Storage Doesn't Free Up

[BlackBolt84]

Plan

Premium

Device

Pixel 7

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

Why is it that deleting a 1300+ song playlist from my phone does not release any of the storage?  It was roughly 7GB of data that is now unrecoverable by my device.  Everything I find in the community is either the completely unacceptable suggestion to uninstall and reinstall everything (requiring me to redownload another 19GB of playlists), or an equally bad explanation that Spotify just continues to hold this storage hostage and leverage it for other purposes.  Spotify does not need 7GB of space to sit on "just in case."  People's phone storage is valuable now that almost no manufacturers include memory expansion capabilities on their devices.  Please finally address this; it's been this way for years and years.

UPDATE:  Apparently Spotify was actually holding 16 GB of storage hostage on my phone.  I deleted everything and started fresh.  I redownloaded all of the exact playlists I had saved before.  Imagine my shock when what was once displayed on my phone as 19GB of data is now only 10GB (download quality wasn't changed).  Who knows how long Spotify was eating up that extra 9GB, and later an additional 7GB from the above described scenario.  This is in absolutely no way an acceptable practice for an app developed by a company that is currently worth $62.23 billion USD.  A simple "resync downloaded content" button that actually purges unneeded storage would resolve all of this

[Susan_GP]

Hi there @BlackBolt84,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community and for your detailed message - we appreciate it!

Most of the memory consumed by Spotify is because of the offline downloads you have. The app also uses your device's memory to store parts of music and podcasts as cache, so it can play without lagging. However, sometimes there can be a corrupted cache taking more space. In such a case, it's best to clear the cache by going to Settings> Storage > Clear cache. Or you can clean reinstall the app in case that doesn't help. Also, make sure your app is always up-to-date.

On another note, are you running any cache-clearing or memory-optimizing apps/services? If you are, it's best to delete them as they can also cause these types of issues.

Now, we appreciate you taking the time to let us know about this situation and for the recommendations. We always aim to improve, so we’ll get this passed on to the right team.

Cheers!

[BlackBolt84]

The problem is that for years on this and other mobile devices I've used, deleting a cached playlist does not actually free up the memory. Going to the settings as you have described will only clear the cache and not downloaded media. As stated by other responses to similar questions, it appears as the Spotify just holds on to the storage space for whatever reason afterwards. This, over time, will grow and grow until it is consuming massive quantities of phone storage. There is no way of having it audit downloaded playlists and clearing out unnecessary data usage without just removing the app entirely. The cache will not factor into this group of data, as it is all listed in Android under user data. Unless I am mistaken, there is no way to force a recheck of the data that actually needs to be there. With most people's phones no longer having expandable memory capabilities, taking up gigabytes and gigabytes of unnecessary space is hugely problematic and needs to be addressed by the developers.

If the only answer is to clear the cache (which doesn't affect the set of data) or uninstall and reinstall the app, then this needs to be escalated as a bug to the development team

[Sbk31]

Hello Susan, was it passed onto the "right team" to actually rectify the issue?  There is no way that Spotify should be using 30 GB of storage space on my android given that I have removed all downloaded files.

And yes, I clear caches regularly. 

Please advise how to resolve.

[MihailY]

Hey @Sbk31,

Thanks for reaching out.

We couldn't replicate this behavior, so in order for us to renew the investigation, we'd like to ask you for some additional details:

• Are you using Local Files?
• Have you already tried a clean reinstall of the app?
• Your device model, OS version and exact Spotify version.
• Have you removed your downloads from the settings menu (Data-saving and offline) or by unchecking the download button on all your offline playlists?

@BlackBolt84, apologies for missing your last comment. If you're still having the issue, let us know the current behavior and share the above details as well. 

Cheers,

[PaulMac]

I'm also having problems with storage on the s24 FE.

Previously the cache would have slowly built up and every few months I would need to clear it within the phones app settings. The 'data' storage space was always small and never an issue, which is what you would expect given that I don't download any music for offline listening.

Over the past few weeks this has changed - the data storage is filling up very rapidly at a rate of around 1GB per day (much faster than the cache), despite the fact that I'm not downloading anything!

I've already tried reinstalling the app but it hasn't helped. Grateful for any advice...

[Vasil]

Hey @PaulMac,

Thanks for reaching out about this.

What I'd suggest in your situation, as we can't view your accounts from the Community - is to reach out to our folks backstage. They'll be able to take a look if anything is getting downloaded and will hopefully be able to assist you further with this. 

In the meantime - if there's anything else we can assist you with, just let us know 🙂

[PaulMac]

Thanks Vasil, I'll certainly give that a go. Cheers

[PaulMac]

Hi Vasil,

Just a quick update.

I spent a considerable amount of time across a couple of evenings with support advisors. Tried a few things including reinstalling the app and clearing the cache through both the phone settings and through the app itself. Finally we changed the audio quality settings and as expected this did lower the amount of storage building up. And that was the final recommendation - if I want to reduced storage don't listen in lossless quality!

Obviously that isn't a satisfactory solution as we've waited years for Spotify lossless to become available. Grateful if you could please raise the issue with the tech team. Spotify needs to implement some way of throttling back or capping how the cache is being managed.

Thanks

[Vasil]

Hey again @PaulMac,

This does make sense! Thank you for sharing your experience with our folks backstage 🙂
Listening in lossless uses extra data and storage whenever the app is streaming tracks, causing the device to build up cached data up to a point. Spotify is always trying to improve its services so your feedback in this regard is greatly appreciated. 

In the meantime - in case you have a way of freeing up more space to account for the lossless cached-data, this would be my go-to advice. The other thing I can think of is setting the downloaded quality to lossless and the streaming quality to very high. When you download the songs you wish to listen to in lossless, the app will prefer the downloaded quality, disregarding the streaming quality if its set to something different.

Hope you'll find this info helpful. We're here for you if there's anything else in the meantime.

[mnp47]

Hello, I am also having this issue. Spotify is using 40 GB of storage space and I have no local audio and very few downloaded albums. I'm constantly removing photos and apps to compensate, but it keeps spiraling. Can you please fix this issue? I'm about ready to switch to Apple Music if this isn't fixed soon. 

[mnp47]

I have a Galaxy phone. I just found out why the cache couldn't be cleared. You have to go into the App settings in the Spotify app to clear it (settings - > data-saving and offline), not the app manager of the phone. There you will see that the cache builds up and never deletes, even if you force quit the app. Hate that this thread went on so long without anyone mentioning this... 

[Georg9741]

In my case the problem is even bigger. Spotify just "lost" over 200 GB downloaded offline content and didn't remove over 100 GB from my SD card, redownload the whole 200 GB and now nearly 400 GB are taken. Now I need to reinstall the over 200 GB just to make 100 GB free again.

Is it that difficult to NOT corrupt downloaded content? Serious question.