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.

[pernsdorff]

Reminder that this is a CLOSED item.

I suggest you post this good description in a new item. Since this item is closed it will just be ignored by Spotify Dev Team - not that they will pay attention to it even then.

[bill_hobkins]

Re-posted the issue in bugs, please vote for it:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Storage-switched-back-to-internal-at-every-reboot-Sa...

[Kauo]

Similar issue, the difference is that my phone disconnects SD cards frequently and each time it does... BOOM, all the data of my downloads are now junk needing to be cleared, and downloaded again!!... very frustrating... it's the only app I have installed that can't read it's own files after a SD card disconnection. 

[Brenballs]

Hi,

I've been a paying Spotify customer for over 5 years and I have been having this issue for about 2 years now with different devices, but most recently my Samsung Galaxy S7.

I have tried all the suggestions, tried different SD cards, formatted them correctly as portable storage etc etc, but Spotify CONSTANTLY loses all SD content and forces music back on to phone storage, filling my phone and causing issues.  Doesn't matter how many times I put it back it happens again.  No other app on my phone has this issue, please help.

I'm currently paying 180euro/year for your service and I only listen to music offline, so this renders my subscription almost useless and I'll be cancelling my long running subscription if this isn't fixed.

Thanks

Bren.

[codayop]

"looking into this"?? This has been going on fir years. How has this not been resolved yet? Why is nobody reporting this to the media. It's a massive fundament failure of the app/service.

[neil741]

Me too March 2018 and still not resolved.

Issue seems specific to Samsung devices and encrypted cards.

[Hubo]

Hey folks! Thanks for coming to the Community!

All information from this thread is with the right folks and rest assured, they are looking into this. There's no time frame for a fix at this moment but any updates will be posted here. Let me know if you have any other questions in the meanwhile.

Thanks, have an awesome day! 🙂

[RaphAtienza]

I have a workaround that works!

1. Turn on developer options in Android Settings. (Search Google sorry I forget how)

2. In Developer Options in Android Settings Turn on "Force allow apps on external" (This the 2nd to the Last setting in developer options)

3. Then move the Spotify app to the External Storage.

This will make the Spotify app only available when the External Storage has been decrypted. I don't lose the Downloaded Spotify songs after a reboot on my Encrypted MicroSD on my Galaxy Note 8 on Oreo 8.0

I haven't tried rebooting with the Spotify app open upon reboot but assume this workaround will work.

I STILL HAVE NO IDEA WHY THIS HAS NOT BEEN PROPERLY FIXED BY SPOTIFY!

- Raph A

[neil741]

It is definitely a wider issue than just Samsung devices, since my last post I have seen this on an iPhone and Pixel 2XL.

The concerning thing is Spotify keep marking as resolved when it clearly has not been.  I'm jumping ship at the end of my billing period but as I am going on holiday there is no way I can trust the app to not remove my downloads just before I get on the plane so I have already re-subsribed to Apple music.

Maybe social media shaming is the only way foward on this one!

[nug21]

Good to see this is still an issue four years later.  Here I thought all coders knew what they were doing but clearly they haven't quite got the talent of other companies.

Horrible service Spotify!