Why do only a few songs download from Google Music to my Phone?

[AC Question]

Only a few songs download from Google Music to my Phone

Just made the switch from iPhone to Samsung S6 Edge. Therefore I decided to leave iTunes behind and switch to Google Music. I transferred all my music to Google Music and works great from my laptop. The problem is when I try to listen to my music on Google Music from my phone. It only allows me to listen to all of it if I am on wifi. But if I enable the "downloaded only" option only a few of them downloaded. The other ones are grayed out and can't play them unless I am connected to wifi. This is making me crazy. I have already spent several days trying to make this work!
- Yes! I am logged in with the same google account on my laptop and phone.
- I refreshed my play list several times
- If I play songs in my laptop sometimes they show up as downloaded on my phone but they go away too.

Any ideas please??!!

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Only a few songs download from Google Music to my Phone

Welcome to Android Central! Are you specifically selecting songs from your Google Play Music library to be downloaded to the phone? The ones you're seeing are probably cached temporarily on the phone because you listened to them before by streaming from the cloud. You can find that setting by opening Google Play Music, swiping in from the left, tapping Settings, under "Cache during playback."

In order to specifically download music to your phone for offline play, tap the 3 vertical dot menu button associated with the album in question and tap Download. This will keep that music locally stored on your phone until you decide to remove it from the phone (but it will remain in your cloud library). Keep in mind that downloading music directly to the phone via the Play Music app only makes it available for offline play by the Play Music app, not any other music app. If you want other apps to be able to play the songs, you have to download the music from the Google Play Music website on your computer, then copy those mp3 files to the phone via USB.