Large playlists take 10-60+ seconds to load, sometimes not found. Why?

[zachhoon]

Large playlists take forever to load on the Mac desktop app. At times they will return 'Can't Find This Playlist' errors. This has been an issue for approx 3 weeks. I have multiple record label playlists I update a few times a week. This issue is slowing me way down. I have done the complete uninstall/reinstall rigamarole a few times. This seems to fix the issue for 10mins or so, then back to the slowdown. I'm on a MacBook Pro with 16gb of ram, so hardware isn't the issue.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @zachhoon,

Thank you for your post in the Community and for the troubleshooting you've done so far!

To start with, can you let us know how many songs you approximately have in the playlists that you're having these issue with?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care 🙂

[zachhoon]

Hi Jeremy, thanks for the reply! A majority of the playlists I work with are within the 1,000 - playlist limit (10k) range. As an example, my Ninja Tune playlist currently has 4,983 tracks, and just took about 30 seconds to load. Again, this is in the Mac desktop app. I do tend to leave the app running for a quite a while (days), as I'm always using it. I've noticed quitting and restarting helps a bit, but it's seemingly random when it does, and then gets bogged down again pretty quickly.

I realize this is probably an edge case, but it really slows me down when updating playlists and their descriptions. I've also got a few thousand followers/likes, and if the playlists are taking forever to load, their experience suffers quite a bit.

Anyway, any help or info is appreciated. Thanks!

[Jeremy]

Hi again @zachhoon,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

If it's possible, can you try with a different internet connection to see if the issue persists? 

Note: This can happen when you have larger playlists so if it's working better with smaller playlists we recommend that you split it up into smaller playlists.

Keep us posted.

Cheers!

[zachhoon]

Hi again! I have gigabit coming into the house here, so internet shouldn’t be a problem at all. I did switch it, tethered to my phone on at&t 5g. The problem does indeed persist. No offense intended, but I don’t really buy the ’this can happen with large playlists’ explanation, for two reasons:

This has only been an issue for the last 4 weeks or so
Why would the playlist song limit be 10k if the system can’t handle 10k?

I suspect someone recently done messed up your backend.

In any case, thanks again for investigating! Hoping for some sort of solution soon!

[OscarDC]

Hey @zachhoon,

Thank you for keeping in contact and for the info shared.

If this starts happening recently, it could be related to damaged or replaced files in recent updates. We understand you’ve already tried some troubleshooting steps including reinstalling a couple times. But to be sure that we're on the same page - did you use these steps for a clean reinstall? They are more thorough than a regular one. That way you can make sure the cache is not causing this issue.

If the issue persists, would you mind checking on a different device to see if it makes any difference?

Lastly, to continue investigating further; include in your next response the make, model and OS version of your device, along with the Spotify version you're currently running.

We'll be on the lookout. 

[zachhoon]

Hi there Oscar, I did indeed follow the steps for a clean reinstall, a couple times now. As with restarting the app, this seems to fix the problem for a bit (15-30mins), but the increased playlist load times and occasional timeouts/‘playlist not found’ errors return after that window of regular app use (searching, loading playlists, artists, & albums, adding & removing tracks from playlists).

This does not happen on a 2019 MacBook Pro 2.6ghz i7 w/ 32gb ram running macOS Big Sur with Spotify version 1.1.59.712.g54f36e5d-a. This is a work machine with managed software/OS I am not able to upgrade myself.

This is all happening on my personal machine, a 2017 MacBook Pro 2.8ghz quad i7 w/ 16gb ram running macOS Monterey with Spotify version 1.1.88.612.gcc529952

Hope this info helps!

[AndresM]

Hey @zachhoon,

Thanks for your reply. 

Could you tell us if this happens with the web player? 

Changing tunes, we suggest that you head to Menu (3 dots at the top left corner) > View > and uncheck "Hardware Acceleration". Afterwards, restart your device and let us know how it works. 

We'll keep the volume down until we hear back from you.  

[zachhoon]

Hi there! First, I am sorry to report disabling hardware acceleration didn’t make any noticeable difference.

But! I experienced none of the playlist lag in the web player using Chrome. I didn’t think to do this, as I am mainly a Safari user. However, I noticed you’re not able to sort playlists in the web player. I rely on that functionality quite a bit, so, web player isn’t really a full time option for me. I was thinking though, is this the clue we need? Could it be something to do with that playlist sorting functionality in the desktop app?

[Dian]

Hey @zachhoon,

Thanks for the reply.

At this point it would be considered normal, that large playlists take extra time to load, as the collection you're using is very big. The fact, that this is not the case on the web player hints at the different architectures of the desktop app and the web player and how they connect to the Spotify API.

As we're constantly trying to improve the user experience on our platform, we hope to see large collections taking no time to load soon.

Hope this helps,

Cheers!

[zachhoon · Accepted solution]

Hi folks, I just wanted to note that the slow large playlist issue seems to be resolved with Spotify for macOS (Intel) version
1.1.90.859.gf1bb1e36

Thanks!

[OscarDC]

Hey @zachhoon,

Thank you for keeping in contact.

We're glad to know that everything is working fine now in the new update. We appreciate the time you took following the troubleshooting steps you've tried and sharing this info.

If a different user still has this same issue, we'd recommend performing a clean reinstall and keeping the app updated.

In case you need anything else, remember that we're just a post away 🙂

Cheers!