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?

[bigm]

Wow, finally... Thank you @Guido .

I'm about to switch to Google Play Music because I've had enough with this bug. Let's hope there will be a fix at last.

[michaelhuzie]

Hahahaha wow thanks @Guido for the massive "F*** you" from Spotify.

Why has this been changed to not right now?

This is a huge bug

[12168554152]

this has been an ongoing problem for android users.

surely it wouldn't be that tough to at least recommend a workaround.

i guess everyone is too busy developing Canvases and thank goodness for that. /s

[mustardkid]

Ok I turned off auto updates for spotify but the android firmware update
has just made the storage switch from SD to internal again. And once more
I've got to download my tunes again.

[mjod-uk]

Samsung  s9+ with 128K internal storage and 256K external. Spotify Premium single user. 

This is a massive issue for me too. Not only does Spotify lose all the downloaded music on my SD card but also resets my music quality. It's a massive pain in the neck and as far as I can see has been a problem for at least 2 years. 

Please treat this as very serious.

[TerminalNZ]

2 x Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, running Android Pie

1 x Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, running Android Pie

Storage resets on boot removing all downloaded files, only on Android Pie due to SD Card mounting after Spotify has checked for storage.
My family and I have a lot of local files mixed into our playlists and this is a make or break feature as we can't listen to them without them downloaded on our devices.
Given the limited storage space of the devices, using external storage is our only choice when it comes to downloading our music for day to day listening. We haven't been able to do this for 3 months since we upgraded to Android Pie.
I feel let down by Spotify. This has been reported to be a huge problem for a while and all the attention its had is being marked as "Not Right Now".
Well, Me, My Family, & 6 of my friends think it might be time to make our subscription "Not Right Now".
It's not worth paying for a subscription to an application that can't function properly on its platform with support that gives you a shrug.
If this was properly being looked into I'm sure this would be fixed by now.
If you release an app on a platform, make sure it works on that platform. The platform won't adapt to you and it's pretty clear this is the direction Android wants to take with SD Card mounting for future Android versions. Get a headstart that you're already late to.
Sorry if this sounds harsh in any way, but you guys really need to fix this, it looks bad when you're ignoring such a big issue.

Cheers

[TerminalNZ]

Temporary Solution / Workaround that has worked for Me
Took me hours on end of trial and error but I finally got it to work.
No Root privileges needed, just an ADB command line and your SD Card.

1. Follow this guide: https://forum.xda-developers.com/idol-3/general/make-sd-card-semi-adopted-t3399510
- You need to partition your card to be part adoptable storage, part accessible SD Card.
2. Enable "Force allow apps on external" in the "developer options" menu.

- Tap the Build Number under "About Device" repeatedly until it says you've unlocked the developer menu.

3. Restart your Phone.

- Let's start fresh now that that's all setup.

4. Download Spotify from the Google Play Store.
- Woo we're getting there!

5. Find Spotify in your Applications menu in your phone's settings and open it.

- Might be called Application Manager or something along those lines
6. Click on storage, then change storage and tap your SD Card.

- This theoretically means that Spotify won't autostart before your SD Card mounts because you can't start Spotify if its install location isn't mounted. 😉
7. Login to the Spotify App and set your in-app storage to the normal SD Card partition you created.

- Mine defaulted on the first login to the SD Card for in-app storage which was pretty neat.

8. Download Something.

- Here she comes, here comes the test.

9. Restart your phone, unlock it after boot, and wait anywhere from a few seconds to a minute or two.

- My apps take forever to load into my launcher, just need to be patient but well worth it as to not lose 90GB worth of downloaded music.

10. Open your app, and bammm, I hope what you've downloaded is still there because this took me a while to type up and I share your frustration.

- It's totally worked for me, a couple of days with many restarts and everything's still as smooth as a smooth thing.

Hope this works for some of you! 😁

Spotify you still need to fix this though, customers shouldn't have to do this to get such a simple feature working, don't use this as an excuse to ignore the problem because someone found a temporary fix.

[Melkschuimer]

Huge problem for me too, especially frustrating since it should be trivial for Spotify to implement a fix.

[mjod-uk]

I've fixed it! I've cancelled my subscription and moved to Tidal. No storage issues and great sound.

[Blitzk23]

Got this same issue as well! Kept waiting for a fix but no action from spotify. I followed the previous reply and just switched to TIDAL!!