexus but Samsung phones do come with MirrorLink and RockScout integrations so it is most likely you are streaming music that way.

[stevenascott]

The responses make no sense because the original question was why the
Spotify app isn't accepting USB as offline storage. You can use USB on most
devices, as well as SD cards.

Stop thinking about this being music or sound-related, and realize it's
just a storage issue. This is a local playback situation, on a Nexus 7
tablet.

[stevenascott]

You also forgot raw USB audio as yet another way to stream Spotify to another device. I do this to achieve a flawless digital audio signal all the way back to the DSP in my trunk.

[itu_]

The OP asked:

1) If anyone has the same setup, do you know if there is a way to download what files I can to my device and then move them onto my USB drive? 

To which I replied: "Unfortunately, I must inform you that what you are trying to achieve is illegal.

You can't download music to your device and transfer it to another (like a USB in your case)."

Because:

1. You cannot download several files that are readable through other means.
2. You can't transfer your music. In some devices that support SD Card you can save directly your music there because you have the ability to move Data of an app to the SD Card on Android itself.

2) Since I have all of my songs downloaded on my phone, is there a way to stream the songs off of my phone via Bluetooth or some other solution?

To which I replied "You do can stream the songs from your phone to your car, with your phone! It's either through Bluetooth or through AUX connection". I admit I forgot about MirrorLink and Android Auto at that time but still I answered his question.

I replied to both questions correctly. The maximum you should go with storing is SD cards. Any further than that is straight considered illegal because you are exporting the data outside of Spotify boundaries.

[Goodman]

I think there's been some miscommunication here. The OP seems to be asking if you can download tracks for offline use on one device, transfer that cache to another device and have Spotify recognise it as downloaded tracks.

This is not possible.

Same goes for local tracks. To get local tracks onto a mobile device you need to use the desktop app to create a playlist of local music files on your desktop. You can then sync that playlist on your mobile device. But again, that cache isn't transferable to a different mobile device.

OTG is still often tricky/wonky when it comes to mobile devices, rooted or not. I've used plenty of Android devices where OTG simply didn't work properly, either due to vendor or other limitations. It's usually a combination of hardware and OS limitations.

If you want your mobile device or tablet to be able to use a connected OTG USB device as storage (instead of a internal SD card) and it doesn't work, then you can post that as a suggestion.