Please solve Bug playing mixed playlists of Local and Spotify Files

[Patthesplat]

Can you please fix the IOS bug that has been around for 2 years and discussed in several threads on the forums including the one below.  

This bug means that when you have a playlist of mixed local tracks and spotify tracks, playback often (always?) stops after the second spotify track in the playlist.  More detailed testing info is available from several people in several of these threads, and also a way to recreate this problem.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-iOS-iPhone-iPad/Songs-occasionally-won-t-start-in-mobile/m-p/1...

For ease I have pasted in below a relevant post detailing how to recreate this bug

Still same issue - Iphone 5S upgraded to latest IOS and latest version.  I did quite a bit of testing on this back in July, and I am copying in here my findings of how to repeat this:

Create a playlist with:

Track 1 = A spotify only track

Track 2 = A local track (doesn't matter whether it's matched or not).

Track 3 = A spotify track.

It seems actually to be on the second played spotify track and after a local track that the freeze occurs.  First spotify track in the list plays fine.

If I remember correctly, someone called Victor who said he was from Spotify support was able to duplicate my test above.

NOTE:

- You must have the list switched to "available offline" for this issue to occur.

- You must play the list above without shuffle being on for this test to consistently show up the issue as it's the second spotify track after intervening local tracks that causes the issue.  If you have a long playlist with a combination of many local and spotify tracks in it, and you use shuffle, this will seem like random freezes.

- You must let the device play through the tracks skipping forward to the 3rd track you will NOT see the issue.

- Once this issue occurs, on the screen you will most likely see the track ticking forward through the seconds as if it's actually playing, but no sound will come out.  If you use your finger to slide the play slider back to the beginning, it will then start playing normally.

- On my iphone 5S, I have found that this test only works when the screen is on.  If the sceen is off (blank) all tracks will play correctly.  However, I have seen the freeze occur later on in large playlists even with the screen off, so I think it's more repeatable in a short playlist with the screen on.  Other users on the thread challenged this and said that for them having screen on or off made no difference.  I tested this again yesterday and for me it was still the same and the screen on or off affected the test, at least if you are only using 3 tracks as described above.

The next effect of all this is that if you like to have playlists with lots of spotify and local tracks in them, you will experience "random" freezing.

[Marco]

Hey there!

Please post your findings and detail in the respective bug topic so it can hopefully be fixed soon.

Thanks!

[Patthesplat]

In fact I have already repeated the same findings in that other thread.

[ktash]

My problem has only started happening recently and hasn't really been a problem for the last couple years. Now all of a sudden though, Spotify will "mute" when it gets to a local file on my mixed playlist. It still appears to be playing away, but there is no actual sound coming out and then about 3/4 way into it, it freezes. every time it's a local file. Then there are some files that have been matched on Spotify but they do the same thing (mute, then freeze), so I have had to find them on Spotify again to find a version of the song that actually plays. Getting very frustrating and making me not appreciate the fact I am paying for Premium and not receiving the great service.

[ktash]

by the way, the local files are definitely connected and they play just fine through iTunes.

[Patthesplat]

This issue is still going on with the playback freezing in mixed playlists, even after more than 2 years.

Since Spotify have been the only streaming service offering local file integration, we have had no choice but to live with this if we want to have these mixed playlists.

However, I see that as of yesterday, one of your major fruit based competitors is just about to come along with the same functionality - if it works, and the spotify functionality continues to be broken, why would we want to stay with Spotify?