topic Re: msPlayed is londer than track.duration_ms in Spotify for Developers

msPlayed is londer than track.duration_ms

AlexM123 — Wed, 09 Feb 2022 04:31:21 GMT

I'm working with Spotify streaming data and noticed that for multiple songs the amount of time spent streaming the song is longer than its actual duration, which shouldn't be possible. In most cases, the two numbers are only off by a few milliseconds. I assume this is non-issue reflects loading time or something to that effect. Would that be a correct assumption?

However, for some songs, the difference is quite large, with the largest being a difference of 632,948ms (~14 minutes). I verified that song duration is accurate both in the datafiles and on Spotify itself. What would be the reason for such a large discrepancy here? Is this possible or reflects an error in the streaming history file? I can think of situations where this discrepancy makes sense (e.g., someone started the song over before it finished), but want to check on it regardless.

Anyone know? Thanks for any info someone can share here!

Re: msPlayed is londer than track.duration_ms

Jatin_21 — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 07:10:49 GMT

I am facing a similar issue, with one particular listening event having msPlayed value of almost 10 hours (for a 4 minute song).

It would be great if someone could shed some light onto why this might be happening, and how it should be interpret. Thanks a lot!

Re: msPlayed is londer than track.duration_ms

gab_landi — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 17:59:38 GMT

I am facing a similar issue. I’ve noticed that the issue is more common with my 2021 dataset, while it is less common but still present in more recent datasets. Has anyone figured it out?