Downloading

Duets.fm allows you to download songs to your device. 

By default, the app does not download any song. You can ask the app to download songs from the Songs tab - Downloads option. 

When a song has been downloaded to your device, you will see download_done on top of the song's cover image. Downloaded songs can be played, even when your device is offline. 

Setting up downloads and storage used

You can control how much storage is used on your device for downloaded songs. From Songs tab - downloaded songs - 'Maximum space for downloaded songs', choose the appropriate setting. 

The default setting for 'Maximum storage for downloaded' is to not store any song on your device. This option will use the least amount of space on your device for this app. You have to change it to another option for any song to be stored on your device. Once this storage limit is reached, the songs you played earliest will be removed from your device to make space for the new ones you play.

Download trigger - Controlling when a song is downloaded

Until release 1.5.6, you could download a song only by playing them for 10 seconds. 

Since 1.5.6, you can download the songs automatically in the background by choosing 'Download automatically' from the 'Download trigger'. The app would will tell you how many songs will be downloaded and how much storage would be used. 

Only playable songs can be downloaded with the automatic download. If a song is not playable, you need to make it playable, before it can be downloaded. 

Storing a few songs permanently

You might want to keep a few songs always stored on your device. To do this, select Song types - Downloaded songs from the Songs tab. Under each song, you will see auto_delete, which is the default behavior. You can tap on it to change to do_not_touch, which means that the song will always stay in your local storage. 

The setting under 'Maximum space for downloaded' has to match the number of songs you mark to be permanently stored on your device. If you reduce the 'Maximum space for downloaded songs' to a lower value, but have too many songs marked to not be deleted, you will see a popup asking you to unmark some songs. 

Also, if songs that cannot be deleted use up the entire storage set under 'Maximum space for downloaded', then new songs you play would not be stored on your device. 

Controlling what songs are downloaded

You can control what type of songs get downloaded using the other settings on this page. 

Download scheme lets you download only your joins, your favorites etc. 

Download media lets you download only audio, which can be useful to conserve space, as audio files take up just one fifth the space of video files. 

You can also set 'Songs from' to download only songs from a certain time period.

Downloading a set of songs by playing them

You can download a few random songs quickly, by playing a list of songs for just a few seconds until they are downloaded. 

Select a list of songs using search or any other method and play them. Tap on the icon playlist_play at the top. It will change to queue_play_next. This mode will play each song for about 30 seconds (or until downloaded, whichever is longer) and move to the next song automatically, downloading the song in that process.   

The songs you select have to be downloadable based on the 'Download scheme' setting explained above. 

Until release 1.5.6, this was the only way to download a list of songs quickly, but since then, there is automated downloading as explained in the 'Download trigger' section above.  

Download location

Until release 1.5.6, the downloaded songs were stored in the app specific area which is not visible to the user. Starting from 1.5.6, users can access the downloaded songs directly using the 'files' app on their device.

On iOS devices, all the downloaded songs are stored under duetsfm/songs on your device. The songs are organized by the year, month and date they were sung. Please do not delete these folders or songs directly as that will cause certain parts of the app to fail. If you are concerned about the storage space, please use the 'Maximum songs downloaded' option explained above. 

If you have an Android device, there is an extra option to choose where the songs are saved. Please see the article on storage for more details.  


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