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.

[cg99]

...Aaaand...it didn't work for me, either. Turned my phone on this morning, and the whole library downloaded again to local storage. I am back at square one.

[CaptainDubious]

Dang, really sorry to hear it didn't work for you guys.

I've rebooted a couple more times since then and it looks like my library is staying intact on the SD card, so it definitely worked for me.

There's one thing I didn't think to mention: before trying this, I had manually deleted the com.spotify.music directory from the external SD card before trying this. I didn't think it was related, but perhaps it made the difference? If nothing else works you might want to try that, so:

1) Clear Spotify data/cache
2) Delete sd card/Android/data/com.spotify.music directory
3) Uninstall spotify app
4) Reinstall spotify app, DO NOT OPEN it yet
5) Android settings | Apps | Spotify | Permissions, change Storage from disabled to enabled
6) Start Spotify, log in, download a small amount of music to SD card, reboot

[Petya]

Hey all,

Thanks for reaching out and staying active in this thread! We can see you've tried a lot of troubleshooting steps already.

 Anytime you're experiencing issues with your downloads, you can check this article.

After all of the possibilities that could be causing this are checked off, we can move on to other methods such as:

1. Enable permission for storage option for Spotify. This can be accessed by going to Settings>Apps>Spotify>Permissions>Storage.

2. Make sure Spotify is set as an exception for any cache-clearing apps that you might be using.

3. Do a clean reinstall as explained here.

If these don't do the trick, feel free to leave a comment with your device, OS and Spotify version (since it's been a while). 

Keep us posted 🙂 

[cg99]

CaptainDubious, thank you for that extra step. I just tried it, but it didn't work.

Petya, thanks for chiming in on this thread! I am using a Moto g(6) with Android version 9 and an SD card. Spotify version is 8.5.33.831.

Unfortunately, the page of download Q&A you linked to doesn't talk about this issue, and I have already tried the other troubleshooting and remediation steps you mentioned: ensuring that the app permission for storage is enabled, and doing an uninstall/clean reinstall.

Since my last post, I have spent two very frustrating hours in live chat with Spotify support (there is a lot of detail there that I will refrain from offering in this thread). The outcome of that is they determined there is not an issue with my account. The only additional thing they tried that is not mentioned anywhere in this thread was deleting the offline devices from my account. In any case, it didn't help. Now that we have ruled out the account, that narrows it down to the app or the device. The likelihood is that it's the device in some way, although Spotify is the only app that seems to be having any issues at all, with the SD card or otherwise.

I continue to suspect it is the way the app runs on this hardware/OS combination with an SD card in the mix. Perhaps in the scheme of things, that's an edge case and I will have to live with it. I would love to figure something out so that I can restart my phone whenever I want to. But based on my last experience, I'm reluctant to go back to support to try additional troubleshooting.

[wackygoose]

This is really saddening. It started happening to me yesterday, my SD card also stopped working, I couldn't format it, then today I bought a new SD card and did a clean install. I have spent 6 hours downloading 30gb of my beloved music and then restarted the phone and my music is gone. Weird is that spotify was downloading to SD card without storage permission, I gave permission just to be sure and yet every time I restart my phone it switches back to internal storage and delete all of my SD card music... This ended with my hopes of having a good day off, I might as well switch to Tidal as there is a nice discount to it here in Brazil, and I will do it if my problem doesn't get solved by the first week of January. 

[cg99]

Happy new year, community members.

Fingers crossed, but the 8.5.40.195 Android version seems to have fixed it on my device. I hesitate to say this, because I have had false results before, but it's been over a week and I have restarted numerous times. I have even applied an Android security update. And so far, things are working. When I restart my phone, Spotify knows that all my music is on the SD card and it leaves everything alone.

For all the other people who have struggled with this issue for so many months, I hope you are experiencing similar positive results.

[LeoIntreBian]

I think i found solution here, although it is not really solution, but i think this way will orevent it, but NOT FIXING it, maybe and unless spotify or phone manufacturer take action to resolve this issue. Here's how:

1. When you restart the phone, especiay like mine always restart randomly without even me want to restart it, wait until the phone turn one again.

2. HERE ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT PART. When the phone have fully turn on (part where you insert your sim pin, or phone lock, take this in mind, dont unlock your phone yet, if it just sim unlock, it is still okay..proceed). Pull out your notification bar and put the phone on AIRPLANE MODE quick BEFORE YOU UNLOCK YOUR PHONE via pattern, pin or fingerprint. 

3. Wait for 30 to 60 seconds, without disable the airplane mode, go straight to spotify and check your downloaded song. If it still there, you can disable your aiplane mode. Thats all and enjoy your music. 

I know this will never fix the problem, at least this can prevent your spotify to redownload your music back to it's library especially if you runs on limited data like mine. Have a nice day!

[wackygoose]

You can just put a pin before boot, way easier ##- Please type your reply
above this line -##

[Muszico13]

Just shock my 3-4gb mobile data just gone to 0..then find out spotify re downloading all my song,after restart my phone..Samsung A50s,android 9..this is bad..

[Peter · Accepted solution]

Hey folks,

We just wanted to let you know that we're currently looking into this issue.

Make sure to subscribe to this Ongoing Issue thread - we'll keep you posted there and let you know as soon as we have any updates on the matter.

Thanks!

[cg99]

I'm glad Spotify is finally giving this issue some attention. Whatever they fixed in version 8.5.40.195 is still working for me. I am at 8.5.42.812 now and it's still good. Here's hoping they don't break it again, now that they are officially looking into it.

[user-removed]

Is this problem still being investigated? I'm on version 8.5.47.1006 and still having the problem.