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Local file not matched on other system due to song duration.

Local file not matched on other system due to song duration.

Plan

Premium

Country

Australia

Device

PC and Macbook Pro 2015

Operating System

Windows 10 and OSX Mojave

My Question or Issue

A specific local file on one device that is copied to another device (either operating system) is not matched/detected on the device that the file is copied to when the file is in a playlist. The problem ocurs the other way around. After further troubleshooting it appears to be an issue of how Spotify detects the song duration on each system. One device such as a Windows 10 device rounds up the duration whilst another device such as a OSX device rounds down the duration which causes the local files to be not detected/matched when in a playlist.

 

For example:

The following device is running windows 10 and is where the song originated from:

Annotation 2019-04-06 193834.png

Now this same file, when copied to the OSX device it is not matched due to the OSX spotify client detecting a different duration. The OSX device shows it greyed out in the playlist:

Screen Shot 2019-04-06 at 7.39.34 pm.png

On the OSX device, when looking in the Local Files section, the file is detected however with a different duration and similarly on the windows device:

Screen Shot 2019-04-06 at 7.55.10 pm.png

When adding this file into the same playlist, duplicate entries are added however with different durations. One is greyed out and one is able to be played:

From OSX Device:

Screen Shot 2019-04-06 at 7.58.03 pm.png

From Windows 10 Device:

Annotation 2019-04-06 195904.png

 

Additionally upon further investigation, I've opened the spotify console and noticed that the duration is different in the spotify uri:

From windows 10:

 

track_uri: spotify:local:%E3%81%95%E3%83%A6%E3%82%8A:%E3%83%9F%E3%82%AB%E3%83%85%E3%82%AD%E3%81%AE%E8%88%AA%E6%B5%B7:%E3%81%9D%E3%82%8C%E3%81%AF%E5%B0%8F%E3%81%95%E3%81%AA%E5%85%89%E3%81%AE%E3%82%88%E3%81%86%E3%81%AA:273

273 at the end of the line, according to the spotify api docs corresponds to the track duration in seconds.

From OSX:

 

track_uri: spotify:local:%E3%81%95%E3%83%A6%E3%82%8A:%E3%83%9F%E3%82%AB%E3%83%85%E3%82%AD%E3%81%AE%E8%88%AA%E6%B5%B7:%E3%81%9D%E3%82%8C%E3%81%AF%E5%B0%8F%E3%81%95%E3%81%AA%E5%85%89%E3%81%AE%E3%82%88%E3%81%86%E3%81%AA:272

In the spotify OSX client the duration is shown as 272 seconds. 

Therefore this 1 second difference prevents spotify from detecting/matching the local file on either device. 

 

This occasionally happens. A workaround at the moment was to manually shorten the duration of the song using Audacity (or similar software) which allows both windows and osx clients to detect/match the song in the playlist.

 

Reply
1 Reply

I had similar issue on my devices as well.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Different-local-files-length-on-Windows-7-and-10/td...

 

Here's what I tried to resolve my issue (note that I'm still not sure what exactly the problem is):

Verify two files' hash or size to make sure they are the exact same files. Spotify still have different song duration.

Reinstall Spotiy and found out the song duration are the same now and can be played on both devices. However, they appeared to be 1 second longer compared to my OS.

My guess is that they adjust their algorithm for calculating song duration after I post an issue and the user have to manually clear the cache for songs information (reinstall spotiy to be the easiest option).

 

Hope it helps.

 

 

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