To listen to Spotify offline, you have to download them. So, where does Spotify store downloaded files? Well, follow the below steps to find the Spotify download location and change Spotify download location if need be.
Spotify is one of the best music listening services out there with awesome functionality and a clean user interface. Not only you get access to millions of songs but the seamlessness between all Spotify apps is pretty refreshing and intuitive. Though most stream music from Spotify, you can download the music you like and all your playlists for offline listening. This is particularly useful if you have an unreliable internet connection or when you are traveling.
When you chose to download Spotify music, it stores the downloaded songs or music locally in your hard drive. Let me show where Spotify stores the downloaded music and songs. Once you know the location, you can either back up the files or change the download location to somewhere convenient.
Note: I’m showing this with Spotify Windows 10 Store app but the same procedure is applicable even if you are using the regular win32 application.
Find Spotify Download Location
1. First, open the start menu, search for “Spotify” and click on the result to open it.
2. After opening the Spotify application, click on the drop-down menu appearing at the top-right corner and select “Settings”.
3. The above action will take you to the Settings page. Here, scroll down and click on the “Show advanced settings” button appearing at the bottom of the page.
4. Now, scroll down and you will see the download location folder path under the “Offline songs storage” section.
If you are using Windows 10, simply copy and paste the below path to go to the Spotify offline storage folder.
C:\Users\vamsi\AppData\Local\Packages\SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic_zpdnekdrzrea0\LocalState\Spotify\Storage
Keep in mind that all the files you see in the Spotify download folder are DRM (Digital Rights Management) protected. i.e, encrypted. Only Spotify can decrypt them. Which simply means that these files are pretty useless outside Spotify.
That being said, you can still back them up and restore so that Spotify won’t have to re-download your library. This is very helpful when you want to reinstall Windows or Spotify.
Change Spotify Offline Download Location
Rather than manually backing up, you can simply change the Spotify downloads folder location. Doing so ensures that you can easily access the files and even when you reinstall Windows, the files will stay intact as long as they are not in the C drive. You can simply point Spotify towards the files and your offline library will be restored.
1. First, go to the drive or folder where you are want to store the files. Now, create a new folder and name it anything you want. In my case, I named the folder “Spotify”.
2. Open Spotify and go to the “Offline songs storage” section (steps in the first section). Once you are here, click on the “Change Location” button.
3. In the next window, find the folder you created earlier, select it and click on the “Ok” button.
4. That is it. You’ve successfully changed the Spotify download location.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, it is pretty easy to find the Spotify offline download folder and change the offline download folder.
Hope that helps. If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible. If you like this article, do check out how to make private session default in Spotify and how to stop Spotify from launching at Windows startup.
If you find the downloaded Spotify songs in the local files, you will find that they are encrypted in Ogg Vorbis files and readable in the Spotify app only, as mentioned in the article. However, if you remove DRM protection via a third-party tool like AudFree Spotify music converter, then you will be able to back up your Spotify songs or playlists when Spotify Premium expires, and keep them forever.
Hey i accidentally changed the location to my desktop, and now all the files are over my desktop. How can I reset it back to the default location
Follow the same procedure but select the original folder as the download location.
I’ve got a problem where I don’t have the “Offline Songs Storage” field, and I cant just copy and paste the link given, as I believe that I have Spotify installed on an external D: drive, and it exists in a different way than it would normally, if you could give a solution for this, it would be much appreciated