Music library redownloads every time after restart

[cg99]

Device: motog6

Android version: 9

Plan: Premium family

There are other posts about this, but the solutions do not work for me and the problem is persistent.

Every time I restart my phone, all my downloaded songs redownload. This makes the app basically unusable.

It started last Thursday (Nov. 7). Here are the things I have done so far to try to remedy the situation:

1. Clear cache and app data.
2. Uninstall app.
3. Turn off phone.
4. Check that my SD card is seated properly.
5. Turn on phone.
6. Confirm that other apps can read and write to SD card successfully.
7. Log in to spotify.com and remove all offline devices from my account.
8. Reinstall app.
9. Download music library again.

I have done all these steps twice. And still, I turn my phone on in the morning and it immediately starts downloading my music library again.

I think it is a software issue, because:

• I quit the app before I turn off my phone. It did not used to automatically run and check for anything when the phone starts, but now it seems to.
• There is no indication from any other app that my SD card isn't working.
• Half the time when I look in the storage settings in my app, it has switched back to Device from SD card. But then if I switch to SD card again, it happily copies everything over to the SD card for me.

This bug is bad enough that it is going to make me not use Spotify any more, unless there is an update that fixes it very soon.

[Delmonte]

Same here with lastest version of Spotify. This issue started yesterday.

Tried everything without success.

Galaxy S9+ no SD card
Android 9
Premium family

[cmhmus1c]

After first heavy use since the last Spotify app update (8th Nov) my Moto G6 has been randomly crashing resulting in all my downloads disappearing.  

I have tried using my SD card as both internal and external storage with no differences, the phone crashes and all downloads gone.

[ericq]

I have the same issue on both my Oneplus phone and Samsung tablet for a few weeks now. It is subscribing me to random playlists i have listened to in the past and downloading music. Some of these playlists have over 2000 songs!!

Here is what i allrady tried:

• Removed all the connected apps from my account.
• Removed all offline devices.
• Turned off my phone and then on my tablet:
• Cleaded cache and storage
• Removed the Android app
• Restarted tablet
• Install app again
• Problem still exists

Spotify app version 8.5.32.889 both on phone and tablet

Phone is Oneplus 3 with Android 9

Tablet is Samsing Galaxy Tab S5e with android 9

This is what is happening:

[cg99]

Well, here is what I have come to with this:

• I only restart my phone once a week. 
• I let it download my library again overnight. 
• I copy the files to my SD card when I get up in the morning. 
• Spotify either doesn't believe they have a software problem here, or they don't care because it only affects a relatively small number of customers. 
• This is a bad customer experience. 
• I am evaluating other streaming music services and the tools necessary to migrate my playlists. 

[marcosfdez109]

I have the same problem, about three weeks ago, it's not easy to move 4500 songs from one service to another, that's the only reason why I'm still here. Between this and the app frequently deleting my downloads, it's all too much. I hope there is a solution soon. 

[cg99]

Signs of hope...with the Nov. 25 update, this problem seems to be fixed on my device. Can you fine community members confirm for your devices? If it looks good for others, I will mark this as resolved. 

[marcosfdez109]

In my case it didn't work. I thought after that update it would be solved, but it wasn't. 

[CaptainDubious]

Latest update does NOT fix it for me, either. Same behavior as before: after rebooting, the storage option has switched itself back to Internal storage and starts downloading everything again. Switching back to SD Card is possible after opening the app, but this causes all the existing download music there to be erased.

Phone is a brand new Moto G6, unmodified except for the latest official update, Android 9 (Pie).

I think what is happening is the Spotify service starts before Android mounts the SD card. By the time you can open the app itself, the SD card is already available. But the service has gone haywire and **bleep** everything up already by then.

This behavior is incorrect no matter how you look at it. Even if the SD card were removed, it's still stupid to silently switch to Internal storage and start downloading everything again. For one thing, it happens even when there is not enough free space in the Internal storage. For another, the data transfer is likely to be significantly higher than the user expects.

The app simply must wait for the user to confirm that they want to switch storage options, anything else is wrong.

[cg99]

That was my hypothesis, too, until I very clearly saw it start to download after the SD card was mounted. I have no idea why this problem persists or what the root cause is. 

So sorry it is still a bug that affects other people. Now I don't trust that the behavior has corrected itself on my phone.

We will definitely leave this thread open for others to add their voices. And maybe someday Spotify will indicate that it is listening and cares.....

[CaptainDubious]

> That was my hypothesis, too, until I very clearly saw it start to download after the SD card was mounted.

That's true, the downloading starts later, but it's possible that the background service changes the storage setting before that. The downloading is a later consequence of that.

> And maybe someday Spotify will indicate that it is listening and cares.....

I wouldn't hold my breath.

[CaptainDubious]

Interesting development: I pulled an older version (8.5.4.770) of the Spotify app apk from my old phone. I was definitely not having this issue on the old phone, but it still happens on the new phone even with the same old apk.

The old phone was an HTC 10 running Android 7.1 (Nougat), the new one is the Moto G6, Android 9 (Pie). The SD card setup is the same: external SD card used for Spotify storage, and both using traditional (as opposed to "adopted") mode.

So it seems the problem must be specific to either the Android version or the phone vendor itself. I do notice that there is a temporary notification about "checking" the SD card when the first phone boots. It finishes quickly, before I ever attempt to open the Spotify app, but perhaps not before the background service notices that it's been unmounted.

*Even if that's true, Spotify's behavior is still wrong. It's not OK to silently switch to internal and begin downloading without asking the user or even checking if there's enough free space, even if the SD card were actually removed.

So ... how about it? Is anyone having this issue on any other phone than the G6? Or, any other Android version than Pie?

[cmhmus1c]

It seems to be somewhat random.  

I'm on a Moto G6 with the latest updates and since the last Spotify update all my problems have gone.  I've tested two restarts of my phone and all my downloads are there along with configuration still set to the SD card.

Occasionally Spotify will download a few tracks but I am guessing they have just been updated to it refreshes them.

[Delmonte]

After update this annoying issue still persists.
Galaxy S9+
Android 9 Pie
Last version of spotify (updated yesterday)
I am not using SD card.
Premium Family

It's seems spotify does not care about their users.

[cmhmus1c]

And about 20 minutes after posting the message saying that it seems to have been fixed my phone crashed, my entire music collection downloaded wiped and changed back to phone storage rather than SD card!

[cg99]

...and now...I start Spotify, it shows all my music as waiting to download again. I put my phone in airplane mode. I listen to my music successfully, playing from my SD card. Spotify doesn't know it's there, except it plays it. When I connect to WiFi again? All my music starts to download again. Probably to local storage. It seems less predictable than it was before. Is it better? Is it worse? I can't really decide. 

I am sure that this software still doesn't work correctly. 

[CaptainDubious]

OK, I don't want to jinx myself, but I have rebooted 3 times now without this issue.
The solution was actually suggested by Spotify support. I finally realized I could contact actual support instead of just posting in a forum, and they got back to me very quickly and proposed the following solution, which appears to be working for me:

1) Settings | Apps | Spotify | Storage | Clear Data
2) Uninstall the Spotify app, and reinstall it anew from the Play Store
3) Before opening the app, Settings | Apps | Spotify | Permissions and change the Storage permission to enabled
4) Open Spotify, log in, and download stuff to the SD card. It will now correctly stay there after a reboot.

Note that I did try enabling the permission without reinstalling, and that didn't work. So, it probably has to be enabled when Spotify first initializes the storage. That does mean you'll have to download everything again at least once, but hopefully only once.

My device is a Moto G6 with Android Pie btw.

[cg99]

Oh nice. I couldn't find a way to contact Spotify Support, which is why I started this thread. You are smarter and more resourceful than I am!

I have tried your steps. Fingers crossed. It would be great if that worked.

One thing I noticed is that after I reinstalled, the downloads went really fast. Like, it wasn't actually downloading them at all, just checking the SD card for each file. So maybe clearing the app data doesn't actually delete them from external storage? I forgot to check the volume before and after.

In any case, we will see if this persists as a fix. I will leave the post open for another week, but then I hope we can accept your answer and move on!

[CaptainDubious]

> One thing I noticed is that after I reinstalled, the downloads went really fast. Like, it wasn't actually downloading them at all, just checking the SD card for each file.

I had nothing on my SD card when I reinstalled, so I didn't see that, but it's very encouraging. It could mean that we can now remove the SD card, put it back in, and still have the downloads (there's a related but separate thread in this forum about this). It would be awesome if not only this was fixed but that too!

[cmkl]

Didn't work for me unfortunately.