Multiple registrations of same device in offline device list / downloaded music disappearing

[user-removed]

Spotify is registering the same device multiple times in my list of offline devices. It appears that every time a new download session is started on a device, that device is entered again into the list of offline devices even though it is already listed. When the limit of three entries has been reached, all of the downloaded music disappears.

I was having problems finding that my downloaded tracks had disappeared. I came across the following Spotify troubleshooting advice and discovered that I had the same device listed three times in my list of offline devices.

https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/listen-offline-troubleshooting/

So today I cleared the entire list. I then cleared all Spotify-related data from my Android device and began to download some tracks from scratch. I went away for that series of downloads to finish and then began a second load of downloads - which is currently ongoing. I just checked my list of offline devices and discovered that the same device is now listed twice.

So it would appear that every time I begin a new series of downloads the same device is listed as a new entry in the list of offline devices. Since we are only allowed three, once that limit is reached, the first device - which happens to be same one listed three times - can no longer play the downloaded music.

It can take a very long time for the list of ofline devices to be updated in my account, so this problem is not at all obvious.

I did not update the Android device software or Spotify in between the downloads.

I am running version 8.4.11.1283 armV7 of Spotify and version 4.1.1 of Android - the latest that this device will support. I don't know exactly when this problem first occurred as I don't often listen to downloaded music.

Note that when searching the community help pages I saw that this issue of losing downloaded music has been reported very many times but for some reason Spotify has closed all of the threads. I don't understand why, but perhaps it because no one has noticed the issue of the same device being registed multiple times. It's a shame that Spotify support hasn't dug deeper into this issue as judging by the number of comments in these support pages there are a huge number of people with this issue.

[gräy]

Totally agree and feel the same with you. spotify is not giving a * about after services and just advertising ultimatly about paying them. SO MANY PEOPLE HAVING THE SAME ISSUE OF MULTI-SAME DEVICES. their programmers don't even care.

[MonicaM_Bogota]

Hi, @user-removed and @gräy!

Welcome to the Spotify Community.

It sounds like there's been a hiccup with your offline devices. Don't worry, just head here to remove them. Once done, you'll need to reinstall the app with these steps and resync your tracks.

Also, if you have any cache-clearing apps installed in your devices, removing Spotify from the app's settings would worth a shot.

Let us know how it goes.  

[gräy]

Re Monica_L,

thank you for caring, but I see this comment so many times, problem is your code in the app so aggressive to remove downloaded tracks. note that I just needed to configure my drive a little, and bomb, all songs gone, but my drive was not reformatted, not crashed, no bad sector. And the register method used on your system for offline device is too unwilling to cooperate, why not simply let the users register which three signed in device to be allocated with a code/number/name/letter, so whenever downloading on a new device the user must choose to remove one, instead removing any device by the WILL of YOUR SYSTEM.

[William_13]

Hey @gräy!

We appreciate your comments. 

Can you try to download some music on a different device? Also, let us know if trying some of the steps that we sent before helped.

Keep us posted.

[gräy]

 Re @William_13,

thank you for the reply, I downloaded thousands of tracks nearly hundred times on Mac, Windows(past, cause the most severe on deleting tracks, DAILY), Android and ios. It is not happening regularly, instead of at the most inappropriate time, it happens: vacations, getting limited data and mostly, right after I finish downloading and get a restart on the devices, it happens. As I said, it is the problem of your system UNABLE to CORRECTLY register and STABLY keep our offline devices on YOUR SYSTEM'S LIST. And the code in the applications on all platform is too aggressive to delete any offline tracks. SO I suggest your system to build a way to deactivate tracks when anything went wrong, instead of deleting tracks instantly, like GIGABYTES OF DATA DELETED INSTANTLY.

p.s. that page of "troubleshooting" is waste of your time and my intelligence, just please improve your system instead

[user-removed]

Thanks @MonicaM_Bogota  for your advice. Sorry for not replying for so long. I've been out of the country this last week.

I tried your suggestions but still no good.

I followed your instructions on removing devices and then clearing data and re-installing the app, though I couldn't execute the step, "go to Storage > Android > Data and delete a folder called com.spotify.music" as there is no 'Android' section under Storage on my device. (I have version 4.1.1 of Android, the latest supported by my device.) Instead I erased all 'USB storage'. I then used a file manager app to search for the Spotify file I was to delete and didn't see it. Presumably the clearing of the USB storage area deleted it.

Next, I re-installed Spotify. I noted that it is a slightly newer version than I had used previously and is now 8.4.19.792 armV7.

I then downloaded a few tracks and a little later noted that the device was listed on my list of offline devices.

I then downloaded a few more, and then another set and finally a much larger group of tracks. After each download session I checked and still had one offline device listed. That was yesterday. Today there is still just one device listed.

So this issue with multiple instances of the same device must be some intermittent problem. When I came back from my travels and before I started doing as you asked, I noted that I only had one device listed even though I executed several download sessions before I left, which was contrary to my experience that caused me to post the original error. That is the first thing to note.

So for an hour or more all seemed fine with the downloaded tracks and I was about to post in this forum that all was now well. But I went out for a few hours and when I returned I connected my device to my laptop and added a dozen or two non-Spotify albums. (I didn’t check the status of the Spotify stuff beforehand.) I then check how much storage space was free to see whether I could download more albums and was surprised to see that I still had loads of space. Then I discovered that all my downloaded Spotify stuff had disappeared. As stated before, I still only have one offline device listed on my account.

This implies thatt here are two different problems: an intermittent problem with the same device being registered several times; and the ghostly disappearance of previously downloaded tracks that so many people seem to be experiencing. I would have thought that these two issues are somehow linked but I don't know how. Maybe the number of devices is still registered as three on your server but is not always being reported accurately in our accounts?

[user-removed]

@MonicaM_Bogota and @William_13, Following from my last message, I've now completed another experiment.

I ran through the same steps as before but this time checked the status of the Spotify downloads before I loaded albums across USB from my laptop. All was fine before the transfer but afterwards Spotify deleted the tracks that I'd downloaded! There was plenty of space on the device and still just one device on the offline devices list.

In all my tests the Spotify app was running - but not playing music - on my device. I was also running Spotify on my laptop and playing music on it, so I just ran a very quick test whereby I shut down Spotify on my device before copying albums from my laptop. When I restarted Spotify, the previously downloaded tracks were still there. So it sems that your app doesn't like sharing storage with another concurrent process and decides to pick up its ball and go home.

I'm not certain, but I'm fairly sure that this is a new problem and that I have copied albums across USB when the Spotify app was running on the device before. ('New' as in the last few months.)

[user-removed]

@MonicaM_Bogota and @William_13,

Well, I wrote too soon. My downloaded tracks are still fine but I've just noticed that the same device is listed twice in my list of offline devices. Looks like there are two issues here that need to be fixed.

[Alfredo]

Hey folks, thanks for all the detailed info!

If your downloads are disappearing, try following the steps under "Downloads unexpectedly removed" here.

The duplicate offline devices could be caused if your device's internal memory or SD card is compromised or corrupted.

In this case, we suggest creating a backup of your device's SD card (if that's the storage you're using for Spotify) and formatting it, or using a different SD card.

You could also try using a different device altogether to check if it could be your device's internal memory causing the duplicate devices.

Cheers.

[user-removed]

@Alfredo, (cc: @William_13, @MonicaM_Bogota) How on Earth can you suddenly change the status to 'not an issue'? That's arrogant, insulting and ridiculous to do so before waiting results of your suggestion. You have absolutely no evidence that this is a memory corruption issue yet and therefore no basis to change the status of this post.

Furthermore, I can't see how your suggestion of corruputed memory could ba an issue a) because I am not using an SD card and b) how that could the root cause of the problem that only occurs when copying files whilst Spotify is running. I suggest that you re-read my second to last last posting.

I have gone through the steps of your suggested 'fix'. If you look at this forum there are a huge number of people with this problem. They can't all be memory corruption issues.

I wish to complain most vigorously about how you have handled this.