Do iTunes files affect playback/downloading of songs?

[moltonlava12]

I used to primarily use iTunes, but it's such a pain in the **bleep** after a while, having to buy all the songs I want, and download the others that I couldn't find on iTunes. I noticed that after switching to spotify, I played some songs that I knew didn't have the greatest quality via iTunes, played them on Spotify, and they had basically the exact same sound quality. Then, after deleting the music files from iTunes, the songs played quite clearly via Spotify, which makes me think that iTunes files somehow affect playback without me doing anything with them.

Also, I've had this SUPER annoying issue where I have a playlist that I want to download for offline mode (and no, I haven't reached the song download limit. I have like 200 songs downloaded), and some songs will download just fine, but other songs won't download at all, no matter what I do. Interestingly enough, I have an album that I want to download, and the only 2 songs that I had on iTunes from that album are having trouble downloading.

Any thoughts/suggestions on this? I'm really quite annoyed.

[kirashi · Accepted solution]

Hello @moltonlava12. Thanks for posting in the Spotify Community!

It's totally not cool you're having issues downloading tracks, so let's try a few things to get you back on track. 🙂

When you have local files on your device (via itunes) Spotify will try to play those files first, even if they're in the Spotify catalog. I presume this is to save mobile data or WiFi data, so it makes sense to play the local copies of the files.

As you discovered, removing the local files from iTunes allows Spotify to playback its' own copies of the songs from the Spotify Catalog, which just so happened to be better quality in this instance.

More information about playling local files with Spotify.

I've always fixed playlist downloading issues with a reinstall of the Spotify mobile App. You can also try flipping the Download switch off, exiting the app, then turning it back on again, which may allow Spotify to properly download the remaining songs.

More information on reinstalling the Spotify Mobile App.

Let me know if these suggestions help you out, and keep on rockin'!