Looks like I found a fix! For some reason, you have to download the playlist in which the song you are trying to listen to...... That fixes it all. Awesome!
Plan
Premium
Devices
Phone 1: Nothing Phone (2a)
Phone 2: Samsung Galaxy S10e
Laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad P1 Gen 3
Operating System
Phone 1: Android 15
Phone 2: Android 12
Laptop: Windows 11 Home
My Question or Issue
I have a few songs that are made available by the artists as free downloads (and are not on Spotify), which I have downloaded (all as MP3 files) and stored on my laptop. I play these on my Spotify desktop app using the 'Local Files' feature, which works perfectly fine. Now, because I also want to be able to listen to these songs on my phone, I’ve made a copy of these files (they are identical) to my phone’s storage so I can play them on the Spotify mobile app too. However, most of the songs (around 90%) aren't recognized correctly across both devices. With 10% of the songs, I can start playback on my laptop, switch to my phone ('phone 1'), and the song continues playing seamlessly. The other 90% of the songs don't behave this way: when I switch devices mid-playback, Spotify simply stops playing, acting like the file is missing on my phone (where it's grayed out). It's always the same songs which are grayed out; this doesn't change over time or when I try copying and deleting the files more times. To be perfectly clear: I can go to 'Local Files' on my phone and listen to all songs there. But then the same happens when I switch to my laptop: it stops playback in the case of 90% of the songs because the songs aren't recognized.
I also tried with a different phone ('phone 2'), and it has the same issue with roughly 90% of the songs. Surprisingly enough, however, it is not the exact same set of songs that aren't working! Some songs do work on phone 1, but not on phone 2, and vice versa. Some work on both, but most work on neither.
What might be causing Spotify to, in some cases, not recognize the same local file across devices for seamless playback? Any other insight into how Spotify deals with 'Local Files' and to make them consistently recognizable on multiple devices would be very helpful. Do let me know if additional information is needed. Thank you!
Some additional information which might be helpful:
- On phone, the songs are in the folder 'Internal Storage/Music for Spotfy' and on laptop they are in 'Music/Music for Spotify'
- The songs on phone are a direct copy of those on laptop.
- I tried clearing cache on the Spotify app on phone, but this didn't help.
- I transferred the files from laptop to phone using a USB cable.
