Offline playback issues when abroad

[amd]

Hi everyone.

I recently visited Spain and sync'd lots of music to my iPhone to play offline over there, to avoid data roaming charges. Much to my disappointment, I could not play a lot of the music without going online and I would like to know if I did something wrong or if the problem is with the spotify app. Below is what happened.

Any music in playlists I had sync'd played offline without issues as expected. However, any music I sync'd under 'your music' would not playback offline.

For example, I searched under albums in 'your music' for an artist called Tycho. I had sync'd a full album called Dive. The album showed up with the little green arrow in a circle indicating it was available offline. When I tapped on the album I expected to see a list of the songs on the album displayed. Instead all I got were the three white animated dots that normally appear for a few secs on spotify startup. However, they stayed there indefinitely and I was unable to play the Dive album.

I tried this with many other albums I had sync'd to 'your music' and the results were the same. I could not play any of them. However, any music I sync'd in playlists played back just fine. Some of the albums I could not playback under 'your music' are duplicated in some of my playlists. Again, the sync'd songs in the playlists played fine whereas the same sync'd songs under 'your music' would not play.

I then put spotify in online mode and tried navigating to the albums that would not play under 'your music'. Now when I tapped on any of the albums, a list of the songs on those albums was displayed as expected.

I then switched back to offline mode and I was able to play the songs on the last album I had navigated to whilst in online mode. However, if I tried playing any of the other sync'd albums under 'your music', I had the same problem as before. The three white dots would appear and no list of songs was displayed for any album I selected.

I was extremely annoyed at this because each time I wanted to play an album sync'd under 'your music', I had to go online momentarily so spotify could 'find' the songs on the album, then I could go offline and play them. However, each time I did this, spotify used small amounts of very expensive roaming data.

Does anyone know why this happened? Does anyone know why albums sync'd in my playlists played fine offline and the same albums sync'd under 'your music' did not?

Thanks in advance.

[smidny]

Hey!

I'm always pleased to hear of folk making use of Offline Mode and I'm sorry it didn't quite work out for you on your recent visit to Spain. (Did you have a nice time!?)

I have personally experienced similar problems. I believe part of the issue is that 'Your Music' is a reasonably new feature and it might be that a few bugs still need to be ironed out. Feedback like yours can help us make the fab new feature better for everyone!

I'm hoping you're up for helping further by testing some stuff out with me. Do you think you could reinstall the Spotify app and then try syncing an album for offline use now that you're back at home and then entering Offline Mode to see if the issue still occurs over here?

Also, what kind of iPhone are you using and have you got the most recent firmware update?

Thanks again for helping to make Spotify the best app it can be. I don't really believe that anything can be flawless, but I know that is what we aim for here at Spotify. We get closer each day to providing the perfect listening experience with the most seemless and easy way to access it ever thanks to all our lovely customers.

I'll look out for your reply. 😉

[amd]

Hello and thanks for your reply.

I reinstalled as you suggested and so far the problem has not replicated itself, so I will keep an eye on it.

I have an iphone 5 and I believe the firmware is up to do date.

[smidny]

Hey dude!

Thanks for getting back to me.

I had a feeling that might sort out the issue. Shame we couldn't get it sorted for whilst you were away though. Genuinely sorry about that.

I had the same issue on my 5s last week which was fixed by a reinstall. I'll look out for other Spotifyers experiencing similar issues and I'll log it as an issue if it appears to affect more than just us two!

Thanks again for your feedback. I'll be ready and waiting to help you if the issue happens again so be sure to let me know how you get on going forward.

All the very best. 🙂

[amd]

Hello again.

Thanks for your help. I know it's not your fault, but it's a shame that reinstallation is required for these types of problems. It just means that the laborious task of resynching everything has to be done again.

[amd]

Hello all.

Just an update to this. The exact same thing has happned all over again. Looks like it was a waste of time doing the re-install 😞

It seems to be a bug. When spotify is offline it cannot find the album contents of sync'd albums until it is temporarily put online.

[Christoffer]

Similar issue here as well.