Feedback Request: iOS Offline Issues

[Rorey]

Hello everyone! Spotify here.

We are looking into customer reports about issues with offlined playlists on iOS devices (music which is downloaded to your phone so you can play without an internet connection). Our investigation shows that some folks might have experienced some issues with this so we were hoping you could answer some questions to help us diagnose the problem.

1. Have you made a playlist available offline which you could not play without any internet connection?

2. Have you made a playlist available offline which constantly downloads when you start Spotify?

Thanks,

Team Spotify

[DrunkenJim]

I've also noticed this, it happens when you play a non spotify song ie the new AC/DC album.

the non spotify songs will start playing then it seems to attenuate to a lower volume.  At the end of the track, if the next song is a spotify song, the song will play but no volume.  If you move the progress bar a small amount it palys normally.

hope this makes sense, and really hope it can be fixed quickly as i'm currenttly having to split my playlists.

edit: the songs i have noticed it on are all itunes rips or downloads, originally AAC or apple lossless.

[sfag01]

i too have just lost my offline local songs and they wont re sync. Please fix this.

[jheeze]

I honestly don't get how this isn't a P0 ticket/bug/issue.

If a key selling point of Spotify is the ability to sync local files for offline play, you'd think this would've been tested (and re-tested and re-tested) before release. It's not even a huge edge case and shouldn't have been hard to have figured out for your test plans: play a song that isn't in the catalog that has a comma (or non-Latin alphabetical) character in it.

This is incredibly frustrating, and the fact that we keep hearing from one of the community managers/brand evangelists that he "gets to test it on the Beta!" and that "you'll all be super stoked when you get the next version, whenever that is, but I don't care because I have that version but IDK if it actually solves this problem LOL!" doesn't really help the rest of us.

I don't understand why a dev can't just come out and say "this is part of our 12/18 release"--we're all screaming about the same thing and the only response we get is from a brand evangelist saying "I talked to a dev, guys, we're working super hard on it"--sweet.

[DannyKoel]

I'm now on version 2.2.0.2464 of Spotify with an iPhone 5s and iOS 8.1.2.

The offline albumart seems to be fixed.

[MattSuda]

@jheeze @theminxyone 

There is a current bug that causes any local files with (parenthesis, commas, dashes, etc.) to be unsynced randomly (if already synced), or in some cases they will not sync when trying to sync them for the first time. The developers are currently investigating this bug. There is currently no information on when the fix will be out. I'll do my best to keep you guys updated here.

theminxyone, you said you plugged your phone in? To sync local files your phone needs to be connected to the same WiFi network as your computer. The desktop app does not sync local files over USB. I think you already know that though. It could be that the current local files bug is why you cannot sync your songs.

jheeze, while I do not work at Spotify, I do spend a lot of my time volunteering on this forum. Spotify trusts me to help their users with problems they are experiencing. I have direct communication to Spotify employees. When I say the developers are looking into this, I mean it.

[sfag01]

thanks for that reply. I'm on version 2.2.0.2464 on an iphone 4s. Alas it seems to be all my local songs that will not sync. The very same songs used to be synced just fine.  I hope it gets fixed soon. Cant surely be that had to find out what is going on. 

[AZMountainGator]

Jave been with Premium since August of 2012, I keep losing music from my offline playlists. 

Last night I got a message of "Offline session expired please log in: on both the desktop and iOS versions of Spotify. Once I relogged back in on both apps, some of my music, that were inported from iTunes has been greyed out. Is there a way to resync my music back without having to recreate the entire playlist? Which some have over 200 songs in it. The music that was greyed out on my phone seems to play fine on my computer with no problem

Desktop version 0.9.15.27 Mac OX s 10.10
Mobile version 2.2.0.2464 iPhone 6 plus iOS 8.1.2

[MattSuda]

@AZMountainGator 

There is a current bug that causes any local files with (parenthesis, commas, dashes, etc.) to not resync to the iPhone app after becoming unsynced. It is likely that when the offline session expired, the local files from iTunes won't sync again because of this bug.

The developers are currently investigating this bug. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

[papaki70]

Ok its official: spotify won't sync paylists for offline play. I have an iphone 6 128 with plenty of free space and I am waybelow the 3300 limit. I have downloaded the latest Spitify update and actually the problem got worse. Its a same. Please fix it.

[ashyfly]

Hi there - any updates on this issue?   It's been a few weeks now!    Thanks!

[AZMountainGator]

Seems if we are paying for subscriptions ... the obvious thing to do is iron out the bugs... 

[g0rg]

I'm constantly having this problem on an iPhone 6, iOS 8.1.2 (also on ipad 3 and ios 7). The problem in my case is not with playlists (I don't tend to create them) but with saved albums that have been synchronised.

For example, when trying to access the co tents of such album when offline, Spotify just tries for a connection for a very long time and shows nothing. This is intermittent - on rare occasions I can access these contents when offline.

The easiest method to replicate this for me is to start playing a non-synchronised song when still having a connection, then lose the connection and try to access my synchronised content - fails 100% of time.
Sometimes, miraculously, the synchronised content shows up in a different context. For example, if I want to open an album from My Music - nothing. But then, if I go to the Artist view, the songs would be displayed and I could play them. Or, if they are not displayed in Artist, then they MIGHT be still displayed in Songs. But most of the time they are nowhere.

Also, when I don't use the app for some time, and try to open it without having a connection, it just idles, trying to find the connection, and doesn't open at all.

In principle, all I pay the subscription for, ie to have offline content, is not working for me, and hasn't been working properly ever since I subscribed.

[papaki70]

Well, on iphone6 and ios 8 something...apart from not being able to synch songs offline, today all of a sudden I lost all saved artists and albums...
And its definitely an IOS issue.
On a samsung tablet where i also downloaded spotify there are no problems.

[Joe31]

I only have spotify on one device, my iPhone 6 plus. However I do switch wifi networks quite regularly. I get the 3 device alert almost every time I disconnect from a wifi network and then have to resync my playlists, very annoying. If this isn't fixed by the time my 3 month special is over, I will not be renewing my subscription.

[MattSuda]

@Joe31 

Sign into this page and make sure only your iPhone 6 is shown for offline devices. You will be able to remove any other devices that are shown there: https://www.spotify.com/accounts/offline-devices/

I suggest you contact support if the problem keeps happening so they can see what is going on:

https://www.spotify.com/about-us/contact/contact-spotify-support/

If you get an automated reply email, you need to reply back to it.

[JohnSmith56676]

I have problem #1, the only reason I paid for spotify premium is for the feature to make the playlists available offline.

I was planning on using it on airplane rides and to go play basketball without interruption, but when I click the button that says "available offline" it just unchecks itself or it doesn't ever sync. I even went through and manually selected each song, and for a while all the songs had a little green arrow next to them. Only until I actually got on the plane, I found out that it didn't even work. I'm on the iPhone 4s, and also it has been saying that I already have offline playlists on 3 different devices and that I need to quit and restart Spotify to resolve the issue. I only use Spotify on my Mac and the iPhone so there's no possible way that I'm using a 3rd device.

This is extremely frustrating, as I'm paying for the service that is unusable and to be honest I don't think I should have to decode the Egyptian hyrogliphics to enable offline mode. It should work like this, you click the "available offline" button then bam it actually works. But of course that wouldn't happen, I mean this is real life right? Can you fix this or tell me that I'm stupid and I'm doing something wrong, or make it like a 1 click thing instead of having all these issues for nothing. I have more than 2 GB of space free and my playlist is only like 120 songs long. I also go to my playlists, click the edit button and click the circle with the arrow. It highlights but none of the songs highlight, and when I leave that playlist screen it just shows a grey arrow. Why is it not syncing? I'm looking at this thread and this seems to have been a problem for almost 1.5 years now and you still haven't fixed it. Where is the money going, I mean you would think that something that you advertise would work. I BOUGHT PREMIUM FOR OFFLINE. If this isn't fixed by the end of my 3 month trial, you can kiss my ass goodbye.

[MattSuda]

@JohnSmith56676 

A reinstall usually fixes most problems. 

I suggest you delete the app from your phone

Then login to this page and remove your phone from your offline devices (and other devices that could be causing you to exceed 3 and get the error message) https://www.spotify.com/accounts/offline-devices/

Then reinstall the app and select your desired download quality from the app settings. Also make sure to select any other settings you may have set before you reinstall the app.

Then try to download the playlists for offline use again. 

[JohnSmith56676]

Ok I'll try that out, sorry if I was rude but this is frustrating. Thanks for replying so fast, I'll let you know if it worked out or not.

[MattSuda]

@JohnSmith56676 

No problem! I understand the frustration when things don't work like they are supposed to.

Downloading for offline use should work, it's just a matter of troubleshooting if there's a problem.

Let me know if you are still having problems, and I'll try to help.

[JohnSmith56676]

Hey sorry for the late reply but I think it was just internet connection issues, I didn't have to redownload the app but when I got to my place of residence it downloaded immediately. I was at my parents house for the week and I don't know why but it just didn't download. It worked great once I connected to my wifi, sorry for the angry post once again but everything is working great! Also, it only synced around 5 songs before I took the plane ride, but I actually think the problem was that I didn't leave my phone unlocked.