Listening to local files from pc on mobile

[koenpierens]

Hello everyone, 

I use spotify on both my pc and Android phone. I've imported my iTunes playlists, made them available offline and all is well on the pc. When I try to listen through my phone however, only certain files are available (I guess the ones recognized by Spotify) and the others are grayed out. How can I enable listening to my music on my mobile device? 

Thanks in advance.

[Jon_UK]

Hey!

This is a nice simple thing to sort. Basically:

- You need to open Spotify on Android and make sure that Spotify is open on the PC too.

- You must then ensure both devices are connected to the same Wifi network

- Then go to the playlist on your phone and click to make it available offline

All that's happening is the MP3's on your PC are being pushed through your home WiFi to your phone. Spotify has no access to your iTunes files and therefore they have to be sent directly from your PC to your mobile device.

Make sense? 🙂

Cheers, J

[koenpierens]

Hey man!

First of all, thanks for taking the time to reply.
Your explanation makes sense indeed. However, when I do what you describe, my phone only downloads the songs that were allready highlighted.. So I am afraid it doesn't solve my problem.

Regards, K.

[Jon_UK]

It's a pleasure 🙂

The highlighted ones it's downloading are downloading from the Spotify network as they exist on Spotify itself. The ones that are grey for some reason, are not being pushed from your PC, and they should be. 

I'm guessing on your PC, the ones that are grey on your phone are playing properly? My suggestion is to reboot your network, your PC and your phone. Make sure you're on all the latest versions of Spotify also. Then try again!

I use the local files all the time on my phone.

Please note, that you can't just stream a local file (ie the grey ones on your phone) one at a time. You *must* press the make offline button first, let it download, then play it!

Best, J

[koenpierens]

Hey man, 

Yeah indeed, they're doing just fine on my pc. I downloaded the apps today. 

That was indeed what I was expecting and hoping for, but no luck thus far. 

I'd love to accept the solution, but I haven't gotten any further yet so i'm sorry. 😛 

Thank you for your time though! 

Regards, K.

[Jon_UK]

Yea don't accept it if it's not sorted!!

Did you try restarting all your hardware? Sometimes (say if you're on Virgin internet) there is a 5G & 2G wifi network connection. If one is connected to 2G, and the other is connected to 5G this may be causing the issue.

It's something silly like that, I'm sure of it!

[koenpierens]

Yeah I did. Yeah I've got both a 2GHz and 5GHz router and I checked that they were on the same one... and no not using Virgin.

[Jon_UK]

Things like this can be frustrating. So on the playlist with the local files, when you select "Offline" what happens? It just downloads the ones in white only?

[koenpierens]

Yeah exactly.

[Jon_UK]

Well it's clear that there is a lack of connection between the two. Does Spotify Connect work between the two?

[koenpierens]

Yeah it seems so, I can use my phone as remote for my pc if that's what you mean.

[Jon_UK · Accepted solution]

Well that's even more mysterious! If that's so, the two can see eachother perfectly well. 

Two more ideas then:

1. Make sure Spotify is allowed through your firewall on Windows. This would prevent syncing if it's not (if you don't know how to do this, just ask me!) Unblock Spotify.exe from public and private networks. I take it you're just using the standard windows firewall?

2. Try connecting your PC to the internet via a LAN cable (not wireless) just to test.

I know in some instances, this has fixed this problem for other users!

[koenpierens]

I'll give it a go to try your solution. In the meanwhile I've got another issue: I can't manage to store my offline stuff on the SD-card instead of the internal memory... I've tried the clean install. Any tips there?

[koenpierens]

The boxes are checked, but it says "Allowed apps:" so wouldn't that mean they are supposed to be? 

[Jon_UK]

Can you show me a screenshot at all?

And I know that SD Card one. With Spotify on Android, you cannot manually decide where the music goes (bit odd). It will basically choose where to put music the first time you set anything to offline and it will choose whichever has the most space available at the time of first sync. After that it will stick to that location.

What I usually do is ensure the SD card is empty (it's bigger than my internal memory anyway), then install and sync Spotify. That always works for me!

[koenpierens]

Yeah but my internal memory has 4Gb free and my SD card 250 Gb.. So that should work but didn't. Sure I can, of what exactly do you want to see a screenshot?

[Jon_UK]

You have a 256Gb MicroSD card? Blimey, that's unbelievably huge!

Screenshot:

- Your firewall on the spotify.exe bit (it should be open in public/private). Incidentally have you just tried temporarily completely turning off your firewall (only for a minute or so just to test)?

- One of your local playlists

[koenpierens]

Here are the screenshots.

[koenpierens]

I've got a development! It downloads the files now. I don't know if its the cause or just a coincidence.. but when i got my laptop LAN connected and used it as a hotspot for my phone, it downloaded the entire playlist.. All that remains now is that it's on the internal memory in stead of the SD...

[Jon_UK]

Awesome, I did say a few posts ago about plugging LAN in, so it's definitely not a coincidence because I got the idea from someone else who fixed it that way. I'm glad that's half of the issue sorted!!

Now for part 2....

I think it's gonna have to be a painful test 😞

1. Uninstall Spotify from your device;

2. Use a cache cleaner to remove any evidence of the software (perhaps CCleaner etc) or just manually find the spotify directory on the internal memory and delete it (check the SD card too).

3. Here's the kicker... can you format the SD card via android? I appreciate this may be an issue as it might be full of stuff already....

4. If you can do that, then reinstall Spotify on Android

5. Log in, download something and fingers crossed, it should do the job!

We're getting there buddy 🙂 J