Local files on my android greyed out and skipped in playlists, but can still be played otherwise?

[AndOr47]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

Samsung Galaxy S10e, HP ENVY x360 Convertible 15m=dr0xxx

Operating System

Android 11, Windows 10

My Question or Issue

A couple songs which come from my local files are skipped over in playlists and I can't figure out why or how to fix them. They're shown as greyed out in playlists yet if i directly play one it plays just fine. The only issue is that when I go from song to song in a playlist, they're skipped over and can't be played even if I skip back. I've already tried deleting their files, redownloading them and putting them back into the same playlists but nothing has worked. Both are from albums and each song from the two albums were downloaded in the same places so I'm not sure why only two songs of them all can't be played.

[Ej5s]

Nope spotify doesn't give af

[ChrisAhlund]

Glad to see that I'm not alone with this issue, and that it's not only on Samsung.

[ADSFORPREMIUMSUCKS]

I'm on a one plus nord having the same problem, Spotify just doesn't care.

[ChrisAhlund]

Hi Mihail! Can you "unsolve" this and open up the case again since it's clearly not resolved?

[K-Roc]

S21 ultra here and I've had this problem for a while now.  I've given up doing the workarounds already.  Lol

[heckypants]

I've also been having the issue; I have the files downloaded directly onto my phone and they keep getting greyed out and won't play in shuffle; but I can tap on them and play them. I've also noticed they've been un-downloading themself from my downloaded playlist. I'm on a Samsung s22, so this is looking like an android issue 

[itsmeidson]

It's never getting fixed. It's clearly an old and broad issue that they are never going to fix because they don't get anything from it. In fact, they profit from the issue. By no being able to listen to local files properly on Spotify, you'll likely listen more to Spotify songs. That's why they won't fix it. They get more money that way.

I love unreleased songs but rarely listen to them because of this issue. So I listen to the songs available on Spotify. It's sad but it's the true.

[mobilehypo]

Unluckily for them I can batch recut my local songs to seem new so they show up in my playlists. Is it a PITA? Yes. Am I going to keep doing it? Yes, because I am stubborn and I won't let them win. 

[heckypants]

you're definitely right, its partially the reason why I pay for YouTube premium so I can listen to whatever, but it's still such a pain. if Spotify wasn't so convenient I would've cancelled it by now; and that's what they're banking on unfortunately.

[ColbySwell]

Hey guys, I wanted to post an update for a slight work-around to this, hopefully anyone still in this chain hasn't completely lost hope.

In order to avoid this happening, I recommend connecting your phone and computer that your local files are hosted on to the same wifi connection at least once a month with the spotify application opened on both. Every time you do this, it "checks again" for local mp3s. Basically, anytime it messes up, youre going to want to do this. Its a chore and pretty annoying but ultimately a lot easier than nuking your downloads (and playlists) on either client.

The other thing I recommend doing is: if it's been a while since you've played a local song, and youre worried about selecting a song and greying it out, I would intentionally have a different mp3 to use as a buffer in case it doesn't load like it should. I have a couple personal voice memos and stuff that automatically got indexed by spotify in my library, so If I'm concerned that it wont load properly I just select one of those.

I've started making sure my spotify libraries get synced once a week even if theres no new song additions and this has basically solved the problem for me, and when it stops working I just fix it whenever I get home from wherever I am when my songs "grey out". Hopefully any/all of this was helpful. Happy new years guys. Go download a bandcamp album or two.

[bsaq]

Thanks, it inspired me to just disable the local files display option in the settings, get back to the library and then re-enable the option. It worked! My device is Samsung Galaxy S23.

[Gamelap1]

This is WHY this happens and Spotify needs to fix it. When we synchronize or local files via PC or even if we just import MP3 files and save the directly to your phone. Spotify often keeps them in a local files and or sync folder. Spotify will often randomly (after an update I've noticed) remove all the spaces in a saved MP3 file in the local files folder and that is what causes it to be greyed out because it can't find the original name of the file since Spotify changes the filename. For example: I had a file called Captain Planet - Intro.mp3 - after a Spotify update it renamed all my local files and removed the spaces in them so the file then looked like CaptainPlanet-Intro.mp3 even though only the spaces were removed it was enough for the original source file to not be found when I went to the playlist where I added the original file. I have since copied all my local files to a new folder far away from the Spotify folders and then manually readded each song and it has never happened again. I believe that during certain Spotify updates they have a bug that has existed for quite some time now where it causes all saved or synced local files to be renamed with spaces removed thus greying everything out. General Customer service is inept unfortunately and will always say to just delete everything and reinstall. 

[mynamemow2]

iPhone 11, Spotify version 8.9.8.487

Windows 10, Spotify version 1.2.29.605.g66a43ceb

My Question or Issue

I use local files a lot because a lot of the music I listen to isn’t available on Spotify, and certain songs keep “undownloading” from my phone, forcing them to be redownloaded every time I open the app. They disappear at random, but are gone more often than not. It is the same songs every time, and every time I launch Spotify it tries to download the same songs. They were obtained from genuine sources, so foul play is impossible. The attached photo shows that local files work, it’s just these specific songs that are causing me problems.

[heartaidcafe]

been having the exact same issue lately and it’s really frustrating, and i couldn’t seem to find any recent discussion of it until now, everytime i redownload my files, they stay for a bit until they randomly disappear, but the weirdest thing is just. a few specific songs actually stay downloaded each time, and it’s the exact same ones every time? rainbow stairway and solid soul for example are both local files, and play completely normally every time for whatever reason while the others don’t. i used to have a bunch of video game osts downloaded to my phone with no issues even up until now when i deleted all my mobile downloads to try and fix this issue, so i’m not entirely sure why isn’t changed all of a sudden 

[ValakiHUN]

I have this problem as well. The spotify on my android will download and be able to play the local files from the playlist as well as long as spotify is open on the computer with the local files. As soon as I close the spotify on the computer, the local files songs on the android spotify becomes unavailable.

[Paradoz_]

I have this problem as well but i'm on an iphone 11. The same random songs keep getting greyed out. I've tried everything in this topic but it doesn't work.

[ValakiHUN]

Hi all!

I followed up on the tip that spotify removes spaces in the synced local files on phones. It seems that anything that is not part of the english abc, number or "-/_" are removed from the title as well. I have renamed my local files on the computer accordingly, and the syncign is working well again.

[Ej5s]

So theoretically if we just don't have spaces in our file names we won't have this problem?

[heckypants]

I have no spaces or extra characters in my files and they still don't work,
so I guess it just works sometimes 😕

[Ej5s]

Sounds good I will try this