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Duplicate songs on iPhone Spotify local files

Duplicate songs on iPhone Spotify local files

Plan

Premium

Country

Currently in Colombia

 

Device

iPhone 15 Pro Max

Operating System

iOS 17.0.3

 

My Question or Issue

Hello, for some reason when I activate local files on my iphone, it adds some duplicate songs to my library. Currently there are 2,203 tracks on my iphone, but on the spotify app on the computer, there are 1,937, which is the correct number.

 

How to fix this/delete the duplicate songs on my iphone? Thanks

Reply
12 Replies

Also iPhone spotify decides to sometimes randomly add some versions of a song with no way at all to delete.... Give the option to delete songs please from Spotify..

Hey there @Laserfocus

 

Thanks for reaching out about this and welcome to the Community! 

 

Keep in mind that the local file discovery on mobile will show any audio source stored on the device (no just songs) on the Spotify app as long as the format is compatible.

 

On another note, you mentioned that you're seeing a different amount of songs in the desktop app; are you referring to just the local files or all songs in general? Additionally, we'd like to know if you're syncing the local files from the PC to your iPhone? If so, the synced local files might get duplicated if those same songs are stored in the iPhone (even if it's the same song, they come from different sources). 

 

Lastly, could you send us some screenshots of what you're seeing on your end? We'll take a closer look. You can attach them to your next response by using the Insert image option in the post editor. Make sure not to send any private info.

 

We'll be waiting for your reply. 

EniModerator
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“Music acts like a magic key, to which the most tightly closed heart opens.”– Maria von Trapp

Hello, I attached 2 files, one titled "on my phone" which shows my phone songs screenshot, and another "spotify PC" which shows the spotify PC songs.

 

The PC has 1,940 songs, which is the correct amount, and the phone has 2,001 songs.

 

To give you my steps:

 

1. I have all the songs stored on my folder on my PC. I selected the "find local files" option on my PC and imported ALL songs, playlist by playlist from my folders to the spotify app.

 

2. I deleted ALL songs on my phone and then as I added new songs to the PC, I noticed them syncing over to the phone.

 

3. At some point near the end, the phone for some reason ends up getting 61 more songs than the PC. As the songs get synced from the app to the PC, for some reason this happens and I don't know why.

 

Thank you,

Ivan

spotify pc.png
on my phone.png

Hi @Laserfocus,

 

Thanks for the reply. Could you try performing a clean reinstall on the phone and then re-add the local files as shown here? That will hopefully resolve any duplications.

 

Hope this helps.

JoanModerator
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Unfortunately my phone got stolen so I already started with a brand new phone with no music on there at all. Throughout the process of importing everything from my iCloud, I also reset the phone quite a few times already. I have already done this step before adding the music here.

Hi @Laserfocus,

 

Thanks for the extra info. 

 

We've tested this on our devices now and it does behave in a similar manner. As @Eni explained if you have the Local files function turned on, it's going to look for all files that fit the criteria on the device. That's why you see more songs on mobile than desktop. We recommend that you sort the local files in playlists so that you'll have only the songs you'd like to listen to and not stumble upon any other audio files that might also be picked up by the system. Spotify is aware that this is not the ideal scenario for the feature and we happy to pass on your feedback on this to the right team.

 

Hope this clears things up.

JoanModerator
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Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

HP laptop, iPhone 13 mini

Operating System

Windows 10, iOS 17.4.1

 

Most of my local files sync how they are supposed to from my laptop to my phone. However, a select few songs are not. I have two main playlists: the default "Local Files" and one called "Shared" where I put the songs from my computer to it so I can download them on my phone. With these un-synced songs, the Spotify app on my phone seems to make "copies" when I download the "Shared" playlist. I am originally supposed to sync 106 songs, however, my phone is making copies so that the "Local Files" has 112 songs. In my "Shared" playlist, the songs that are copied are the original ones from my computer, in which case they are greyed out on my phone and cannot be played. 

I have tried reinstalling Spotify on both my computer and phone, and even redownloading the files. Another thing: they used to be fine and synced well until I added another song/file which seemed to have messed up these files. I have looked at the properties and everything is the same. I don't know what has happened to them.

@bugsandblaze I've visited this thread prior for my duplicating local files problem, now checking it for the second time to make sure I hadn't missed anything, and seeing there's another person who's having trouble I wanted to leave a comment. Yours and the initial poster's problem are identical to mine, and I have put multiple hours into trying to fix this issue. I've looked at all the threads from Spotify and anywhere else about people who have this issue, tried every combination of restarting and redownloading and resorting files on both my PC and phone, and I've come to the conclusion that at a certain point there's genuinely nothing you can do about it. Not to say that this is the case for all local file issues, but for this specific one (certain local files duplicating, the files from your computer greyed out on your phone while other duplicate files exist fine) I'm almost certain it is completely impossible to fix, unless Spotify fixes it in an update. The problem is that every time you resync your files between devices, the phone will create a *different* version of those songs in its files that isn't lined up with the ones on the PC. These songs only exist on the phone and are greyed out on the computer (and vice versa, the original files from the computer are greyed out on the phone because they don't actually get downloaded), effectively duplicating those files in your library should you want to listen to them on both devices. Why this happens, and only happens to certain songs, I have no clue; some of the duplicating songs had metadata which at some point I changed or added to make it accurate, and I think that may have messed some process up somewhere, but some songs I hadn't touched whatsoever. Maybe try completely deleting the local files off your computer, deleting the files in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player to make sure any trace of them is gone, and then restart Windows Media Player (any necessary files in that path will be automatically generated back when it starts again) before redownloading and resyncing your local files, so you know there's no file/path issues. It helped me for one song, but otherwise I've had no success.

 

I know it's a complex exchange of information between phone and PC even when both go through Spotify, and it can be tricky if you have a Windows PC with an iPhone as many of us do, since a Mac would probably have better compatibility with the phone for this stuff. But regardless, I think it's insane that a service as big as Spotify hasn't fixed this issue, and it's far from the only problem that syncing music with local files has; the function as a whole is very tedious and doesn't have much care put into it. It's very clear local files are a small afterthought to them because it doesn't benefit them financially but for I and many others they're a really great way to have normally inaccessible music next to all the stuff you've saved from the app. Not to be all righteous about it but it's so frustrating not to have a fix for this and it's genuinely making me consider using another streaming service because this one doesn't seem to care much about its listener base

I have a Mac and have the same problem you & other posters have been describing so it's not a hardware issue @Kaz_M

Local files play on my desktop but not on my mobile app.. how can I get it to work so that I can listen to my files on my phone?

This also happened to me. I put a song in the local file on my PC, and it could be found by Spotify. I added this song to one of my playlists, then opened the app on my iPhone. But after it synced, the song became two files on my iPhone: one with the cover pic and the other without it. I really hope you can fix this 😞

Hey folks,

 

Thanks for all the feedback.

 

I'd recommend using iTunes and following Apple's guide on how to sync over your Music Library - just note that you may need to change the source folder for your local files in the desktop app's settings first, in case it's empty.

 

There are several other ways for uploading Local files on your iOS device mentioned in the articles below, so feel free to check them out as well:

Cheers 🤘

YordanModerator
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