How to unsync a playlist? (Spotify is not giving back my data space)

[Vito_Basile]

Hi!
I have no more space dat on my iPhone because Spotify downloaded playlists are using some space, so what should i do? I already deleted some playlists on Spotify but is not giving me the space available again, i went to settings and even though i'm getting rid of some playlists and songs, The app is not giving me back the space, I refuse to clear all the data from spotify and lose all my synced playlists, is there away to get back my space data? I really need some space for other apps, i would love to know how to get my space data again, seems like i can't unsync a playlist, can somebody help me please? Thanks in advance...

[martin_]

IOS 7.1

Spotify 1.0.0.3251

12,7 GB

5/65  at 320 kbit/s

12,7 GB

I waited for about 10 minutes before posting. A me too on it being nice if we got an update on the progress of  this bugfix? or the adding of this feature.

Regards,

Martin

[amatt]

a. Your iOS device and iOS: iPhone 5, iOS 7.1.1

b. Your Spotify app version: 1.1.0.2549

c. How much space is used before unsycning: 662 MB

d. How many playlists/ tracks you unsynced: All Albums (3 albums total, under "Your Music")

e. Please confirm how much space is still being used: 662 MB (an hour later)

I've waited for over an hour, have tried killing and restarting the app, and have tried syncing a different album to "refresh" this data.  In all cases, the total space just continues to increase.  If no way is added to automatically clear unsynced tracks, or to easily do this manually, I will have to cancel my premium subscription.

Thanks,

Matt

[mekucukcolak]

Hi there,

I have the same problem here. I think its also caused by using different quality options when saving offline.

ome space is freed after unsyncing but there was still 1,5 GB used by spotify even though I unsynced everything and waited.

I had to reinstall the app to free my space up. Just like thousands of spotify users I find this surprisingly annoying. I hope it gets fixed asap and I wouldn't have to cancel my subscription when my free trial ends.

Thanks.

iphone 5

ios 7.1.1

spotify 1.1.0 (premium, obviously)

[martin_]

mekucukcolak wrote:
I have the same problem here. I think its also caused by using different quality options when saving offline.

 Does unsyncing work with some quality options for you? Interesting, which ones? Of course I need it to work with 320 kbit/s 😉

ome space is freed after unsyncing but there was still 1,5 GB used by spotify

Does that mean that some of your offline cache is deleted when making a playlist "not available offline"?  That is nearly annoying (Congrats though:) Is it consistent, how long did it take, and how much space was freed up?

Regards

Martin

[martin_]

With the release of Spotify 1.2.0 for iOS offline cache is deleted when unsyncing. Not all of it, though. The good things are that they are working on it and that the cache that is removed is removed instantaneously, not "after a while". This is good because offline mode will be fully usable when it is fixed properly.

I sent in a detailed report. 

I hope we won't have to wait to much longer.

Martin

[adownes]

iTouch4
6.1.6
1.2GB
12/150
1.2GB

Ipad2
7.1.1
1.8GB
8/90
1.8GB

I took out a subscription to Deezer recently because premium is currently only £5 pm. They have a cache reset button. Is this under development yet?

[jeremygoh]

@martin_ @adownes Possible to have the detailed report? I re-escalated this to the Spotify team to feedback on this.

[martin_]

@jeremygoh: I sent the below message to Support. Daniel Fretwell confirmed that he passed it on and promised to get back to me as soon as he heaerd something... It has taken kind of a long time, though.

@adownes: Are you satisfied with Deezer? I am getting a bit impatient. Suppose I should sign up for a trial account...

Subject: Re: I am having trouble with Offline mode - I am unable to sync songs [ ref:_00DD0pxIW._500D0ciPFP:ref ]

Hello Daniel,

I tested unsyncing after the release of Spotify 1.2.0 with results below. Some space is freed up but not all. It also seems as if some cache for repeatedly played "online" songs are removed when unsyncing.

Device : iphone 4 S
iOS: 7.1.1
Spotify: 1.2.0.3344

Offline playlists made "unavailble offline" 29 playlists [1]
122+56+67+118+41+36+40+36+37+61+39+49+45+38+43+42+44+51+31+37+43+47+114+48+42+105+37+56+40 = 1565 minutes
320 Kbits/s = 40Kb per second = 2400 Kb per minute.
1565 * 2400 = 3756000 Kb total.
3756000 / 1024 = 3667.97 MB
3667.97 / 1024 = 3.58 GB space occupied on the iPhone.

Before "unsyncing" space occupied by Spotify: 21.2 GB
after: 19.7 GB

1.5 GB was removed.

About 2 GB was not freed up that should have been according to above calculations. An improvement but all cache of offline playlists is still not deleted when unsynced.

When I made these 29 lists available offline again Spotify disk usage as reported by iOS only went up to 20.6 GB ie 0.6 GB less than when I began the process. Only 0.9 GB for 26 hours of music at 2.34 MB a minute which should add up to 3.56 GB. This suggests, as I guessed at earlier, that the decrease in disk usage reported by Meredith (Spotify Staff in meassage 7 in thread [1]) was not due to or at least not only due to "unsyncing" offline tracks but also as a "side effect" of removed cache for repeatedly played "online" songs.

Whe I repeated the process of unsyncing disk usage went down from 20.6 GB to 19.9 GB, and when making lists available offline again some lists were made available immediately:
Lists 2 through 9 made available immediately.
Lists 22 through 29 made available immediately.

With all the lists made available offline again disk usage for Spotify was back up to 20.6 GB, a 0.7 GB increase. It was not back to 21.2 GB, the disk usage before I began. Yet another hint that cache that was removed the first time around was not only "offline" cache. Also, clearly all offline cache is not removed when unsyncing.

[1] The Lists used:
nr 1:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:26h0CCK10SYd6RCLtZDcnB
nr 2:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:0B7xqJi9DKDeWI2QtYqGI4
nr 3:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:6pjzBmR0RhSHUjkpfst6KE
nr 4:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:5LV46jGYIe1PlUpLKwnv8o
nr 5:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:0hD8xtgMtF7QymWzYRonzi
nr 6:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:4XiawZtfTgRSxl0kadboZD
nr 7:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:0T0H2elvGyPbCjRAOhTgvT
nr 8:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:1TOPDlTfcjximnDo4LPZb6
nr 9:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:758AIsBXfhTjXgZPuLjLTC
nr 10:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:3EmXkf9ZtP6pvM2JKMDocv
nr 11:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:6mLy552TuPJnOCTxbFY40m
nr 12:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:4ZtqezTY6Ph2BnEdf4JAnE
nr 13:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:56OQICGtp7sfGlcVamZuxM
nr 14:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:4dJ11DP5Of38iC8aLHSGwC
nr 15:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:2ZLj07eybKnM1dU5Puz8qT
nr 16:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:27rTltL4arVNtjv5ebVoFh
nr 17:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:4xTb3Rnfa5MGo5Iorymt81
nr 18:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:4GL75621wFw8FoBiTqdx2u
nr 19:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:2smrMxHrcFX73Aoq66NMy4
nr 20:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:6x08yPPlwaQR8IAg5u6D5V
nr 21:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:65wqhODkELWS7wZ3pPGD6V
nr 22:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:7dvma9MUlP9Rf9p6bBjIM1
nr 23:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:6d2A865FUpnZbJyOEdXzpV
nr 24:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:0U7CrcxlkTpKjDCF8iwqV9
nr 25:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:6dSHvS6fha2vf3xVPyrWew
nr 26:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:2uLWmzKEQnQX1ibdCGb6bf
nr 27:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:1svSvfnKdGDMjc58P72nB3
nr 28:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:7Ko2SCfVLSVh8yPeWTS4PG
nr 29:spotify:user:martin.spot:playlist:5hESmvgSi1bxnZSQLSrRp3

[2] http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-iOS-iPhone-iPad-iPod-Touch/How-to-unsync-a-playlist-Spotify-is-...

Regards,
Martin

From: support@spotify.com
Subject: Re: I am having trouble with Offline mode - I am unable to sync songs [ ref:_00DD0pxIW._500D0ciPFP:ref ]
Date: 6 juni 2014 11.40.43 CEST

Hey David,

Thanks for this report.

I'll escalate this up to our guys who are looking at this in depth.

As soon as I have any updates I'll get back in touch!

Thanks,

Daniel Fretwell
Senior Service Advisor
Follow our customer service team @spotifycares for all things Spotify

[adownes]

Deezer is as good but i am used to Spotify - they just need to sort out this memory usage problem. I do not want to resync a couple of thousand offline tracks, including local files, every time i want to clear some memory from my device. Relying on IOS to eat into the cache when needed is just too unreliable. I had a problem that two local tracks were corrupted and i could not replace them with the same tracks from the Spotify library until i uninstalled Spotify to clear the cache and lost all my offline files in the process. It seems all of Spotify competitors have this ability to reset the cache manually and, just as importantly, limit/set the size of the cache for streaming files. Let's hope Daniel responds soon.

[jeremygoh]

I have escalated this to the community on my end. Hopefully there will be something that comes back.

[martin_]

@jeremygoh: Thanks for doing that! All efforts to bring this issue to attention seem to be needed.

@adownes: I checked out Deezer and it seems  as if a largish part of their catalog is only available at 128 kbit /s.   This exentends my patience with Spotify a bit. For me automatic clearing of cache whe unsyncing is a lot more important than manual removal of cache since I almost exclusively listen in offline mode on my phone. But right after they fix the unsync-bug I agree that they should add a remove button, and the ablitiy to limit cache size. 

[Keepitonwaxx]

Seriously Spotify??!!

Users are complaining since your iOS App exists and you still didn't manage to fix this issue? Wake up damnit! Users in this thread are already discussing which other music service they should use and you just don't care. How about a comment from you guys from time to time? Just to let people know that you're on it.
Os it really that hard to simply make the song disappear from the iPhone memory when unsyncing it? Or to add a "Delete Song" button or something? Right now, when I want to delete the songs from my iPhone I have to delete and reinstall spotify. But since this deletes ALL the songs I have to start from scratch and sync all my music again. Is this the best spotify can do?
It'd be nice if someone from spotify could answer this comment.
Regards
Johann

[user-removed]

Hey everybody,

Is this issue still persisting? My device definitely registers the memory clearing up almost immediately after unmarking playlists for Offline access, so I'm assuming the update has resolved the issue for me at least.

[adownes]

Hi Victor - what device are you using?

[martin_]

@vyxl: Yeah, it is still not working. At least it doesn't work on my device. iPhone 4s, iOS 7.1.2, Spotify 1.4.1. Somewhat randomly  some space is freed up a long while after flipping "Available offline", but not consistently. And this waiting for an unspecified amount of time for cache to be cleared is not reliable. Also, it doesn't allow for rotation of playlists on the phone. 

Congratulations on having a phone on which it works! Can you post your details? 

It would be nice if they let us know if they consider the bug resolved, or can not reproduce it (with a couple of thousand views of this thread...) or what is happening. There has been no mention of the bug being fixed in the release notes since 1.2.0.

Regards,

Martin

[user-removed]

Yea, I am on iPhone 5s, iOS 7.1.2, Spotify 1.4.1. By the way, what do you mean by not allowing for rotation of playlists on the phone?

[martin_]

---

@vyxl wrote:
Yea, I am on iPhone 5s, iOS 7.1.2, Spotify 1.4.1. By the way, what do you mean by not allowing for rotation of playlists on the phone?

---

Ok, 5s instead of 4s. Apart from being a better phone I don't see how that would make a difference as I run iOS 7.1.2 as well. Of course, Spotify insists on asking for phone model and not just OS version so I guess it could be a factor somehow....

By rotation I mean switching sets of playlists that I make available offline since there i not enough space to have all lists offline. We can't be expected to wait an unspecified amount of time in order to make a different portion of our collection available for offline playback. That would require a bit much foresight ...

Regards,

Martin

[user-removed]

So Martin, what happens to your phone's memory when you try to unsync one playlist then sync a different one?

[martin_]

@vyxl: There is a difference with the last 1.4.1 release. Thanks for making me check it out again! I made all songs om my iPhone not "available offline" 22.3 GB. When syncing a different  playlist, usage for Spotify went down to 4,5 GB. This makes the situation manageable for me, but I expect usage to be lower than that as I pratically only listen in offline mode.

Regards,
Martin

[martin_]

@vyxl:

An update on the cachecleaning. It is not consistent. I just deleted ten albums at 320 kbit/s. and synced a different playlist to no avail. The usage just rises.

So, sadly the situation is not even partly resolved.

And Spotify is silent. Utterly incomprehensible!

Regards,

Martin