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.

[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. 

[#9]

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.

[#12]

My app has gotten worse and worse about the downloading status always showing up, even though it's at 100% and there's no new tracks to download. Sometimes opening the app makes it go away, others times it doesn't. It does it over cellular and wifi, even if I have cellular downloads turned off. How can I make this stop?

[EmberCoal]

Plan

Premium

Country

Canada

Device

Samsung Galaxy s23

Operating System

Android 13

My Question or Issue

Multiple times a day (and this is getting annoying as I am used to it happening every once in a whilst but now it's way too often) the spotify app, whilst closed, will start downloading in the background even though I have nothing new on there. I find myself with an unswipable notification that says "downloading 9,708 out of 9,800 (99% complete)". It's always exactly the same message, at 99%.

The only way I found to make it go away is to open the app, wait a little bit, close it, open it again a 2nd time and then it goes away. But it keeps coming back at random times throughout the day and never stops on its own.

[rishia513]

How do I see if I'm subscribed to a radio-playlist for a song?

[Amayy]

Hey there, welcome to the Spotify Community!

This can happen for various reasons. One could be that you have a Spotify-curated playlist downloaded. When there are updates to the added tracks then it needs to download them again.

Another reason could be the battery optimization settings in your device. Make sure to add Spotify as an exception. Also, let me know if you are using a SD card.

Keep me posted.

[CaptainCrawdad]

I don't know what it's downloading, or where (playlist, album etc.) it's adding the downloads to. I have tried to set each playlist to not add or enhance my music, but the downloading still happens. Occasionally I hear songs in my main playlist that I have not added, and find them to remove them is difficult because my playlist is quite large.

[EdwardStanford7]

I seem to be having a similar issue and I can't figure out why. Every day Spotify decides to start "downloading" my entire liked songs playlist. If I let it finish it will usually be fine for a while until the next day it will randomly start again at some different percentage completion. I've checked storage space it's using and it's not changing so it's clearly not actually downloading anything. It thinks it's downloading new songs but it's clearly not. The downloading moves much faster than it does when actually adding a new song to be downloaded so it seems to be some bug where it's temporarily not recognizing the download and then finding it again. 

I have a moto g power 2022 and I am using an SD card. 

[Elena]

Hey @EdwardStanford7,

Thanks for your post and for the info!

As you mentioned you're using an SD-card, keep in mind that corrupted cache on it can cause different issues with the app's performance so we recommend removing it, clearing Spotify's cache and giving it a reinstall and then downloading the content again, directly on your phone's storage without the card to see if the issue persist.

Keep us in the loop.

[EdwardStanford7]

I don't have enough space on my phone's internal storage for my library, hence why I'm using an SD card. 

[Joan]

Hi @EdwardStanford7,

Thanks for the reply. We still need to test and see if the behaviour is related to the SD card. Please try these steps and then download at least some part of the library to the internal storage just to see if this makes a difference.

Let us know how it goes.