Issue with storage option switching from SD Card to internal

[haydnrb7]

Plan

Premium

Country

US 

Device

Moto X4

Operating System

Android Pie

My Question or Issue

 This happened with my last phone, Samsung S7 running Oreo (or whatever the most recent OS is) but it was fixed when I got the Moto X4. I like to keep a lot of songs downloaded offline because my service is terrible and I also spend a lot of time in the mountains. Before I I update my phone to the new Android Pie OS there was no problems. Now everytime I reset my phone I think spotify cannot see my SD card at first and tries to download all the music to its internal storage and I have to go back in and tell it to store it in the SD card. That is extremely annyoing but not the end of the world. What is really frustrating is that I think all of the downloaded songs are still on the SD card and just keep redownloading and taking up space. Eventually this will cause me to reformat the card which will be a major pain for me since I store a large amount of photos on there also. Is anyone else have this problem? I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the application so any other suggestions or help?

[stackoverflow64]

Same problem with Android 10... Spotify switches to internal storage after reboot and redownloads all the songs that had previously been downloaded to the SD card.  I've spent a lot of time trying to find a work-around, and contacted Spotify Support twice.  Nothing so far.  I have my fingers crossed that Spotify will releases a fix for this, but it's discouraging to see this problem has been around for a long time and still not addressed.

[enterquak]

I first solved it by locking my screen at startup long enough that spotify wasn't started during SD card mounting, over time it seemed fixed regardless what I did at boot. However, it has started again last week, and I am not sure if I have changed anything this time, and now it seems after a system restart, but spotify notices it only the first time when it is started. The maximum of 20GB traffic each time this happens (~1 USD on Amazon S3, probably less for spotify) is probably still much cheaper than having an engineer look at it, as long as their metrics cannot see that too many people quit the service due to that exact reason...

[esimioni]

I might have found a way around this issue.

First I cleaned all data and uninstalled the app as recommended.
After installing again and configuring Spotify to use the SD Card I have downloaded a playlist with 50 songs (not much, but enough to have time to see what Spotify is doing).
It downloaded correctly to the SD Card, then I restarted the phone and Spotify started downloading all over again to the Internal Storage, I waited for it to complete, then I went to the storage config of Spotify and changed again to SD Card. It copied all data to the SD Card.
After this process I have restarted the phone again and it retained the storage configuration and didn't try to download to the Internal Storage.

Time will tell if it really "fixes" the issue or if it was just a lucky coincidence.

[esimioni]

I might have found a way around this issue.

First I cleaned all data and uninstalled the app as recommended.
After installing again and configuring Spotify to use the SD Card I have downloaded a playlist with 50 songs (not much, but enough to have time to see what Spotify is doing).
It downloaded correctly to the SD Card, then I restarted the phone and Spotify started downloading all over again to the Internal Storage, I waited for it to complete, then I went to the storage config of Spotify and changed again to SD Card. It copied all data to the SD Card.
After this process I have restarted the phone again and it retained the storage configuration and didn't try to download to the Internal Storage.

Time will tell if it really "fixes" the issue or if it was just a lucky coincidence.

[esimioni]

Unfortunately the workaround I have described above doesn't work consistently.
It is downloading 10,000+ songs for the 3rd time in 5 days. This will get even worse once Spotify releases HiFi plans.
Spotify engineers don't seem to be capable enough... You should consider hiring some Android developers from TIDAL. Their app doesn't have this issue.

[EvofusionTM]

I'm having the same issue, which only started happening after the app updated to the new UI

It appears the update broke spotify in several ways. Disappointing because I have been a Premium member for several years.

And yes, I have tried clearing data and cache, as well as reinstalling the app. I checked permissions and everything seems to be ok, although one time the settings said "no permissions" and when I clicked it - it changed to "permissions - storage"

Please fix this bug!!

[EvofusionTM]

Ok, it seems spotify is losing storage permissions and switching back to internal storage, however, on the app settings page where you can manually select permissions. Initially, it says "permissions - none" ,however, after I manually click on it to give storage permissions it AUTO switches to "permissions - storage"

What is going on here?!?

EDIT: Ok, so I did another restart and the downloads didn't disappear. It seems completely random at this point.

EDIT2: Nevermind, downloads disappeared again after another restart. Once again this seems completely random... I need to have offline access because I travel a lot come on spotify.......

[JG1030]

For all who are having this issue, I replaced my SD card with a new one a
few months back (they're not that expensive) and haven't had the issue
since.

[EvofusionTM]

Honestly this doesn't seem like a viable option. I have a pretty high end samsung 256gb SD card. Plus, this issue only started after the new UI update, AND the sd card is working fine for pictures / videos.

[mjdb71]

It is ridiculous that in 2021 this issue still exist. Hundreds of people are complaining about it and it is clear Spotify does not care about their customers. I have a Note 10 running Android 11. When i have downloaded music to my SD card, after every reboot Spotify switches SD card storage back to internal storage and starts downloading all music again. How difficult would it be for a developer to put the code in debug mode and reproduce this @#€\% bug. You don't deliver us what we pay for and I am now so fed up with this problem that I am going to switch my whole family to YouTube Music.