How to disable local storage

[SolidSnark]

Ok, here's my scenario.  My wife is a Spotify user with her own PC/Android devices.  She also uses my machine on occasion (maybe once or twice a month) and has installed Spotify on my machine with my blessing.  

Unfortunately, I discovered that it's downloading gigabytes of un-needed, unwanted and frankly unacceptable data.  There doesn't appear to be any preference options to remove this local garbage and prevent further downloads.   

I don't need the data.  I don't want the data.  And I particularly don't want my SSD life shortened.  Good grief, Spotify is supposed to be a STREAMING service.

Is there any way to disable this parasitic use of hard drive space for music I will never listen to?  

Any help would be appreciated.

Also, if anyone has any insight as to why Spotify hides its install under AppData I'd love to know what the deal is there.

[OneByBoo]

Hey there @SolidSnark,

thanks for posting in the community !

It sounds like your wife's Spotify settings are set to enable importation of local files as this feature exists on the app.

Please check out this help guide as it has all info needed to solve this issue.

Let me know if you need further help 😃

[SolidSnark]

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I'm still confused though.  The link you pointed to regarding file importation doesn't appear to be my issue.  My problem is that when the application starts it immediately begins downloading over a thousand songs to it's "Offline" storage.  (The one that defaults to the storage directory under AppData)  It shouldn't need to download anything that exists locally.

There's an option to relocate that directory within the app but I can't find anything to disable it.  What am I missing?

Thanks again!

[OneByBoo]

Hey there @SolidSnark,

thanks for the quick response.

Let's try again.

When you stream music, spotify stores each song in the cache to provide buffering in case the connection drops and also to save bandwidth if you choose to replay something you recently listened to.

The cache size is managed automatically and as you continue listening, older stuff is discarded so there shouldn't be any problem.

To manage storage and for further info, please check out this help page.

Let me know how you did=)

[SolidSnark]

I followed the instructions and yep, I can clear the clear the cache and relocate it and then Spotify immediately tries to download over 1000 songs.  That's eating my bandwidth, not just my hard drive.

I have a 100 mb connection.  I am not worried about blips there.  In its current configuration, it's wasting both bandwidth and storage space to download 1000 songs when she listens to maybe 20 a month on this machine.

You indicated that Spotify manages the cache settings itself.  (That is NEVER Ok BTW.  *I* manage storage on my machine.  Simply because I have hard drive space available is not a license to fill it up.)  What rules does it use?  Is there a limit to the amount of bandwidth and storage wasted?  

I was thinking of adding a Spotify account of my own, it would be useful to find new songs, but my tastes are far broader than my wife's and I don't want to give up endless hard drive space for an application that is supposed to be streaming, not downloading.

Thanks for taking the time for replying, I do appreciate it.

[SolidSnark]

I can't believe that I am the only one that has an issue with the Spotify's client abuse of system resources.  Has anyone had any luck in circumventing this?