Downloading playlists broken

[MistahZ]

EDIT: Found the cause, like right after posting... Apparently Spotify hates VPNs, for downloading songs  🙄

Never been a problem for me till last update though.

Plan

Premium

Country

The Netherlands

Device

Desktop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Issue

Since the recent desktop redesign update, I've been having multiple issues downloading playlists for offline use. There are two main issues, of which I am unsure if they are part of the same problem or not:

1. Downloading doesn't do anything, unless I start listening to the playlist. And even this works horrible: I need to have shuffle disabled, so Spotify will download the next 2 (sometimes 3) songs that are following the current song. In order to get a playlist downloaded, I need to play every second song in it, so the two songs after it will be downloaded.
2. Even with above trick, some songs just won't download at all. No matter what I try, in every playlist I want to make available offline there are at least a couple songs that won't download. Removing and re-adding them to a fully downloaded playlist, doesn't fix it either. Neither does removing the songs from ALL my lists and then re-adding. It seems to be random which songs can't be downloaded, as songs that wouldn't download at first, will download after re-installing.

I've tried re-installing Spotify, clearing the download folder and changing the download folder, but nothing works to fix the problems.

Also the amount of songs in the playlist doesn't seem to matter: after a fresh install, I started with an attempt to download a playlist with only 5 songs and again had to start listening to the playlist, before it would start downloading.

[CarlosE · Accepted solution]

Hi there @MistahZ,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community!

We don't officially support VPNs as they can interfere with the app's optimal performance, as in this case.

If you have any other issues, try disconnecting the VPN as it may be the cause.

If you have questions or need a hand with anything else, we're always a post away.

Have a good one 🙂