[PC] 1/4 of my Local files are greyed out

[SmoothGardener]

Plan

Free

Country

United States

Device

Alienware PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Up until a few days ago all my local files played fine but recently about 1/4 of my over 20,000 local files have become greyed out. Entire albums are greyed out instead of just a few songs off of one. Most of the song files that are greyed out are MP3s but there are some M4A files too. The songs that are greyed out don't show up when searched for in spotify. Also if I update the album that's greyed out by doing something like changing the genre the songs will un-grey and become playable, but only until I close spotify and open it back up again, where it will go back to being greyed out and unplayable.

I've tried uninstalling spotify, deleting index. dat, deleting local-files. bnk, disabling hardware acceleration, restarting my computer, changing the offline song storage, and changing the song source to the direct folder instead of "Music Library" but nothing has worked so far.

[Ver]

Hey @SmoothGardener,

Thanks for posting here in the Community 🙂

If the songs are grayed out, it could be that they are in an unsupported format. You can look up the types of files that are supported here.

If they are in a supported format, we'd suggest you give these steps a go and run a clean reinstall. This one is more thorough than the usual one. That way you can make sure the app is up-to-date and the cache is not causing any issues. It's a good idea to try downloading the app from the Microsoft store.

Hope this helps. If you have questions, we are here for you.

[SmoothGardener]

A clean reinstall did absolutely nothing to help. I was able to un-grey a few albums by renameing or transfering folders but that hasn't been effective for a lot of albums still.

[Alex]

Hi there @SmoothGardener,

Currently there is an ongoing issue with local files that have special characters and language specific letters in their names, which cannot be played. Check it out here.

Can you see whether the files that appear grayed out have anything outside the standard roman alphabet in their names?

Cheers.

[SmoothGardener]

This is probably the reason for a lot of them as they either contain Japanese characters or non-alphabet characters like ()-&: however not every song with non-alphabet characters is greyed out which is curious if this is in fact the reason why so much is greyed out.

[Alex]

Hi again @SmoothGardener,

Thanks for getting back to us.

The right team is working on a fix for this, but we can't give you a definite time frame for when or if it will be resolved. If there are any songs from your big collection that you'd really want to play at the moment, I'd suggest renaming those using only English letters and trying to reupload them.

You can add your +Vote to the Ongoing Issue and subscribe to the thread. This way you'll get notifications as soon as there are any developments. 

Another thing that's worth trying is connecting to another network like a mobile Hotspot and reuploading your songs, as some users report that this made it possible for them to play the local files.

Hope you find this info useful.

[EdGalois]

Having a similar issue with fewer variables, which is even more confusing.

1. All songs are mp3 format
2. Not one of the greyed out songs has a special character that would prohibit the app from playing them.
3. All of the songs are in the same folder on the main drive of my desktop, and on top of that-
4. A new mp3 which I was trying to add to local files isn't appearing in the spotify app.

So not only is the new song not showing up, trying to add it has lost me the ability to play 3 albums of music and many singles. The formerly playable mp3s are still playable on my phone, which thank goodness the mobile and desktop apps don't sync automatically or else they'd be lost for good.

This issue feels very clunky considering the only thing the spotify app has to do is read the contents of a folder.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @EdGalois,

Thank you for your post in this thread.

Can you confirm if you performed a clean reinstall of the app as @Ver suggested?

Another useful step is to change the source folder of the local files on the pc. The steps are: Uninstall Spotify on both devices > create a new folder somewhere else on the pc and move the local files there > install Spotify again > remove any potential source folders and add the new one > download the playlist again.

Let us know how it goes.

Take care!

[EdGalois]

Tried both, neither worked.
Uninstall and reinstall and deleted all the indexing files (ie; 0a, 0b, 0e, 0f, etc.) ; same songs still greyed out.

Moved the files to a different folder>all songs grey>added that folder as a source>songs were back and the same files previously grey remained grey.

[EdGalois]

Additionally, random local files with no album art in the file have been given the album art of one of the greyed out albums.

 

 This is confusing. Spotify doesn't recognize the files from the Incorporated album, but it donates the album art to other songs on the list that don't have album art.....proving that it must recognize the files in some capacity. 

[Jeremy]

Hi again @EdGalois,

Thank you for your reply.

Can you run a clean reinstall in safe mode to see if that helps?
 

Let us know how it goes.

Cheers!

[EdGalois]

Is this supposed to be a joke?

I did what every other person would be required to do to install the Spotify desktop application. I went to the Spotify website, downloaded the correct installation wizard and followed the directions. 

I did everything that was expected of me, as the consumer. I apologize if this comes off as rude or crass Jeremy, but to tell a customer to go to these lengths to use your product after it fails to function properly is simply ridiculous. 

No disrespect to you individually, but if I need to go that far to create a sterile environment for Spotify to possibly work, it's not a me problem.

For the sake of any other users who have this or a similar problem, I sincerely hope this issue gets referred to a company engineer who has the time to look into it.

Well wishes, thank you for trying, and thank you for your time. 

I hope you got paid for reading all this.

[djiki]

I have followed ALL the steps
I do NOT have any special characters
My file is an MP3

Can you please give a little guidance as to why my file is still greyed out.  I have literally followed every step, Uninstall, Re-Install, check certain boxes, run a marathon.  Nothing seems to work. 

It's very frustrating that this app is so confusing and complicated.

[Novy]

Hey @djiki, 

Thanks for reaching out here in the Community. We're sorry to hear that you're experiencing this issue, but we're here to help. 

Can you confirm if you tried @Jeremy's suggestion of changing the Local Files source on your computer?

It would also be helpful to have your device's make, model, OS version and the Spotify version you're currently running. 

Keep us posted.

[djiki]

Hi Novy,

Thank you very much for your reply.  To answer your question, yes I followed @jeremy's instructions and switched location of the file, deleted the originals from spotify and added the file from the new location.  This includes uninstalling spotify from both devices and reinstalling.

My desktop platform is Windows where I can see and play the file
My mobile device is iPhone12 where I can see the file greyed out and can't play it.

thank you

[CarlosE]

Hi again @djiki,

Thanks for your reply.

Could you try restarting your router by unplugging it from power for a few seconds? If that doesn't make any difference, try importing and syncing your Local files again to the desktop app and your phone using a different connection, like another WiFi network or a mobile hotspot.

Keep us in the loop on how it goes.

[djiki]

I'm having to do a lot of stuff here to get a very basic functionality to work.  I know you're only trying to help and this isn't really down to you, but can Spotify fix this issue?  It shouldn't be this difficult for me to add my own music to the my mobile device.  Seems like a top 3 kinda functionality.

To reply to your directions, I tried those and still no luck.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @djiki,

Thank you for your reply.

We understand, and we really appreciate the troubleshooting you've done so far. We really want this fixed for you.

can you try the following:

• Add some songs from our catalogue to the playlist as well as the local file/s and make sure they have ‘Show unavailable songs in playlists’ turned on in Settings

• Play some music on the device that has the local files to see if it shows via Connect on the other device

• Make sure the router supports the Bonjour protocol. If the router is made after 2005, it will likely have this protocol. The best way to handle this is to check the router make/model and Google it

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

Take care!

[Wa8De]

i might be a lil late but i guess checking the " local audio files " from the local files  on ur phone might help , i've got the same issue and thats what worked for me ..

[idkidksam]

you are a genius 

thank you