Spotify keeps deleting downloaded songs

[jetlinssen]

Spotify premium keeps deleting my offline downloaded music, despite of the fact that I have enough empty storage room. What could be causing this problem?

[goldvixis]

The only reason that I haven't moved is I can't find some of the music
anywhere else and use Spotify playlists extensively. Thanks for the report
though, I may have to - I also use it on my commute and the random
unloading is getting to be a problem!

[neilmctee]

Not only is this bug annoying as **bleep**, it has cost me a decent amount of money.

I use spotify to play downloaded music on a long commute. 2 months in a row now, Spotify has 'forgotten' all of my downloaded music and then when I've started the app in my car, it has quietly re-download all of the previously saved albums - dumping several gig of music on my device, out of the reach of wi-fi, and blowing through my data allowance in one go (forcing me to top-up for the rest of the month).

If anyone from Spotify is actually still monitoring this thread... I *think* the issue is caused by me using the spotify app on my macbook. It seems that when I subsequently use the phone app - my downloaded music is gone.

This is a showstopper for me. If it isn't fixed (or a decent workaround provided) I will also be cancelling my account. 

[goldvixis]

They don't seem to respond via email, but I got an answer via twitter, you
could try that?

[Somerockenguy]

I've been experiencing the same problem of tracks needing to be re-download along with noticing Spotify not showing the "storage" setting which makes me thing it's loosing the index file or having some storage permission problems.

Start off with basic details for me. Galaxy s7 edge running Android 7.0 keep up to date on Spotify releases and store all my offline songs to a 64gb EMTEC class ten micro sdxc card that never gets removed. I'm east coast USA. 

I reached out to the support team via email a few days ago regarding the issue. They seemed willing to help though they would only reply between 930pm and 12am my time making communications slow. They gave me access to a test account so they could further troubleshoot the issue. Problem was there was so many users on this test account I could never play more then a few seconds of music before being kicked off. When I emailed that there was too many users on the test account to me to even listen to one song they thought I was talking about my personal account which resulted in a remote lockout and password block of my account on all devices (assuming some language barrier here) . Needless I was pissed seeing this email at 11pm knowing I had an hour commute to work at 6am. That was resolved within 24hours.

Since then I have done a little more testing. I downloaded "rocket player" so I could play mp3s via Android auto and did notice once that app loosing index/access of my SD card which Spotify also lost access to but I was still able to browse and access data contained on via the file explorer. A simple restart of my phone restored access to saved music in Spotify and rocket player.

After this I dug into premission setting of rocket player which was only storage, checking Spotify only camera premission was granted though I have never been asked for storage premission. I enabled storage.

Drove home listing to rocket player and checked Spotify. All music is un-downloded again. I am currently re-downloading all 500ish songs in extreme quality.

This thread needs to be marked as not solved and it would probably be helpful for everyone the start or end their posts with phone, android/ios version and Spotify version. If storing to SD card that info might help also. 

[delidavid]

Same thing happened here, first time in 9 months. Recently the app started "downloading" for a few moments when connected to WI-FI, eventhough there was no new music to syncronize, and this morning I accidently switched off the internet connection, while it was "downloading". Could it be the problem? Sony Z1 Compact, version 8.4.18.743. 

[user-removed]

One thing I remember I didn't have any of these problems on my windows phone before but now it has happened twice in one month on my android phone and the other weird thing is that my Spotify likes following Beyonce for some reason and I keep unfollowing,I'm pretty sure I haven't listened any of her songs,at least not volunteerly..

[Rocky_Mtn]

Every time my IPHone turns off (either by me turning it off or battery dying) my entire offline library deletes. It could cause me to cancel my premium as well. 

[HatfieldScarlet]

---

@goldvixis wrote:
They don't seem to respond via email, but I got an answer via twitter, you
could try that?

---

They're very responsive and polite via Twitter.  However, they're ultimately useless, as they're unable to do anything to solve the issue because it's a tech problem that needs IT dev work.

As it happens, I've decided to cancel Spotify Premium because of this issue - I rely on the offline function too much (much of my commute is out of network/wifi coverage).  Hope it gets fixed for you all soon.

[Butsch]

Does someone here use the ES File Explorer? I also just had to redownload the files again and instantly es tells me "Oh my god, Spotify has added 22,69 MB of Data!" ... oh my god!...

My Idea was that if ES does some optimization stuff it might compromises the data structure of the spotify offline data so spotify cannot use it anymore...

[junkenstein]

Happened a few times on my LG G4 and yesterday on my new Galaxy S7. Listened to a downloaded album all the way to end, went to choose a different one, BAM, everything gone. Storage said Spotify still had about 1GB stored though (which was much less than what I had saved).

As much as Spotify is my favourite streaming service, this bug and the 10,000 song library limit are seriously pushing me away.

[ojcardozo]

Same story here. Spotify is randomly erasing all my downloaded albums and playlists from my Moto G5 plus, almost once a week. Very annoying. Also, this thread is marked as "solved", where is the solution??? Soon changing to Google Play..

[jacobag]

This might be after the fact for some of you, but the trick I found that has worked well is to save albums or entire artist collections as a playlist. The downloaded playlists have never been affected by Spotify updates or glitches, at least in my experience. 

[junkenstein]

Yeah, my playlists were always left alone but that is an annoying workaround for something that just shouldn't happen.

Anyway, I put my money where my mouth is; this bug and the silly limit on the amount of albums you can add to your library finally made me switch to Apple. Pros and cons so far, but download management on Android is definitely a pro. You don't even have to re download everything when you switch between internal storage and SD, it moves everything for you.

[20blackone00]

Same thing is happening to me. Tried deleting them and still does it.

[Kevbrechin]

This is hapening after every single update.
The 'workaround' suggested is a total pain in the backside and not a proper solution.

Can you please get your finger out and fix the issue properly. How hard can it be to rescan and re-index the downloaded files after an update? It is basic programming!

[Kirkshoe]

This is one of at least 6 threads  about the same problem of Spotify repeatedly deleting downloaded songs.  If  we all flooded Spotify Technical support at the same time with the same complaint, they might take notice and do something about it.  I already contacted them and they gave their standard solution that they give everyone, which I tried and it was a waste of time and did not solve the problem, and then they closed the ticket as resolved.

[Joe]

Not such a bad idea @Kirkshoe although everyone will probably get the same template response. Maybe it's worth listing things which we know can contribute to this happening to see if there's a common factor? We can add to the list as things occur to us.

I'll start with a few I'm aware of:

• Powering off mobile while spotify is running
• Using an encrypted SD card
• Using an SD card
• Using a cache cleaner/memory cleaner
• Exceeding 3 offline devices (may be same device registered 3 times)
• Removing the SD card (if cache is stored there)

[jamesmbc]

¡Hi Zully! 

This problem has happened to me more than a dozen times now, and I'm not willing to download all my 2,000+ songs again (never again), just for them to get deleted because Spotify's mistakes.

So what I need is for you to assign someone from Spotify to re-download my songs whenever this happens. After all, who breaks it has to fix it, right? I would recommend for this task the Spotify engineers responsible for this issue.

So how do we fix this permanently?

[bobafetz]

Sounds like this is a normal issue.  Glad im not the only one constantly having this happen to so maybe they will fix it soonish. Definitely annoying.  Just went thorugh my Discover weekly downloded a few albums.  10 minutes after even some of the albums i had JUST downloaded already had to be redownloded.  FIX PLEASE.  might cause me to drop my subscription if this keeps happening because its utterly annoying and a waste of my constant time. 

[ihatespotify18]

Check out google play.  Their app actually works.  spotify blows!