Spotify is extremely slow to sync offline playlists on iOS

[fr8d]

Hi,

I'm running the latest Spotify for iOS 5.0.1 version + did a complete restore on 2 iPhones 4S yesterday. I have the same problem on both my iPhones: Spotify is unbearably slow to sync offline playlists.

I have 1200 songs that I want to sync for offline listening. The mobile Spotify app is extremely slow to sync songs and usually stops after 20-25 songs. This has been happening for weeks if not months.

I have a blazing fast cable connection: 100Mb download speed + backup 8Mb download DSL. I've tried on these 2 connections + a 20Mb DSL connection at work and I have the same issue. Wifi signal is 5/5 on both iPhones and bandwidth tests are good.

Friends of mine living where I live (Strasbourg, France) don't seem to have the same problem. I can only think that it might be related to my account.

In addition, I've had to re-download all my playlists something like every 2 weeks for the last 4 or 5 month. I'm only using Spotify for offline listening on 2 devices so it has nothing to do with the 3 device limit.

I usually turn offline mode off every 5 days to make sure my offline playlists will stay on my 2 iPhones but I still have to re-download everything very frequently.

Spotify has become unbearably painful to use because of all this...

Please help!

Thank you,

Fred

[user-removed]

Spotify is slow to sync almost everywhere! Even in 15M internet Offline downloading takes years.

[araup]

I would assume so. Which explains why they are completely ignoring this thread, others and even a direct message via the contact form on their website... Very troubling, indeed.

[alex24x7 · Accepted solution]

I just read through this thread and I'm surprised at how poorly Spotify communicates with its paying customers. I mean, this is obviously a problem for so many people, so how come the people at Spotify aren't more vocal on this thread? This is BS.

I'll be quiting this service if it doesn't improve soon. Its been one year since I joined and the same problem with slow syncing exists today. There has been no improvement. I'll give it one more month and then I'm out.

[Atreidae]

I am experiencing the same issue. syncing Local files (as in, mp3s / m4a's from my old libary) so its not a downloading problem.

Now i get these might have to be transcoded into Ogg but my CPU is bored. (<30% usage) and the issue doesnt appear on the ipad

Windows 8 (happens in my Windows 7 machine too)

Laptop can be connected via Gigabit Ethernet or on 2.4+5Ghz  N wireless. no difference.

I can sync the Ipad at the same time and it flies. (11 tracks in the time it takes the iphone to do 1)

Both devices get similar wireless speeds to my LAN and to the internet

I dont remember it being this bad when I bought the service.

This is clearly an app side issue

Desktop app version 0.8.4.93.gd9f49c35

iPhone 4S 32 GB iOS 5.0.1 Jailbroken

app version0.5.3 build 0.8.2.1377.gc0029917

iPad 2 64GB iOS 5.0.1 Jailbroken

app version  0.5.2.374.g2c5b1077 build 0.8.2.1363.g47019313

Hope this helps diagnose the issue, Ive already blown my data quota once because I couldnt sync.

 
Will this make me stop using the service? No. But I will stop reccomending it.

[Bredal]

Having the same problem as everyone else and tried all the suggestions in this thread.

Will this stop me from using spotify? Definitely. If i wanted cheap or even free music from my laptop I'd listen to my om collection of my laptop or use grooveshark, youtube or something else.

The ONLY reason i bought a subscription was to be able so sync and listen to music offline. Since this isnt' working there's really no reason for me to have a subscription, and I'm sure 75% of all spotify users feels the same way.

Recommendations, not a chance. Spotify is the most overrated hyped product I've seen in a long time....

[shavermac]

Yeah, never has so much been promised and so little delivered. Nothing happening for me when I try to sync, no progress bar, nothing, don't know.

Don't know why spotify treats ipads differently anyway. Mine is not setup as a mobile (3G/4G) device and therefore operates only at home - just like my home pc. So why should it be treated any differently?  Dont worry, I know the answer. $$$$.

The irony is that with a small home pc and a mobile chip I can stream spotify anywhere, anyway. 

Other things your ipad wont do? Play Europsort player without a special subscription, play any videos needing flash, play internet radio requiring flash, etc, etc. Pretty much useless compared to a pc worth half the price.

[jwusoccer]

Same thing for me on my android phone and my ipod touch.. It took 17 hours to sync 128 songs. If spotify doesn't do anything about this within the next month, i'm definately going back to mog.. The music selection isn't as good, but there isn't a problem with syncing/downloading offline tracks. On my phone, it was so slow i thought the percentage bar was for the ENTIRE playlist, but i found out it was just one song. This is unbearably slow, i don't know how anyone puts up with it.

[P-a-t-r-i-c-k]

I just signed up for Spotify Premium and I'm in Australia. I've having the same issue as everyone else on this thread - extremely slow sync to my Android phone. When I was with Rdio, the sync was very fast. Rdio took approximately 1 min to download an album to my phone. Spolitfy - at least 5 to 10 minutes for ONE album.

I really hope they fix this issue as I use my pohone as the main way I listen to music on my commute to work.

[skennedy789]

Please fix this problem! Just in case Spotify forgot, we are PAYING customers, and we need our software to function half-decently. 

[rubenkl]

As ya'll understand, I'm another brother who has a problem with the spotify sync.

I have the excact problem as everyone else, it takes years to sync my songs. I have a stable 20MB/5MB internet connection, and everything is running smooth, except, spotify for Iphone ofcourse. 147 of 562 songs synced in 6 hours!!!!

New iphone, new sim card, fresh install of spotify. Won't work.

FIX IT

[G-0wen]

Just bumping the thread. I've found disabling iCloud sped things up a little, atleast now the number of tracks synced goes up while I'm looking. To turn off  the icloud just go setting>icloud>storage&backup>ManageStorage>Tap your device (iPad, iPhone etc)>Then turn Spotify off.

Other than that all I can think of is it's the server load. Maybe I should try downloading all my playlist on my computer and then syncing to my device...

[nerdnina]

Bump.

Having the same issue. Re-subscribed to try this amazing-looking offline mode thing. Started syncing when I got home from work so that I could go for a QUICK run before it get's dark. An hour and a half later, 4 of my 22 songs have been synced to my iPhone on normal quality.

So much for my quick run.

Why does it only sync to phones via wifi anyway? I have my phone connected via USB, wouldn't it be faster to just use that like a normal piece of technology? If it syncs to iPods via USB cable, why not iPhone? Surely it would be infinitely faster.

The playlist that I'm trying to sync to my phone has already been synced to offline mode on my PC, should it not just be transferring the song data then? That really shouldn't take infitnite amounts of time per song.

Fail 😞

[antulik]

Just renewed my subscription but after adding few albums remembered how exteremely slow the synchronisation is and after looking at this thread seems like everybody have that issue. I won't be surprised if it was done on purpose, kinda way to limit downloads, but for some reasons wasn't mentioned anywhere.

[nerdnina]

It may also just be how iOS devices deal with 3rd party stuff. I've heard of a few developers saying that they have trouble with audio. Oh well. It seems to be getting easier. I think it's just that initial chunk of stuff that you want to sync which becomes a problem. But to be honest I am really happy being able to carry the music around with me once it's there now, which I appreciate greatly 🙂

I have also noticed that if there is a song that I REALLY want to listen to which hasn't synced yet, I can always just turn offline mode off, stream that one song to the end, then turn offline mode back on and that song will now be synced for my offline mode enjoyment. It's streaming hours of songs on the drive home in online mode which is the problem for the phone bill 🙂

[firetraq]

well the ipad 2 is slow to even download apps from the store, i think the wifi antenna is to blame and spotify are clearly not reporting this, least apple comes down on them. 

I honestly dont think there is a thing they could do unless you could sync from the desktop spotify app.

[Chintaru]

I upgraded to Premium yesterday and found that it's relatively faster to sync offline playlists on your computer first, then connect your phone and sync it with your computer. I only wanted to have my favorites/starred playlist available offline on my phone and synced it on my pc (which took less than 5 hours for 523 songs). It was also syncing on my iPhone but extremely slow, but then I hooked my phone up with my pc while having Spotify open on both, and I noticed that Spotify on my pc was syncing the playlist with my iPhone. Which took about 45 minutes 🙂

HTH

[nerdnina]

I might test this if I ever get some spare time to waste on it. Thanks for the tip!

[Chintaru]

No problem 🙂 I must point out though that just now, after everything had synced, I disabled syncing through 3G and the Available Offline switch for my playlist on my phone was suddenly set to 'off'... When I switched it back to 'on', it started syncing all over again (?!) so it seems there's a bug in the app 😞 Resyncing does go slower now that I disabled syncing over 3G, about 150-200 songs an hour (estimated, it's been a little over a half an hour now and it synced nearly 100 songs).

Edit: okay so I'm syncing for the third time now, apparently accidentally selecting a higher quality for syncing and declining resyncing, it resets the synced files. Eventually the data was on my phone, but no file was synced and switching qualities didn't bring it back. So I had to completely delete the app, reinstall it and then sync it again, with default settings. Now it's syncing a song about every 5 seconds. Let's hope the files stay synced this time... I'll report a bug as soon as I get home from work.

[davep]

Just trying to move everything over to the iPhone 5  and attempting to resync all my playlists and this is excrutiatingly slow. It appears that it its not just an iPhone 5 issue but rather an issue that has been around for months.

I have been using Spotify on my iPhone 4 and have LOVED every second of it. Please get this sorted out as I dont want to have to wait weeks before I can listen to my offline playlists again! I spend a lot of time on the road and LOVE my tunes!!

[iRuckus]

So, I'm currently syncing about 11.5 GB of songs or 1,600 to my iphone 4S. And after reading all of the posts in this thread I've come to grips with the idea that this is a forever long process. I've been syncing for about 15 minutes now and it's at 21 songs!

I've got my phone sitting right near my Cisco Router. that is broadcasting over the N-band. (Which for this makes no difference, but thought I'd point out that i"m not on some ancient router) My connection is a 30+ MBps Cable connection. And it's still moving this SLOW??  Is there something that can be done??

Also, Why the poop does'nt it just countinue sycning where it left off or does it just restart ALL over??

So, best work around is just let your phone sync whle you go to sleep for the night!