Mysterious Disturbance Makes Song Offline, YouTube Music Can't Be Played

Illustration of Youtube Music (photo: Doc. pexels)

JAKARTA Ahead of the holiday season, when many people start preparing year-end playlists, a number of YouTube Music Premium users are irritated by the unknown cause of the disturbance.

They reported that songs that had been downloaded for offline playback suddenly couldn't be played. Instead of running normally, the songs only display a non-stop spinning loading icon. Uniquely, the streaming version of the same song can still be played without a problem.

The report was first collected by PiunikaWeb, which found more complaints in Google support forums as well as various discussions on Reddit. One of the users of the Galaxy S24 Ultra in Google's official forum admitted that they had tried various solutions, ranging from deleting caches, deleting app data, to reinstalling old versions.

However, once he tried to download any song, the live playback feature was completely damaged. Two other users confirmed experiencing similar problems, one of which even said that the only way to keep the music working was to turn off the download function altogether.

The pattern also looks the same on Reddit. Many users say songs can still be played while streaming, but fail immediately once the download process is complete. A Pixel 10 Pro owner suspects this issue is related to the latest Android update.

Other complaints came from old-generation Samsung phone owners, and there were also those who reported that downloads on connected watch devices also failed. A number of comments conclude that the problem may be related to Android, as those using iOS state that the device is still functioning normally.

Some Reddit users are trying to connect this interference with the release of the YouTube Music 2025 Recap feature, although there is no concrete evidence yet. There is also a user's story claiming the problem arose right after he updated his Premium subscription, but so far it seems just a coincidence.

The interim solutions available are certainly unsatisfactory. Users in the forum and Reddit say that deleting all downloads and then using the app only for streaming can avoid these obstacles, but obviously that's not the reason people pay for Premium services that promise offline playback.

A Reddit user managed to solve this problem by installing a longer version of YouTube Music through the APKMirror, although this method is not ideal and probably won't be chosen by most users due to security factors.

TeamYouTube finally intervened through a key discussion on Reddit. They asked affected users to submit reports through the app feedback menu so that the technical team could investigate it.

Until now there has been no official solution or application update released to fix the problem. For the time being, users who experience a spinning loading icon on offline songs seem to have to stick with streaming methods while waiting for Google to launch permanent fixes.