Spotify adds a new offline backup feature for premium users

Spotify Premium users no longer have to suffer in silence when they are offline and forget to download songs or playlists in advance. The streaming music company says it is adding an offline backup feature that will automatically display a playlist of available songs that can be played offline, even if they were not manually downloaded.

Spotify says the feature will be available in iOS and Android apps starting this week and will work with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. The company noted that the feature could be useful for those who board a flight without an internet connection and realize they haven’t downloaded music in advance.

A Spotify representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Spotify says the playlist is generated from songs already in the user’s data cache, so it presumably wouldn’t take up any additional storage space on a mobile device. The playlist is displayed when a user is offline and can be filtered and sorted by artist, mood and genre. The offline backup playlist changes over time and can be added to the user’s library for easy access.

While the offline backup playlist didn’t yet appear in the Spotify Home feed on my iOS device, there was an option enabled by default under Storage in the Offline Listening settings. Users have the option to remove downloads or clear their cache, but this could disrupt the playlist. Spotify recommends listening to at least five songs recently for offline listening to work.

Spotify didn’t say in its announcement how many tracks Premium subscribers can expect to see in their offline backup playlist.