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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

Spotify does something somewhat similar as I've found recently. My card expired that was hooked into spotify. When I logged back in it let me know, but then I lost all of my saved content. Hundreds of albums that, as far as I can tell, I must now go through in my library and click individually to redownload. Downloads only happen when the spotify app is active and the display is not asleep. The chore seems so annoying that frankly I'm seriously considering being a pirate to never have to deal with this sort of thing again.

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> Spotify does something somewhat similar > then I lost all of my saved content

I mean, hardly the same here. Offline content is only available to subscribed users, so it makes sense that it's physically deleted from your computer, but you don't lose it: all your "favorites" are still attached to your account.

I do agree that it's a pain if you rely on offline music, but not re-downloading previously-downloaded content is more of a programming issue than a policy one, unless they specifically do it to save on egress fees.

With their generous freemium program, I don't really fault Spotify here and it's unfair to compare it to HP.

Maybe the solution is to give the user 3 days to update their credit card info, after that point process local deleting.

In my experience, Spotify regularly deletes saved content. I've had many flights where my "offline" library won't play, and after I get back on wifi Spotify starts re-downloading all my supposedly "offline" songs.

Is the reason to download hundreds of albums to have them available while traveling? I'm curious as I have only used Spotify as a streaming service.

Yes, for airplanes, but also sometimes I don't have a great data connection for streaming while driving in a car or riding transit, or I'm approaching my data limit and would rather not burn LTE. I'd like to think battery life is improved too.

Note: Spotify is probably required to do this as a condition of their licensing agreements with ASPCA, etc.

Different terms apply to streamed music vs downloaded music, so offline-caching of music would have required negotiated exemptions from the licensing organizations. They probably had to limit the period of time that a downloaded song could be accessed offline.

If you listen to these songs so much, just buy them. If you're a programmer it should be pocket change for you.

Don't feel to bad, Spotify deleted all my saved content too, which I learned while on a trip out in the woods. My card didn't decline or expire, Spotifiy either updated and/or glitched and dumped everything along with any memory of what was downloaded.

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