Can't play downloaded music when offline

Update: 

After further testing, it appears my initial solution of setting the battery to 'Unrestricted' is only a partial fix that reveals a deeper architectural behavior.

I discovered that even with the 'Unrestricted' setting enabled, not all of my downloaded music was immediately playable offline. I had briefly connected to Wi-Fi with the Deezer app open and then disconnected completely to test. I found that only a limited selection of my offline tracks would actually play. Specifically, the songs that worked were from playlists I had recently accessed while online. Songs in other downloaded playlists that I had not interacted with during that brief connection period still failed to play, giving a 'content not available' error.

This leads me to a more refined hypothesis. Instead of a single validation for the entire session, it is more likely that each downloaded track, or perhaps each album, possesses its own individual DRM license with its own expiration timer. When the application has an internet connection, a background process is initiated to renew these individual licenses. This renewal does not happen all at once; there appears to be a specific rate at which this process can validate the songs, suggesting it works through a queue.

Therefore, my core point is that this license renewal process is prioritized. The app likely addresses the tracks with the oldest or most-expired licenses first. My short time connected to Wi-Fi was only sufficient for the background process to renew the licenses for a small number of these high-priority tracks, which explains why only a fraction of my offline library became playable again. Another thing is that it seems to go in order of the playlist itself; a song in index i will be prioritized before a song in index i + 1. I’m not sure yet about validation across playlists (what order the process will occur for validation for playlists NOT accessed). 

​@aforbesj's hypothesis very closely matches my experience. Most of the time, downloaded music works fine. However, there are times when the app forces you to briefly connect, i.e. turn off "offline mode", in order to continue playing downloaded songs. Otherwise, nothing is playable. IMO, this is a MAJOR user experience (UX for any corporate managers looking for an excuse to get some engineers on this) problem because from the end users perspective there is no indication that the downloaded music is unavailable. It would be far better to clearly communicate to the user when a DRM "check-in" is necessary, as then many of these situations could be avoided proactively. It would also be great to have a "force DRM check-in" button available, that way users could manually refresh the countdown on their downloaded music before travelling. In its current state, I'm about ready to switch platforms because this issue prevents me from accessing the music I PAY MONTHLY ACCESS FOR. I appreciate that these DRM refreshes are likely legally necessary, and that's fine. But to perform them in such a way that obfuscates the state of downloaded music from the user and removes any and all autonomy the user has over their downloaded music is a cut and dry case of terrible app design. Please see my above suggestions for how the UX could be improved. Hopefully someone at Deezer decides to actually do something about this MAJOR UX ISSUE.

Thanks for your feedback ​@cjcn5538 ​@aforbesj, I have forwarded it to the corresponding team who’s investigating and trying to find a fix.
Thanks for your patience

Hi, I'm here just to add another testimoney of this bug. I'm using a Xiaomi mi 10 5g with app in version 9.0.0.4.

I noticed I can't play user created playlists I have downloaded (ones I've created or other users playlists I folllow), but I can play playlists made by Deezer or Albums.

This behavior happens when I enforce the "offline mode" as when I don't activate it, playlists try to load in an infinite loop if I have no connection.

I don't understand how this kind of behavior can happen with basic features we want as premium users. Please focus on making the app usable before making UI personnalisation updates.

This happens on pretty much every music streaming app, not just Deezer. If you open Deezer while you still have Wi-Fi and switch to offline mode before boarding, it usually fixes the problem. The app just needs to verify your subscription before it lets you play your downloads.

If it still doesn’t work, you could try a Deezer downloader like ViWizard to save all 1,600 tracks directly to your device, or use a music transfer tool to move everything to another platform.

I never had this problem on Spotify. When offline, I directly had access to my music as normal, but the non-downloaded titles were grey.

Your solution works indeed, but If you have to plan during your day when you're gonna have no network access, it's super annoying and counter-intuitive.

And thank you for your advice, but I’m playing Deezer to listen to music, if I have to download other apps to fix their broken feature, I’m just gonna change of platform. 

Just posting to add yet another voice. I've tried all the proposed fixes and settings from this entire thread and the problem persists. It's an Honor phone with Android 15.

I specifically got Deezer Premium so that I can play music offline when I'm in the mountains, where I have no cell phone reception. I cannot connect daily just so that the downloaded music works when I'm up there, because that would literally require hiking several hours. This basically renders the Premium subscription useless for me. 

What's puzzling is that it used to work flawlessly. I had the app on several Android phones before this one, and it was fine for years. The problem only started for me this summer, with my new Android phone. 

My son had the same problem on his Google Pixel 8 (after switch to flight mode, no downloaded music could be played any more, but it worked when online), and the following workaround led to success, although I cannot say which action were the relevant ones:

1. Log out in the deezer app
2. Log into the deezer app again (immediately after logout). After that, he observed some “change how the interface looked” maybe there was a version update blocked by being logged in, or some old configuration setting from the profile updated? We did not compare version numbers before and after, but he has had the phone for only about two months.
3. Switch the app to offline mode
4. Turn on flight mode on the phone

I hope this helps others faced with non-playing downsloads in flight mode, or gives Deezer a new clue to tackle the root problem.