Music library redownloads every time after restart

[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.