A couple months back, I was listening to some downloaded (Spotify calls it “Available offline”) tracks on the subway when I got a peculiar error. Somehow, with no connection and in the depths of the earth beneath NYC, Spotify on my iPhone decided that I had synced my playlists to more than “three devices” and completely purged all 4GB of music I had synced. All of it. Gone. Just gone. Deleted. To say I was shocked and upset would be an understatement. Some users have complained that this is a bug, but it isn’t going away. It’s something Spotify will do if you sync “your” playlists to more than three devices. Happen to own a computer, phone, and tablet? You’ve hit the limit. Don’t download the Spotify app on another device or you’re in for a world of annoyance and a day or two of resyncing.
It’s not just multiple devices that will cause your entire downloaded collection to be erased from a device. If you accidentally leave a device’s Spotify app in Offline mode (or don’t turn your Wi-Fi on) for 20 days, everything on the device will be deleted. This user lost 20GB of music. It’s happened to me, and even our Editor-in-Chief at DT. Not cool.
Those are not the only setbacks I’ve incurred. After spending a good long while creating an offline playlist on an iPad a few weeks ago, I connected the tablet back up to Wi-Fi to discover my playlist erased and overwritten with a very old, primitive version of … itself. Then there’s the time Spotify erased all of my Starred tracks, deleting the playlist of songs I told it that I liked and wanted to remember.
Bugs are bugs and I’m sure there are sound technical reasons why these and other issues have occurred. The problem is that these limitations only serve to highlight the real problem with Spotify: It makes you feel like you’re in control and still have a music collection when the reality is that you own and control absolutely nothing. Everything can be, and often is, taken away at a moment’s notice because you’ve broken some rule that you didn’t know existed. When you use Spotify, you’re operating entirely in its walls. Everything works by Spotify’s rules. You can’t even share tracks you own (your MP3s) with a friend if they aren’t approved and part of Spotify’s library. So, in that way, it controls the music that you actually do own as well.
Give us everything, leave with nothing
Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/why-i-have-to-quit-spotify/#ixzz32Tc5BtOz
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