Mithun Blog

For users of Spotify Mobile, I’ll start by disclaiming that this software is in beta, bugs are to be expected, and the Spotify team in general is doing great work. That being said, I’m keeping an ongoing list of everything that isn’t working for me, and is driving me crazy.

Second disclaimer: I’m running a custom ROM on a rooted device, which tends to cause ancillary problems. So the mileage of other users may vary.

Ultimately the solution is to report all of these issues to the team so they can look at it, but I need some space to organize these issues in my head and reproduce them first.

All of my downloaded playlists have disappeared. We’ll call this condition zero. I want to resync them, so I’ll do a couple things.

1. First playlist: “Hendrix”, 7 tracks.
1. Desktop client says Droid 2 connected. Clicked Sync this device.
2. Click checkbox for “Hendrix” playlist. List turns green and says “Downloading”. Progress being shown in percent.
3. All 7 downloaded successfully. Shown in list of downloaded playlists. Shows green on desktop client
2. Second playlist: “The Roots - How I Got Over”, 14 tracks
   - This playlist I know for SURE has been downloaded to this device previously, then disappeared. I will attempt to sync it again.
   - If this happened on the old mobile client, it used to somehow recognize that the files were there, and the download bar would fly through to 100% as it checked them.
1. Click checkbox for playlist on desktop client
2. All tracks download relatively quickly. Don’t know if this is because they were found on the device or we have a fast connection in the office.
3. Playlist is green on device. Tracks are all green on device. Playlist is green on desktop client.
3. Third playlist: “Red Hot Chili Peppers - 2012/05/10 Washington, DC”, 21 tracks
   - This is a playlist consisting only of “local files” on the desktop client.
   - These files previously existed on the mobile device. They are now all grey and say “This track is not available” when pressed. 
1. Click checkbox on desktop client
2. “Downloading” progress bar shows up on both clients. Downloads much slower than the Roots album did. This may be because I have sync quality set to “Extreme”, maybe not a good idea considering these problems.
3. Took a while but all files downloaded. Playlist green on both desktop and mobile. All tracks green.
4. Fourth playlist: “The Beatles”, 126 tracks
   - This playlist consists solely of local files (duh), and all of them had been previously downloaded onto the mobile client. The playlist now shows up as undownloaded/unsynced, and all of its tracks are grayed out and unplayable.
   - On the computer I will try this on, only 13 of the 126 tracks are available.
1. Click checkbox to sync on desktop client.
2. The 13 tracks have downloaded and show green on mobile.
3. The playlist shows green on the mobile client.
4. The playlist shows “Pending” on the desktop client.
5. Fifth playlist: “People Under The Stairs - Highlighter”
   - I want to download this for the sake of seeing what happens when another playlist still shows up as “Pending” on the desktop client.
   - These files were all previously downloaded on the mobile client before the downloaded playlists disappeared.
1. Click checkbox in desktop client. “The Beatles” still says “Pending” at this time.
2. Download progress bar shows up. The songs show up as downloaded at a relatively fast pace, like the Roots playlist.
3. The progress bar on the mobile client stops at 44%. Half of the songs show up as green and downloaded in the playlist. Playlist shows up as green and downloaded on the mobile client.
4. Playlist still says “Pending” on the desktop client. “The Beatles” still says Pending.

That’s about it. It gets frustrating when situation #5 happens. I will now try some other things to fix it.

1. Click “Cancel Download” on mobile client for People Under The Stairs playlist (#5 above).
1. The playlist goes from “Pending” to unchecked and normal-looking on the desktop client.
2. All files on the mobile client from that playlist including the ones that were successfully downloaded now show as unsynced (not green) and the playlist is not in the list of downloaded playlists. Back to where it started.
3. Try clicking checkbox on desktop client again
4. Playlist says “Pending” on desktop client. Download bar shows up on mobile client but stays at 0%.
5. Two minutes later, download bar still at zero.
6. Click “Cancel Download”. Everything goes back to condition #2 above.
2. “The Beatles” playlist still says “Pending.” Going to uncheck that.
   - Unchecked playlist. It shows up as unsynced/undownloaded on both desktop and mobile client and all songs on the mobile client are greyed out again.
3. Try People Under The Stairs again. Same result (stuck at 0% downloaded).
4. Cancel that, check Beatles again. Stuck at 0%.

Seems that everything has become stuck. Now I’m going to kill the program and start it again.

1. Kill program, device disappears from desktop client
2. Restart program, everything is white. Nothing loads except for the title “Spotify” and the button to bring up the menu at the top.
3. Click the button to bring up the menu. The pane slides open but everything is white. Pane does slide closed again on press.

I’m going to kill the program again, then unmount and remount the SD card.

1. Kill program manually.
2. Unmount SD card. Remount SD card.
3. Restart Spotify.
   - The program comes back up, but all of the downloaded files are gone again. Back to condition zero.
4. Retrace initial steps.
5. Click “Hendrix” playlist (#1 above). Shows as “Downloaded” immediately, way faster than any of them before.
6. Click The Roots, #2 above. Comes up as “Downloaded” instantly.
7. Click Red Hot Chili Peppers, #3 above. Downloads slowly, but finishes.
8. Click “The Beatles”. Downloads, slowly. Finishes download on mobile but goes from progress bar to “Pending” on desktop client and stays that way.
9. Click People Under The Stairs. Download begins at 44% instead of 0%. Finishes completely and shows as “Downloaded” on both clients.

So that’s it? After a while, a download will freeze in progress, and when it does, the solution is to manually kill the program, unmount and remount the SD card, and redownload all of the lists? That SUCKS. But it’s a solution.

Update:

While trying to download another playlist, the download bar froze and nothing else would download. I killed the program and got the white screen. I tried to unmount and remount my SD card and the thing wouldn’t work. After trying to mess with the SD card for a while, the phone froze while the screen was off and I had to pull the battery.

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Email from Indian company

Subject: Admission Created Successfully for : MITHUN CHAKRABORTY

(seriously)

And always respond in the following fashion:

This email was sent to the wrong person. I made no such request and the person who did probably typed my email address in by accident. I can’t abide companies who do not perform email verification. I can’t log into your system because I have left the Paleolithic era and do not use Microsoft Internet Explorer. So, please remove me from your system so I don’t receive any further emails. Thank you.