Local files skip/won't play

[unboxedeliza]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

iPhone XR

Operating System

iOS 15.1

My Question or Issue

I've been wrestling with an issue that pops up when I try to sync local files from my computer to my phone, and I've browsed thread after thread on similar problems and tried solution after solution, but nothing has seemed to fix it. Essentially, local files work completely fine on my computer, but when I go to play them on mobile, clicking on one has it pop up as if it's going to play for a split second before it disappears like the song was instantly skipped. I have the playlist downloaded on both devices, on the same network, etc., and the songs look completely normal--the green "downloaded" arrow appears and they are not greyed out--but they still refuse to play. If I play them on my computer with the mobile app open, they show up as playing via connect, but if I try to transfer the audio to play on my phone, it instantly breaks.

So far, I have tried:

• Deleting the playlist and starting again with a fresh one (at least half a dozen times)
• Checking every firewall/antivirus program on both devices to make sure Spotify was allowed through
• Moving the files around in my computer/changing the source folder, changing their names, removing them from Spotify and re-adding them, etc.
• Trying the process on a different WiFi network
• Performing a clean reinstall of Spotify on both devices
• Checking the settings menus of both the apps and each device to ensure that local network and/or files were enabled
• Making sure both apps/devices were up to date

At this point, I'm at a total loss. Even worse is the fact that when I did this process maybe half a year back with the same songs, I had absolutely zero issues. What do I do here?

[yandhi]

This has been a recurring issue since I first started my spotify subscription more than 5 years ago. Have not been able to find a fix.

[marcus8883]

Love how the spotify team is always on top of their most annoying problems even after five years 🙄 A solution that I found was to import .mp3 files directly onto my iphone so that spotify can’t say that they’re not downloaded and just skip over them. I did this using the file sharing feature on itunes. This link should provide good information on how to do that: https://support.apple.com/guide/itunes/transfer-files-itns32636/windows