Problem syncing local files of songs not available your region

[Katerina]

Hey there @prossu,

Thanks for posting about this in the Community!

Just to confirm, since you mention that only syncing to your mobile device causes issues, have you tried a quick reinstall of the app on that device?

If you haven't, please make sure to remove all offline devices listed here first. Then, you can follow the steps here for your iOS device.

Once you have, give it another try syncing your local files to your mobile device by following these steps:

1. Once you've imported your local files to Spotify using the desktop app (see "Desktop" instructions here), add the files to a new playlist.
2. Log in on your mobile or tablet using the same WiFi network as your desktop app. 
3. Select the new playlist containing the local files.
4. Switch on Download.

On another note, you mention another Community thread. It'd be helpful if you share a link to it so we can take a closer look.

Let us know how you get on 🙂

[prossu]

Plan

Premium

My Question or Issue

 When trying to sync local files to mobile devices, spotify won’t download them if the song metadata matches a song on spotify but the song is not available in your region.

it stays grayed out and can not be downloaded. On desktop, where the file is, I can listen to it normally, only syncing to mobile causes issues.

Any solutions to this? And changing the song/artist name in metadata is not a solution. I’m not going name my songs incorrectly just because spotify can’t fix**bleep**. This issue has existed for years already, similar topic was opened in 2016.

[katiek_]

Hi there!

I’d recommend checking out the "Downloads unexpectedly removed" section of the "Listen offline troubleshooting" support article for some more help with this.

If the article doesn't help I recommend keeping your app updated with a clean reinstall and avoiding any cache-clearing apps.

Hope this helps!

[prossu]

That article has nothing useful in this case. And the songs are not suddenly removed, they are not syncing at all.

The problem is songs with matching metadata not syncing at all even if you have the local file. If they are not available in your region, spotify decides not to sync the song.

You can fix this by changing the metadata (making it incorrect and not matching spotify’s version). But as a solution this should not be needed, since you already own the song and should be able to sync it.

[asulei]

I'm having this problem now, it's really frustrating. Surprised that the metadata I've put in for the track has actually been picked up by Spotify. I guess there's a pretty sophisticated algorithm behind it.

[prossu]

1. Sorry, I could not find the other thread anymore as I did not save the link earlier and can’t remember what I googled to find it..

However, reinstalling the app does nothing.

Only solution I have found, I mentioned above. You can fix the issue by changing the metadata. For example, renaming the album from ”Album name” to ”Album name local” fixes everything, since it no longer matches spotify’s data, and the song syncs automatically as soon as the change is made.

I guess Spotify’s version overrides the local file when metadata matches and if a song is not available in your region, you can’t get it to sync. If you manually transfer the file to a device or have it on desktop, it works as the file does not need syncing. I would also guess that this only affects files that exist in spotify’s database but are not available. Songs that don’t exist there of course have no issues as no metadata exists for them on spotify, so they sync fine. Also songs that are available in your region sync just fine.

[Peter]

Hey there,

Thanks for reporting this issue to us.

We have passed it onto the right team, who are currently looking into it.

Could we ask you to leave the following information in the comments section below for us:

• Device and OS version
• Spotify version?

Also don't forget to click +VOTE if you are experiencing this issue.

Thanks! We'll let you know as soon as we have any updates on this.

[prossu]

I have iPhone X with iOS version 11.4.

The problem occurs at least with spotify app version 8.4.96.934, but I believe the same issue has been occuring in some of the earlier versions as well.

[Guido]

Hello,

Thanks for all of the info.

We've let our tech team know, and they're investigating this. We don't have an exact timeline for a fix, but we'd recommend keeping an eye out for updates to the app.

Have a nice day!

[jsjxyz]

Any answer on this, I am really hopeless on this.

Example, I put a local files a song "You Are" by Niteflyte put it in local files and import to playlist.  But once it is imported to smartphone, Spotify change the song not from the artist album but appointing to a compilation which ths song is not available to play.

JSJ

[BlackjackM]

It's been a complete year and like jsjxyz said we're hopeless. There are so many problems that're reported on here and recommendations to make the application better but I see nothing being done. I love using Spotify but if no steps are being taken on the vast majority of issues that I at least notice to meet our quality of life demands then I will switch.

Here's my take on my issue which I believe is related or the same issue.

I was able to sync the files from my computer to my phone completely fine. To clear up anything "deemed" to be problematic I will provide more info once I'm done explaining. After a certain amount of time I start to find random songs being taken down on my phone, they were downloaded or "synced" to my phone and able to be played but then disabled; grayed out. After months having this issue I noticed that some songs were randomly playable again but majority once disabled were disabled. Very inconsistent. Also a month before this week the disabled songs *that were grayed out* were able to be played for me, however, the grayed out "disabled" songs weren't added to the shuffle and couldn't be queued, you had to physically click it to play it. Now; being this week I cannot play it period, it's disabled disabled. I would assume it's that Spotify has an algorithm for disabling local files but I also found that songs I had that didn't have the exact same title *live versions I've downloaded and labeled differently* were also disabled so it couldn't just be the specific words used in the files that deemed it to be disabled.

So after months of having this I never bothered to go here to report the issue because I know Spotify won't do anything about it even for quality of life issues that many request. Many thay the majority of users won't have a problem with because only certain people understand. I would like someone from Spotify to reply but I find it unlikely. There's my issue for people wondering "is anyone else having this problem" well yes... yes there are.

Computer: UTD Windows 10

Computer App: UTD and old Spotify versions

Phone: UTD Galaxy S8 'Android'

Phone App: UTD Spotify

How were the files synced?

The sync couldn't be the issue because it worked, I had the songs on my phone but randomly one by one they start becoming disabled after time, it's not consistent enough to say specifics is doing it. I added the local files to a playlist on my spotify desktop app, connected to the same wifi I synced it to my phone.

Specifics on what I have in my local files?

Alternate versions of songs IE: live uploaded to YouTube as a concert or session usually via a radio station recording booth. Cover of songs done by the artist. Albums that're not on Spotify due to problems with the record label or that they were very old. I can understand the problem with the record label stuff but what about live alternate versions? I added these to my local files because I like their music, their message, not to cause any problems but local files has major issues with it that're unresolved.

Hope that this reaches the right people, thank you for reading.