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Limit to 'offline' playlists?

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Limit to 'offline' playlists?

I just spotted something in your FAQ about a limit of 3,333 tracks offlined? Is this true, and if so can you explain why? I realise as you need to re-sync updated tracks for all sorts of reasons, if someone has thousands of tracks offline then they could be re-syncing forever - but I have sort of got into the habit of offlining ever since the problems we had with BT throttling Spotify! It's great having a streaming service for music discovery, but here in the UK our broadband infrastructure is so flaky we can't rely on being able to use your service all the time if we don't offline. I tend to offline anything I 'collect', am I not using Spotify as you expect I should I wonder?

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138 Replies

Awesome! So this is why spotify continues to download for ever and ever and never getting complete. Well I have 1 more day before I leave the internet country for 6 months. Now I know the limit and will most probably resign my premium subscription. I would stay if the 3 devices is removed and totalling 10k offline songs one ONE device. Thank you!

I changed to another music streaming service. I tested a lot of them and also looked for limitations. There are none or the limitation doesn't hurt you (like 20.000 titles of your own music at Google Play). Now another service gets my money 😉 Spotify is still good but the limitation is a no-go.

What recommendations do you have as altenative to Spotify on mobile? Some mention Google, but is it good?

This one's a deal-breaker for me - going to go back to rdio

I need the vast majority of my offline playlists on my laptop and the second most on my iPhone (my husband bought me the new 6+ with the maximum amount of storage space because I simply have that many songs I want to take with me when I do go places).  The third device on our account, his phone, doesn't need hardly any because I'm the music freak.  This limitation is a big pain in the rear, and if Google or Rdio truly do not have such a small limit per device, I will be switching once I verify the price is reasonable and that he and I can both use the service decently.  If possible, it would be great to be able to have more than one device online at the same time, too, because he is overseas right now.  Even paying extra for some kind of family account so there can be more than three devices and two or more online at the same time would be amazing.  We each have three or more devices we'd like to use the service with.

This is horrible. And enough to send me back to xbox music again. I just realised that stuff I had off lined was disappearing, presumably because I hit the limit. I'm on a plane, so my opportunities to get the albums I've lost and wanted to listen to will be limited very soon when we depart and I have to switch to flight mode.

Well after your input i started to switch over to Rdio myself, became premium and all to try it out for 30 days. Then i found http://resp.in to merge in my spotify playlists into Rdio. Unfortunatly, Rdio doesnt have the same variety of music as Spotify. There are many songs that couldnt be found or recognized. This is also a deal breaker for me. If i cant listen to my alternative music then there is no use to use Rdio.

 

Shame, but i guess i have to stick to the limit, no matter how much it hurts.

 

And the Rdio interface is years and years behind Spotify. Its so ugly it hurts my eyes, the pc client is so slow and the android app is just meh. We will just have to hope that Spotify kills this 3 device 2000 songs limit and just makes it 6000 limit for the whole account.

 

Looks at Spotify crew with puppy eyes.

darn now I understand why i've been struggling with my syncing for the past few weeks.

 

I was begining to use spotify as my only music source on my phone.

This is a total deal breaker.

 

Too bad 😞

Problem is there really aint that many great alternatives to Spotify. At least for me that listen to a wide verity of music. Everything from local music of the Indian state Himachal Pradesh to some crazy tunes i saw when i was in Arambol of independent artists.

If you have a "normal" taste for music then Rdio would be my suggestion, other than that....spotify is the way to go 😃

Apple Music has a 25k song limit, when ios9 comes out it goes to 100k.  Come on Spotify step up, or lose my subscription to Apple.

 

I have been using spotifuggle for a couple of years without any problems, However because of this limit and the way that is is killing ALL OF MY PLAYLISTS I no longer feel it's a trustworthy source of music. I create playlists which take valuable time and effort, make them available offline, only to have spotifuggle, kill them off so I can no longer use them.
I have no choice but to find a more reliable source of streaming and as such will not be recommending spotifuggle to any body ever again.
Very disappointed in this matter,
Kevin Bennett

I've been a premium subscriber for years now and have found Spotify to the least glitchy of other music streaming services. I would gladly pay a few dollars more for an increase in that, any music lover would know that being forced to prioritize your favorite songs isn't a real way to listen music. If this limit doesn't get increased or even better, thrown away entirely then I will switch to a more glitchy service without that limit. We shouldn't have to pay to get cut off.

Exactly...the whole point of the premium service is to download and listen offline. I have been a subscriber for literally 48 hours and I've already hit the limit...this is total garbage. As soon as Apple Music plays nice with Sonos I will be ditching Spotify...this is a pointless limitation.

I'm looking at Apple Music because of this limit. I prefer Spotify, but I need more than 3000 songs offline. If Spotify won't remove this limit soon, I think it will loose some paying customers.

 

C'mon, it doesn't make sense to have such a limit and is something you could really easily change. 

Spotify only lately this has given me a headache, was using 3 devices and he told me he was 4, had to leave and re-download.

Now I come to this limit in each device. I will check this limitation on other services if there is, goodbye spotify.

If you are listening Spotify, next actions for you regarding this offline device limit of 3,333 tracks per device -

 

  1. Document it in an official location - in other words, be transparent about the limitations of your service.
     
  2. Spotify apps that support offline downloads should tell the user when the limit is reached. For example, in iOS when you hit the limit, currently you just see Waiting to download and there are tons of people wasting tons of time troubleshooting that, when they are just hitting this hard limit and don't realize it, because the app doesn't tell them they have hit the limit.
     
  3. Renegotiate whatever licensing deals are responsible for this 3,333 track per device limit and raise it to something more reasonable (assuming licensing is actually the reason for the limit).

    I bought a 128GB iPhone to have lots of space for offline music and to avoid data overages due to streaming music. 3,333 tracks at Extreme download quality uses ~40GB, so I have ~60GB of unused, insanely overpriced Apple storage, and need to frequently prune my playlists, because of this arbitrary limit.

    Even if you made the small change of allowing all 10,000 tracks to be on a single device - then folks could max out a 128 GB phone.

    I would love to hear the argument from the music labels for why they think a 3,333 track per device limit makes them more money. Do they think I'm going to hit the limit and start buying CDs and ripping them to my phone? That ship sailed 10 years ago.

They don't care at all. I have moved over to Deezer and absolutely love it. I would give them a whirl.

I'm really upset by this limit, if the 3,333 offline song limit had been said outright by Spotify, I wouldn't have been nearly as disappointed as I am now. My computer crashed along with the 10K+ songs I had on there and I was hoping that by having a premium account with Spotify I could re-accumalte those songs and listen to them offline. After all this work trying to gather up my collection again I find out (after refreshing and sigining in and out of my app multiple times because I thought it was just being glitchy) that there's a 3,333 song limit. I feel like I wasted my time all over again. The the main reason I got a premuim account was for the (supposed) offline benefits. Isn't that why most people get a premium account anyway?

 

Like, what is even the point of having a premium account if the offline service has such a restrictive limit??

I might have to switch to a competitor. I only use one device for spotify and its getting infuriating managing offline playlists as I keep hitting the limit. Seems bizarre that you can't have all your offline tracks on one device

Actually I do use another device but thats my home PC and that's always connected to wireless internet so never have to use offline.

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