Spotify Premium ups the ante in your listening experience by providing better-enhanced features than on the Free membership.
There’s no doubt that Spotify Premium features, like downloading content for offline listening, really step the game up for audiophiles and avid listeners alike.
Unfortunately, several users find themselves annoyed with the problems they encounter with their Spotify Premium subscriptions.
In this article, we will explore the common issues that Premium users come across, and how to resolve them.
There are Still Ad Breaks on your Premium Plan
Arguably, the number one reason that most Spotify users upgrade to the Premium tier is because of the advertisements in between songs on the Free version.
Advertisements on Spotify are the single most interruptive feature of the streaming service, especially when you’re deep in the throngs of a great playlist or album.
Sure, the ads are beneficial to Spotify and to free users as part of the revenue made from the ad breaks keeps the free tier subscription in service.
Users opt for the Premium plan to avoid ad breaks and save their data and battery life.
However, it can occur that even with your Premium subscription, you find there are still advertisements interrupting your listening experience.
This can be caused by a technical glitch or error on Spotify’s end.
When this happens, the best thing to do is to log out of your Spotify account and restart the app.
You can use the steps below to log out of your account:
- Open The Spotify App on your device.
- Tap on the ‘Settings’ icon (the gear icon) located in the top right corner of the interface.
- Scroll to the end of the list and tap on ‘Log Out’
- Now you should be logged out of the app.
- When this is complete, close the app, then restart it again.
- Select ‘Log In’ or ‘Continue With Facebook’ depending on your logins for Spotify.
This should resolve any minor technical glitches or bugs and get you back to ad-free listening.
Unfortunately, it is not so cut and dry when listening to podcasts.
Spotify uses Streaming Ad Insertions (SAI) for podcasts, which allows your podcast host to activate SAI thus, you’ll hear ads during the shows.
The Sound Quality Feature Does Not Show the ‘Very High’ Option
Spotify takes audio quality very seriously when it comes to its Premium users, and this is not to say the Free Plan users are left out in the cold.
Spotify has four levels to sound quality that are applicable to all its desktop and mobile users:
- Automatic (This option is dependent on your network connection)
- Low (This is about 24kbps)
- Normal (This is about 96 kbps)
- High (This is about 160kbps)
Sound quality applicable to all Spotify web player users:
- AAC 128kbps
However, Spotify really brings out the big guns for its Premium users by providing an additional level for its desktop, and mobile users called the ‘Very High’Option which is approximately 320 kbps. And for Premium web player users, this unlocks AAC 256kbps.
These levels are ideal while we wait for Spotify to launch Spotify Hi-Fi with lossless quality.
Numerous Premium users have lamented not being able to access these exclusive sound quality options where the option is greyed out, and the sliding bar won’t move.
We have discovered that the sliding bar isn’t actually a sliding bar, but rather you need to click on it for the option to be available.
However, if that doesn’t work, a solution that has worked for others is to perform a clean reinstallation.
We have guidelines below to help you complete a clean reinstall.
1. First, you need to start by clearing the Spotify cache using these steps:
For Android Devices:
- Open Phone Settings.
- Tap on ‘Apps’ and select ‘All Apps’
- Select ‘Spotify’
- Tap on ‘Storage’ and click on ‘Clear Cache’
For iOS Devices:
- Open the Spotify App.
- Click on the ‘Settings’ icon.
- Tap on ‘Storage’
- Select ‘Delete Cache’
2. Next, you perform the clean reinstall of the app using the steps below:
For iOS devices:
- Launch Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
- Select Spotify.
- Tap on Offload App and confirm, the app will be deleted, but the document data won’t be erased.
- Select Delete App and confirm. This will delete all remaining document data
- Switch off your device and wait for about 5 minutes.
- Turn your device back and reinstall the Spotify App.
For Android Devices:
- Launch Settings > Apps.
- Select Spotify.
- Now click on Storage and Cache.
- Tap on Clear Storage.
- Once complete, go back and tap on Uninstall.
- Open File Manager and toggle to Internal Storage\Android\Data.
- Search for com.spotify.music and delete it.
- Turn off your device and wait a few minutes.
- Switch on your device and reinstall the Spotify App.
The logic behind this is that a newly installed Spotify app won’t have the previously corrupted files, and thus you will be able to access top-tier sound quality as a premium user.
Users are unable to Download Content for Offline Playback
Another appealing reason why Spotify users upgrade to the Premium package is to be able to download their favorite songs, playlists, and podcasts to listen offline.
Being a Premium subscriber enables you to download up to 10,000 songs on 5 of your devices.
It can be very frustrating to be unable to download content or play your already downloaded content when you run out of data or are in an area with an unstable internet connection.
If you find yourself in this predicament, do not fret, we may have a trick or two for you to resolve it.
The first and most common step is to turn Spotify off completely and then restart it.
If you’re unable to download your desired content, you may find that you’re out of range from a Wi-Fi source and have not enabled Spotify to download using mobile data.
Check if you’ve enabled Spotify to download over cellular data; here’s how:
- Launch the Spotify app on your device.
- Tap on ‘Home’ and then the ‘Settings’ icon.
- Scroll to ‘Audio Quality’ and tap on it.
- Under the Download section, toggle ‘Download With Cellular’
If you are unable to play your offline content, make sure that Óffline Mode is enabled.
The assumption is that your downloaded content ought to play automatically when there’s no internet connection, but sometimes technology needs a little assistance.
Here’s how to enable Offline Mode:
- Open the Spotify app on your device (Android or iOS).
- Then tap on the ‘Home’ icon.
- After that, click on the ‘Settings’ Icon (the gear icon) located in the top right corner of the app.
- Click on ‘Playback’
- Scroll to ‘Offline Mode’ and tap on it.
Please note that any content that you have not downloaded will be grayed out and not available in Offline Mode.
If the methods above don’t solve your problem, it’s probably best to do a clean reinstall as directed in the issue above