Android encrypted SD Card: Offline Music lost on Reboot

[charno]

Hi,

I open a new bug for an old issue, since the old report (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Samsung-Galaxy-S7-S7-Edge-w-SD-Card-Offline-Tracks-D...) was closed.

Context:

- Samsung Galaxy S7 with Android 7.0, Patchlevel 1.10.2017

- Spotify for Android 8.4.28.875 armV7

- 128 GB Sandisk Ultra MicroSD Card, which was encrypted using Android Settings -> Security -> Encrypt SD Card. The card holds about 60GB of data which is not Spotify-related.

What do I want:

- Offline musik persistent on external storage

What do I do:

- Go to Spotify Settings, set SD card as storage option

- Download some music

- Reboot

Problem:

- After reboot, in the Spotify Storage Settings, Internal Storage is selected and all my downloaded music is not present anymore.

From my point of view, a likely source for the problem could be this:
"The problem seems to be that Spotify always loads and looks for its cache before the encrypted sd card can be decrypted by the system."

This or similar issues are already discussed at several places in the spotify community webpage:

- https://community.spotify.com/t5/forums/v3_1/forumtopicpage/board-id/spotifyandroid/thread-id/59790/...

- https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Encrypted-sd-card-causes-Spotify-to-lose-offline-music/td-p...

- https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Samsung-Galaxy-S7-S7-Edge-w-SD-Card-Offline-Tracks-D...

In one of these threads, there was the Idea that we should wait with starting spotify after reboot until the encrypted SD is present. This solution does not work for me, offline data is also lost if I wait for the SD card to become decrypted (which is displayed in the status bar on my S7). I suspect that spotify, or some spotify service is already automatically started after reboot, before the SD card becomes available.

This bug has a big impact for me: I'm regularily flying to countries where I don't have unlimited internet available, and where I have to shutdown my phone on the plane. After landing I have no possibility to listen to my spotify music. Because of this I'm thinking about changing to competition.

[jay_mann]

Worth noting too that as per the previous thread, which was never resolved, it's not an issue that relates only to encrypted cards. It happens for many people (including me) even with an unencrypted card. I think the issue is more that Spotify looks for the cache before the card is even mounted. This is not necessarily a problem either. In older versions of Spotify (which people have been using to get around the issue), Spotify would simply report that the download location was missing. Once it it found the card, everything worked normally again. basically, while the card was unavailable, so was the offline cache. Something changed in later versions where essentially, if it detected the cache was missing, it began creating a new cache immediately, and  deleted any reference to the SD card. Even when it found the card again (which on a reboot happens just a few seconds later), it was too late - all reference to the original cache on the SD card was gone so whatever remained on the card was unusable. Logically, regardless of the reboot issue, external storage i general can't work this way. It has to be treated as a bug, not as a design intent, because SD cards are by definition 'removable' storage. There would be numerous other instances where a person might need to remove the SD card. So, every time Spotify, even for a split second, can't find the card, it just starts downloading GBs of data again?  That's can't be right, surely?

[ajhughes127]

Exact same issue as described by the original thread commenter for me. Music on my encrypted SD card is lost by Spotify any time I reboot phone.  This has been a long time issue with no resolution. Very poor customer service, in my opinion, to just close the prior thread without any resolution. I've been a premium Spotify customer for a long time, but apparently need to switch to Google Play Music or similar to get quality service and error resolution. 

Samsung Galaxy S7 on Verizon running latest updates for phone and Spotify.

[user-removed]

Same for me, Samsung S7, 64GB SD card.

Close Spotify application manually before shut down does not work for me too.

SD card encrypted too. (Basic today)

Really annoying issue for Spotify service which i pay 9.99 euro to, every month.

Should be easy to fix...

[charno]

Another Thread with the same problem... https://community.spotify.com/t5/Android/Samsung-galaxy-s7-edge-storage-location-BUG/td-p/1348381

[user-removed]

To all affected people, please send description of your issue and link to this discussion per email directly to Spotify customer service of your country!

[Hubo]

Hey folks! Thanks for your reports!

That's not cool. I'd love to get to the bottom of this. Could you all let me know the following:

• Android version
• Device make/model
• Size of the SD card and if it's encrypted
• Spotify version
• Approximate date/time this happened

Also, if you haven't tried it yet, could you follow these steps to reinstall the Spotify app? Let me know how you get on! 🙂

Have an awesome day!

[stigvi]

This also happens for me. Downloaded music is always lost after reboot. I am seriously considering switching to another service 😞

[charno]

I posted a comment yesterday with some details about the bug, especially with an android logcat output in it. This comment is not visible anymore, but I still have the badge I got for commenting.

My phone stats (context) is already in the original bug report. In the logcat output, you could clearly see:

- Spotify is automatically started without user interaction

- Spotify specifically printed a message stating that the cache location could not be found (of course, because the SD card is not yet mounted)

Why was this comment deleted?

[SergioDavid]

Thanks for all the info @charno.

Rest assured, our team is already looking into this. We appreciate your patience while they work on a fix.

If you need anything else in the meantime, let us know. We're always here to help.

[user-removed]

Same for me today, had to reboot to change my traveller sim card.

Samsung S7 model SMG930F

Android version 7.0

Spotify version up to date ( today)

Samsung SD card, 64 GB, Pro model

SD card encrypted

Spotify was in offline mode.

Before shut down I closed all apps via system task handler, got to settings and stopped Spotify manually.

Shut down, restart.

Smartphone started regular, took about 1 minute to encrypt SD card. (Standard)

After encryption finished wanted to start Spotify, but not possible.

Spotify start screen appears to type in user name and password.

Type it in, press enter.

Spotify tells me Offline, has to connect. (Was in Offline mode before cause I was in overseas)

But if I press connect to Spotify question, same question comes again and again.

Spotify can not connect anymore, I have to reinstall it.

Same as many times before, every time when I have to restart smartphone.

This is really annoying...

Please help Spotify support team!

Best regards

Daniel