Spotify Always Downloading

[djabele]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Samsung Z Fold 3

Operating System

Android 12

My Question or Issue

This is an ongoing issue and is very annoying. Whenever I open Spotify on my mobile, I get the notification of "downloading # out of # (93% complete)" or something along that. The percentage always changes as does the number of songs it is trying to download. I cannot see what it is trying to download to see if something is up with the song or playlist or what. I will turn of wifi and have mobile data on and change the setting to allow downloads over data...and it still doesnt fix it. I have given spotify access and permissions to everything. The only time I can get it to go away is if I clear the cache. But as soon as I open Spotify it does it again. This issue is not only an eye sore of a notification, but makes me nervous that it's draining battery life and whatnot.

I have tried in the past to Uninstall and reinstall, but that doesn't always fix it. Plus, I have over 30GB downloaded and would prefer not to have to always reinstall the app and re-download all them songs. What can I do to fix the constant "downloading songs" notification?

The downloading seems to be a constant loop that never finishes. As you can see from the pictures, I screenshotted 11mins apart and the downloading notification is the same. No more songs were downloaded in that span. Which seems to indicate something is broken between Spotify and android.

[Alex]

Hey @djabele,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

You might want to check if there are duplicate Spotify apps on your phone. Some phones come with the app preinstalled and that might cause issues like this.

We'd also recommend running a clean reinstall of the app. Please follow the steps from this Spotify Guide exactly, as this will assure that all app data is cleared completely, before reinstalling. Note that you'll have to re-download all songs after this.

For test purposes, try activating the Download option only for a small playlist.

Let us know how you get on with this and whether you're using an SD card in your phone.

Cheers.

[Rainbowclaire]

I have the same thing going on. I have only 2 small playlists downloaded as Spotify just kept downloading and increasing the space it was using. Yet when I go to downloads it claims there's only the 2 lists. Why then does it keep downloading and taking up more space? I did the complete uninstall and reinstall and it is slowly growing again!

[Dian]

Hey @Rainbowclaire,

Thanks for posting in the Community.

Could you tell us more about your device like brand/model and operating system?

Are you using an SD card?

It's important to have Spotify set as an exception in the battery/memory optimization settings, but those vary greatly between devices.

Keep us posted,

Cheers!

[Scoutshonour]

This happens to me too using an iPhone X. It’s always downloading 193/2000+ songs everyday despite me uninstalling and reinstalling etc. so frustrating. Is this a known issue Spotify? 

[Dian]

Hey @Scoutshonour,

Thanks for posting in the Community.

This looks like a device related issue. This is why we'd ask you to perform a clean reinstall of the app as described here. 

Also make sure, that your phone is not in a power saving mode and that the background app refresh is turned on for Spotify. More on that here.

How much free storage do you have on your phone and are you using any extra apps for cache clearing and memory management?

Keep u posted,

Cheers!

[artanmuzhaqi]

I keep having the same issue on my Samsung S22 Ultra. It's annoying that Spotify starts in background when not using it and even though everything it's downloaded it never closes.

[Eni]

Hey there @artanmuzhaqi, 

Thanks for reaching out about this and welcome to the Community. 

Just to confirm, have you already tried the previously suggested steps in this thread?

If so and the issue still persists, we suggest that you reach out directly to our Support team through any of these channels so they can check if everything is ok with your account's cache and further assist you with this. 

 If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you.

[Hadtomakeanact]

Hey I actually found a reason as to why my android was having the same problem as you were describing. It turns out I was subscribed to a Radio-Playlist for some song and I had marked to download it, this was causing this issue and notification in the pull down tab to go away. And it has yet to come back since I have unmarked the radio list. Hope this helps, mostly because the customer support for isn't up to snuff on their own app. 

[#10]

Spotify is running an automatic download to my phone every day and I don't want that. It appears to be storing music but I don't know where or why. How do I switch this off?

[wtlongface]

Thanks, Hadtomakeanact. This solved the issue for me. Nice find.

[Danduk]

S21 ultra for me.