Local Files - Not all of my files appear in Spotify

[m_kelly]

Like many, I'm having issues with my local files in Spotify on my Windows laptop.  I have over 30,000 local files that I would like to be able to listen to along with music I stream on Spotify.  I understand that this is a fairly large number of songs, but I have never had such issues with any other music player.  I continue to deal with buggy, glitchy, freezing behavior from Spotify, and while that is all annoying, my big gripe right now is that not all of my local files are appearing in the playlist.  

I keep my playlist sorted by artist name and it cuts off in the middle of artists starting with the letter "P."  In fact, it looks like the playlist stopped loading at exactly 20,000 songs, even though at the top it says that I have 31,xxx songs.  There are no blank slots below the last song, like some people have experienced; it just stops.  All songs are mp3 files.  I've tried a clean reinstall and updating the folder location for local files in "Preferences" to no avail.  Is there a new limit to local files that I'm unaware of?  If not, what can I do to resolve this?

[jpsmgmt]

Hi @m_kelly, I haven't heard of a limit on Local Files, but here's what I do know. You should still be able to play all the music in your Local Files folder whether faded out or highlighted. If an album is faded out, it simply means Spotify doesn't carry the song on their platform. Still, as long as it's downloaded on your device you should be able to play it. Hope that helps!

[m_kelly]

Thanks @jpsmgmt.  Not talking about songs that are faded/grey, but not showing up at all.  And they're not missing at random, the list seems to have just stopped midway through my songs and it looks like it stopped at exactly 20,000.

[TobiasYoung]

Hey @m_kelly,

Lets go through some troubleshooting.

First of all are you sure that you have all the folder seleted under Settings>Local files>add a source?

If not it will finish if the songs are not all there. Local files does not currently have a limit. If this does not help, try to get in touch with spotify with this contact form. You can also contact them @SpotifyCares on twitter.

[m_kelly]

@TobiasYoung - Yes, I'm positive I have the correct location selected.  In fact, all the songs that do appear are in the same folder as the ones that are not showing up.

[TobiasYoung]

Ok. Next step would be to contact spotify

[TobiasYoung]

Have you read through this article yet? https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/troubleshooting2/im-having-trouble-with-my-local-files/

[m_kelly]

I have.  Issue is not with syncing with a mobile device and I'm not trying to sync with iTunes.  All files are mp3.

[Iceburg]

Did you get any resolution on this? I have the exact same issue, and have for months. Very annoying to not have the entire list cached in the local directory, and I can't see any reason why it is this way.

[Iceburg]

One other thing to note; as you look at your local playlist, sort by artist and then click it again to reverse it. You'll notice that the bottom of that list is now visible, once you flip it. I am guessing this has to do with the visual cache, but that the songs are actually there. Scroll all the way down, and suddenly the top part of your list is now missing...

[ACAx1985]

We really need an "Advanced User" forum for support here. Half the replies are really simple and don't address the real problem. Anyway,

I am having the same issue. I have tried manually clearing the cache (deleting the path in Windows), moving the files, re-adding the files, and, with each of these scenarios, restarting Spotify. I've tried each scenario with Spotify open and with it closed. That's like 10 distinct troubleshooting paths that have not helped.

I have all of my files in C:\spotify\music

There are 720 files there. It only loads 559 into Spotify. It is NOT a visual thing -- I can't play any of the songs that were not loaded.

I would love a solution to this issue, I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for you with 30k files!

[woolyjacket]

Same problem.

With me though, some of the local files were visable before, and I added them to playlists. They are no longer playable from those playlists, the text and local file icon show up as a darker shade of grey. These files are playable from other audio programs, just for some reason, Spotify can't see them.

[el_pajaro]

Same problem here, except I only have very few mp3s on a brand new pc. I just ripped a cd (320kbps mp3) and opened the Spotify app to test it. Only 2 out of 12 songs showed up. I tried closing and reopening Spotify, which only resulted in one of the two mp3s vanishing again, leaving only one. Very weird.

[hm8 · Accepted solution]

I was able to solve this problem like this:

• Go to Settings>Local files and de-select all of the folders
  
• Close Spotify
• Go to "C:\Users\#USERNAME#\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Users\##########-user\"
• Delete the file called "local-files.bnk"
• Reopen Spotify
• Make sure the folder you want is selected under "Settings>Local files" (add it with "Add Source" if you have to)
  

All of my files are now there!

[el_pajaro]

This worked for me. Thanks a lot!

[isaac_lee_]

hiya, i found out that if you in a sense made spotify refresh its local files list by moving the file locations it would sense it and add it to the local files list.

What i did as i dont have too many local files is simply select all my music files, copy them, delete and then paste them in again and spotify sensed this and refreshed its list.

hope this helps!

[theamaryllis]

Not only did this not work, it actually made things worse by removing even more songs from my Local Files tab. This has become really frustrating.

[parpie]

Yep, this made mine worse too. The copying/pasting of song files worked, but that's really annoying too.

[Conkerkid11]

I was just having this problem with one song I was trying to add locally. This isn't a good solution if you have hundreds of songs or whatever, but it's a good temporary solution if it's only a couple songs that are missing.

I just right clicked the song wherever it was on my computer, clicked "properties", then "details", then made sure there was a valid "Title", "Contributing Artists", "Year", "#", and "Genre". Dunno which of these in particular allowed Spotify to recognize the song. Hope this helps someone.

Really dumb solution though. I recall a time early on in Spotify's life where you could just drag and drop files from your computer into Spotify and it would add them. Spotify's only been getting worse over time.

[tomashlinka]

@hm8 Thanks for your help - I was experiencing a similar issue: I decided not to have any files in local files anymore and unchecked all folders but the songs were still there (even after removing the files from that particular folder; unplayable though). After deleting this bnk file the songs were not being showed in local files anymore.