When saving your favorite tracks locally for offline listening, if you notice that Spotify is not downloading songs, there’s no need to panic. Rest assured that nothing is wrong with your device. All you need is a few tweaks and some troubleshooting, and you will back up again.
Why Is Spotify Stuck at Waiting to Download and Not Downloading Songs?
There could be several reasons for Spotify songs not downloading to your PC or smart device, including:
- Unstable Internet connection
- Outdated operating system
- Obsolete Spotify version
- Exhausted local storage capacity
- The download quota limit exceeded
- And more…
How to Fix Spotify Not Downloading Songs/Playlists
Considering the above causes, this section covers some easy and quick remedies to fix the problem. These solutions are:
Solution 1: Check Your Subscription
This is pretty obvious. Spotify allows the downloading of songs only to its premium subscribers. If you see that Spotify is waiting to download, you must first check if you are a premium Spotify member. Although Spotify automatically renews its membership every month, if, for some reason, the payment fails and your subscription switches back to the free account, you may see that Spotify is not downloading songs.
To check and upgrade/renew your Spotify membership:
- On your computer, go to https://open.spotify.com/
- Sign in to your Spotify account
- Click your profile icon from the upper-right area of the web page
- Click Account from the menu
- Check your plan type under the Your plan section
- If it says Spotify Free, click Join Premium under the tile
- Follow the on-screen instructions from there to pick a premium Spotify plan to upgrade/renew
Solution 2: Check Downloading Limitations
Spotify is pretty generous about downloading limits, as you can use one account on up to 5 devices and download up to 10,000 songs on each of them. Given that, if your instance of Spotify is not downloading songs or playlists, you must check if you have exceeded the download limit for your account or on the device.
However, at the time of this writing, Spotify doesn’t have any direct method to count the number of songs you have downloaded on your smart device or PC. Therefore, as a workaround, you can go to your library on the Spotify app, go to each playlist, and see the song count from the top.
Note: This solution works only on the Spotify desktop app.
Solution 3: Check Your Internet Connection
Sometimes, your Internet connection becomes unstable. When this happens, Spotify finds it hard to fetch and download songs from its servers. The best way to check if your Internet has some issues is by testing it through any popular speed testers.
According to CNET, the best overall Internet speed tester of 2023 is Ookla, and you can use it to check the stability of your Internet for free.
Restarting the wireless router is the best solution if the speed is unstable. If the issue persists, you can talk to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and seek help.
Solution 4: Free Up Storage Space
If your device ran out of storage, Spotify songs won’t download either. To fix this, you can delete large videos, redundant photos, unnecessary apps, stale media files, etc. You may also want to remove old music tracks you don’t listen to anymore to make room for the new.
Furthermore, you can even erase all the downloaded songs from Spotify to save fresh tracks. To do so:
- Tap Settings from the top-right area of the Home screen on Spotify mobile app
- Scroll down and tap Storage
- Tap Remove all downloads
- Tap Remove on the confirmation box to erase all the songs you downloaded from Spotify for offline listening
Solution 5: Clear Spotify Cache
With frequent downloading and deleting of songs, Spotify’s cache size increases, which consumes space on your device’s storage. Clearing the Spotify cache frees up a significant amount of area on your device, allowing you to download more songs.
To clear Spotify cache:
- On the Home screen, tap the Settings icon from the top-right
- Scroll down the Settings screen and tap Storage
- Tap Clear cache
- Tap Clear cache on the confirmation box to clear the Spotify cache
Solution 6: Perform a Clean Reinstallation of the Spotify App
If your instance of Spotify encounters some issues, you can try uninstalling it altogether and installing a fresh copy from the portal’s official website, Play Store, or App Store.
Depending on your device type, the method to remove and reinstall Spotify may vary. Learn how to clean reinstall Spotify here.
Solution 7: Disable Antivirus or Firewall
Sometimes, antivirus programs show false positive alerts, which means that even though the file in question is safe to download, the antivirus considers it a threat to the PC and blocks all communications.
As for firewalls, they are meant to keep your computer protected from intruders. The default nature of a sophisticated firewall is to block all incoming and outgoing network traffic. Because of this, after installing, security administrators must manually create firewall rule exceptions to only allow the packets (data) from the sources they trust.
If your device has a strong firewall, it could prohibit Spotify from downloading tracks.
Therefore, you should try disabling any antivirus or firewall temporarily on your smartphone or PC and see if you can download the songs.
If yes, you may need to create firewall rules to trust Spotify. If this is too technical, switching to different, more relaxed security measures would be your best bet.
Best Alternative: Download Spotify Songs with a Spotify Music Converter
The bitter truth is that even with the Spotify premium membership, you can download and play songs only within the Spotify app. In other words, you don’t have the freedom to choose a media player to play the track you download from Spotify.
A few other restrictions while sticking to the Spotify Premium method include:
- You must connect your device at least once in 30 days to keep songs available for offline listening
- All downloaded songs are automatically removed from your device if you cancel your subscription or fail to renew it on time
- You can only download up to 10,000 songs per device
Now, fortunately, there is a workaround. You can use an efficient Spotify music converter to convert and download songs in your preferred format, i.e., MP3, WAV, FLAC, etc. Such an application works even when Spotify is not downloading songs using the regular method.
The program that helps you do all this and has a reputation amongst its users globally is HitPaw Video Converter. Although the name suggests that it is a video transcoder, the app is an all-in-one toolkit that comes with a plethora of built-in features like vocal remover, image resizer, etc. HitPaw Spotify Music Converter is one of them.
The process to download and convert Spotify music with HitPaw Video Converter is given below:
Step 1: Initialize the Spotify Music Converter Feature
Download and install a compatible instance of HitPaw Video Converter. Launch the program after the installation is complete.
On the main window, click Toolbox from the top and click the Spotify Music Converter tile.
Step 2: Add Spotify Songs to the Download Queue
On the next screen, when HitPaw prompts, enter your Spotify account’s username and password to sign in.
Browse your library and click to select the playlist with the tracks you want to download for offline listening. Click Download from the upper-right area and wait while HitPaw adds all the songs from the playlist to the download queue.
Step 3: Download Spotify Songs
Go to the Converting tab at the top. Optionally, from the download queue, uncheck the boxes for the songs you don’t want to download.
Use the Convert all to menu from the bottom-left to pick an output format for the tracks (e.g., MP3 or WAV). Choose an output quality from the Bitrate field. Optionally, use the Save to field to choose an output folder.
Click Convert All from the bottom-right and wait while HitPaw converts and downloads all the selected songs to your PC.
Once done, go to the output directory to access the music files and use your preferred method to transfer them to your smart device(s) as needed.
FAQs About Spotify Not Downloading Songs
What if I ran out of space but can’t delete anything as all data is important?
In that case, you must transfer those files to an external storage to make room for new songs. Apart from this, if your smart device has a memory card slot, you can set the SD card as the default save location so all your Spotify songs can go there when you download them.
I can download Spotify songs on all devices except one. What could be wrong?
If Spotify songs won’t download only on one device, you must check if you exceeded the download limit on all 5 devices. Because you cannot use the same ID on the sixth device, and if all 5 devices already have 10,000 tracks each, you may not be able to download any more songs.
Also, you should check the Wi-Fi settings of the culprit smartphone, tablet, or PC. Putting the device on Airplane mode and bringing it back online should work. In the worst-case scenario, you may need to reset all network settings, reconfigure them, and see if the issue is fixed.
For how long can I keep the songs downloaded with HitPaw Video Converter?
Unlike Spotify, where many people find playing downloaded songs in offline mode challenging (the discussion thread on the Spotify community), any track you convert and download with HitPaw stays on your device forever, i.e., until you delete it manually. Also, you have the freedom of playing these songs on your favorite media player rather than being imprisoned with the Spotify-only restriction.
Conclusion
Usually, Spotify songs won’t download unless you have a premium membership. However, if you are a paid subscriber and still can’t download your favorite tracks, the issue could be related to storage space, Internet connection, or network settings of your device. Considering these possible scenarios, the solutions and alternative methods suggested above can help you.
Related Posts: