Some of my local files won't play

[Kqllr]

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

I can only play a few of my local files on my PC some of them I can play, and some of them are greyed out but they're all still saved on my PC. I even have songs that show they can be played but if I try to play them then it just says "Spotify can't play this right now. If you have the file on your computer you can import it." what do I do?

[Sebasty]

Hey @Kqllr 

I'd need to know more on that issue you're having. 🙂

- is your Spotify installed from Windows Store or downloaded from spotify site?

- what format are the files in?

- did this start happening recently, or have some of your files always been greyed out?

Let me know!

[0pTicaL]

Having the exact same issue, pretty sure Spotify update **bleep** something up for us desktop users. Was working for the entire year until recently. I have local files from the same album, some play some don't. This issue repeats for multiple albums I have locally. Not sure wth those people at Spotify are doing but it's always one step forward and two steps back.

[Jeremy]

Hey there @0pTicaL,

Thank you for your post in this thread.

Even though some other file types might work, these are the ones that the feature is designed to work with:

• .mp3
• .m4p (unless it contains video)
• .mp4 (if QuickTime is installed on your computer)
• .m4a (unless it’s an Apple lossless file; ALAC or ALE)

These files must exist on the device, either outside of the app or by setting them to Offline inside the app

To sync local files from one device to another, the user must be actively logged in to both devices with Spotify open and on the same network

Also:

• Make sure that the user is trying to import one of the file types above
• Make sure that the file isn't DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected Note: If the user has iTunes, they can check for DRM protected tracks by following these steps.

Keep us posted. We're always one reply away 🙂

Cheers!

[mlidbo]

You guys may be experiencing this issue: 

[Desktop] Local files with special characters or n... - The Spotify Community

You can test this quickly by renaming one of the files that don't work to something like "aaa.mp3". If renaming it like this makes it stop being greyed out you are experiencing that bug. Some of the non-acceptable characters can be hard to spot. Like versions of - or ' that are subtly different, so don't assume that you are not facing that issue because you don't see anything obviously strange about the file name.

[Kqllr]

All the files are mp3

[Kqllr]

spotify was downloaded from the site, all files are mp3 and this only started recently and some of the files are still playable but most of them are greyed out

[mlidbo]

Sorry, guess I was not clear. The bug in the issue I linked is not about the file type, it is about the file name. Any non-ASCII character in the file name apparently breaks the current code after a recent update. So when I wrote "aaa.mp3" I meant that quite literally and exactly. The point being that you know for absolute sure that you yourself typed only standard characters. If the file is still not imported correctly if you do that then you are not seeing that bug. If it is suddenly imported again you probably are a victim of that bug.   

[0pTicaL]

Moderators are incompetent. The issue is with non-English characters. Such brain dead copy and paste responses are a complete waste of time. AI can do a better job at faking it.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Desktop-Local-files-with-special-characters-or-non-E...

[0pTicaL]

Yes, I confirmed this issue by randomly changing the file name to abc123.mp3 and Spotify recognizes the files. However it's taken the programmers at Spotify over 2 weeks and still no fix in sight. This is what we get for a paid service.

[mlidbo]

Actually, a new version with a fix has just been released. Update Spotify and everything should be working again. You can do this via the ... menu at the top left -> About spotify.

Cheers 🙂

[0pTicaL]

Yup, updated a few minutes ago. About damn time, for such a small issue.