Spotify Desktop App Keeps Un-Downloading Songs Without My consent

[TheWhiteDragon]

I am using a premium account for the Spotify app for Windows 10 due to the need to download songs to be able to listen offline (long story, but I need to turn off the internet nightly). The problem is that Spotify will un-download songs without my consent and against my permission. Every time I open the Spotify app, the majority of my downloaded songs will appear as if they are not downloaded, even when I was listening to them downloaded and offline the night prior. To its credit, when I launch the program while connected to the internet, it will immediately download the songs that are in the playlists and albums that I marked to be downloaded, but if I forget to launch the program before I lose internet connection, most (but not all) of my songs will show as if they were not downloaded, and I will be unable to listen to them offline for the evening and must wait until I regain an internet connection. All of this happens without me ever touching the files relevant to the Spotify program. The weirdest thing about it all is that it's completely unpredictable what songs will be un-downloaded. Most of the time, all my albums will be undownloaded, but only some of my custom playlists will be un-downloaded, and sometimes songs from specific albums in my custom playlists will be un-downloaded but the rest will remain downloaded and able to be listened to offline, but I specifically curated those custom playlist for relatively seamless transitions in between songs and the mood they're trying to convey, so it completely negates the purpose of these. While I'm technically able to bypass this issue by launching the program before I lose internet connection in the evening, it is far from an appropriate solution. All my research into this phenomenon has also shown that this issue has been known by the Spotify IT staff for years, but every time the issue is addressed, the thread will be closed and marked as "solved" with an automated message that the IT team could not replicate the issue, so apparently the appropriate solution to the problem is to pretend it doesn't exist even with dozens of reports across several years describing the same phenomenon. I fully expect the same treatment from Spotify's customer service which will re-evaluate my willingness to continue to pay for a service that doesn't work the way it's marketed, but I'll open a thread anyways to see if the community has any advice or insight that Spotify's professional IT team can't come up with.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @TheWhiteDragon,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and for your feedback. We're really sorry to hear this and we'd like to take a closer look into this.

Firs we'd like to recommend you to perform a clean reinstall of the app as this will make sure there's no old cache files causing this. However, you're going to have to redownload your content again after.

If that doesn't do the trick, can you try to download your content with another internet connection? 

Let us know how it goes so that we can continue to assist you if you need us to.

Have a great start of your weekend.

Take care!

[TheWhiteDragon]

I have performed a clean reinstall and have re-downloaded the songs I want. I have also launched the app twice after loss of internet connection over the course of two days, and so far the issue has not occurred again.

[TheWhiteDragon]

Nope, nevermind; I spoke too soon. Spotify undownloaded all my albums, left my most important custom playlist untouched, and undownloaded my customer playlist comprised exclusively of local files. To repeat that last point, Spotify undownloaded songs from the local files sitting in a folder on the desktop of the same computer it's running off of and won't let me listen to tthem.

[Kiril]

Hey there @TheWhiteDragon,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop here.

Hope we're getting this right, but now it seems you're having issue with your local files becoming unplayable while you're using the app offline, correct? If it so, then this might be connected to a similar issue, discussed by users in another thread here. Good news is that the right folks are already informed about this particular situation 🙂 So it's best to follow the thread there and to keep your app up to date in the meantime - not to miss any upcoming fixes.

Hope it gets sorted out soon. If you need anything else, the Community is here for you.

[TheWhiteDragon]

To be clear, I'm still dealing with the same issue of my downloaded songs being un-downloaded; the local file issue is a separate matter entirely.

[TheWhiteDragon]

Well, I've done another clean install, and I also deleted all the local files from my computer after backing them up on an external hard drive that was then disconnected for the clean install process. Just like many of the other users from that thread, that solution is still not working for me. Spotify will only "download" a single song from my local files and will not play the other when I am offline, even though the local files are all in the same folder that I have specifically chosen the local files to be read from. You know that one Gabe Newell quote? The one that goes, "The best measures against piracy is not anti-piracy software; it's providing a service that's more convenient than what the pirates can offer." For the longest time, Spotify was the more convenient service that what piracy can offer, all the way up until it started behaving in the same identifiable way that is has for dozens of others over years, and I'm really re-evaluating my willingness to continue to pay for a service that doesn't work.

[TheWhiteDragon]

ADDENDUM: Strangely, I have performed a clean install on my other device, and I am able to download the local files from my pc onto my other device, even though my host device can't read them. This is all so tiresome