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.

[user-removed]

And please Spotify support team, don't answer me with standard emails to my requests, no my SD card is not damaged, same issue with second memory card, and yes I tried to reinstall Spotify, same issue.

I am not stupid...

[elfranchu]

Same problem here with Galaxy A5 2016

[pernsdorff]

"Rest assured, our team is already looking into this......" ???

If this is true, why is this item CLOSED with no resolution?

This is not a bug with Android or with Samsung. This is an overly anxious software issue with Spotify where it is starting up a process too soon and expected to see a status of SD card too soon. 

[charno]

Hi,

Any updates, Spotify Team?

As a developer I think it's contrary to good practices to close a bug report (which was supported by a lot of users) and to delete the post with the most detailed info (adb log!). Maybe reopen the bug to aknowledge the awareness of the Spotify Team, and provide some insights into the findings?

Best regards
Christof

Edit:

Lol, cool timing pernsdorff

[pernsdorff]

Also being a developer for over twenty years...it is quite understandable that Spotify is acting too soon to an SD card that is not prepared to be mounted yet on reboot.

Maybe if we opened this same issue 20 times it will finally get some attention. And stop tagging this as an ANDROID BUG, it is a Spotify bug. 

[jay_mann]

This isn't exclusively a Samsung issue - it's an issue with the way Spotify handles any missing SD card. On reboot, it seems to be any device where the Spotify service starts before the card is mounted. In the many other threads on this issue, owners of other brands have experienced the same problem. I have replicated it on an LG G4 myself, though my current device is a GS7. I was using v5.2.0.885, which was the last one to deal with a missing SD card correctly (and thus not have this problem), but in the end I gave up waiting and switched to Google music.

Don't want to discourage anyone further, but this was Spotify's response (on a different thread for the same issue) 12 months ago : "We haven't got any updates at this time, but rest assured, the Tech team are still investigating. In the meantime, please check that you've got the latest version of Spotify, and install any outstanding software updates."

Samsung-Galaxy-S7-S7-Edge-w-SD-Card-Offline-Tracks-Desyncing

Shortly after that, they closed the ticket. These are canned responses. I really don't hold out much hope that anyone is actually looking at it or that this is ever getting fixed. As long as you keep resting assured though, everything will be fine :-).

[CosaNoztra]

lol this has been reported since August 2016.
Ping Spotify, is your goal really to be the leading music streaming service? If so, why are you not acting like it? This is extremely unprofessional.

[anshmagotra65]

Can I use Spotify after travelling to India for more than 14 days? If yes then how? 

[AvekLive]

Same problem here. Any ETA? 

[user-removed]

No solution until now.

Funny thing is:

If you are in offline mode and restart mobile, not only your offline content is away, Spotify app loses user data and you have to login again.

But this is not possible, because in background app is still in offline mode and you cannot login due to app says please connect to internet first...

Then you have to reinstall app again... 🙂

1. Failure:

Restart mobile in online mode, only offline music is away.

Reproduceable at every restart.

2. Failure

Restart in offline mode, offline music is away and app is crashed.

Reinstall necessary.

Reproduceable at every restart with Spotify app in offline mode.

Blame for Spotify, easy errors to fix for programmer but they do not care on paying customer problems as long as others pay enough...

See this forum, failure exists since a long time...