Local Files Not Allowing Me to Play Music on Spotify?

[James1214]

So it seems as though its a well known fact that you can't unlink or stop spotify from finding local files (unticking those checkboxes in preferences does nothing), but for the longest time I have noticed that when I want to play a song (recent example was something from channel orange), spotify will say the song isnt available. Using the Frank Ocean example, I wanted to play Thinkin bout you, but this message appeared. This message also appeared for like 14 of the 17 songs on the album.... yet I was able to play 3 songs just fine. This is the exact same situation when I played another album, whenever I tried to play a song, "This song is not...." blah blah blah. I realised this has been semi regularly happening for probably a year or two... it just didnt **bleep** me off as much as it did today. I think the connection is literally these songs of these albums I want to play... are already local files. I already downloaded the album i wanted to listen to years and years ago, and for some reason spotify is still insistent in trying to play these first rather than their own music files... I dont understand? What am I doing wrong?

[katgongora]

Perhaps if you try changing the location Spotify is taking your music files from? Then also changing wherever your local files are placed to a completely new folder and destination. Make sure there's no way Spotify has a connection to the folders. I doubt Spotify searches all of your computer to retrieve local files. Let me know if it works or not.

[FriendlyHenry]

I've got the same issue. I have loads of music files (20k+ songs) on a hard drive, as part of my iTunes library. Ages ago I 'imported' them into my Spotify library. However, I've long since disabled any Local Files 'Show Songs From' options. But when I go to play any songs on Spotify desktop that I also have on my hard drive, Spotify refuses to play them and displays "This song is not available...." UNLESS I have my hard drive connected. It's driving me NUTS. It's absurd that the Spotify desktop app can't stream the song rather than trying and failing to play it from Local Files to which preferences indicate it is no longer connected. PLEASE fix this! Thanks. I'm running Spotify 1.0.74.380.g1fcff12a on a MacBook Pro with OS High Sierra 10.13.3.