Discover Weekly and Release Radar keeps recycling the same songs

[user-removed]

Plan

Premium

Country

Spain

Device

All

Operating System

All

My Question or Issue

Discover Weekly was a great service at first. I've found some really good music through it that I probably wouldn't otherwise. Then, a few months ago, I started getting the same tracks again. The first week with any duplicates actually had a song from the week before on it. How does that make any sense? How does that help me find new music? Isn't the purpose of "Discover Weekly" to discover things?

Ever since then, every week's been about half duplicates (that I can remember, anyway, there might be more) of songs that've been on there since I started keeping up with it, back in August. I'm asking about this now, because this week, there were 5-10 songs that had already been on Discover Weekly twice, making this the third time I "discovered" them.

These aren't songs that I added to any playlists, or saved, or listened to more from the artist, or gave any indication that I liked. I try to play every (new) song on Discover through once to give it a chance. I do that for all of them, and that's the only explanation I can think of. I've heard that skipping a song before 30 seconds marks it disliked, and it won't come up again, but I skipped some of those tracks already, and now they're back a third time.

This week, I only count less than 10 tracks that I don't remember from Discover already. I'd like it if there was a way to get Discover to stop recommending always the same tracks (we've all had times the algorithm missed the mark), but weeding out duplicates seems like a no-brainer that's critical to the whole purpose of Discover Weekly.

[Novy]

Hi @user-removed,

Thank you for reporting this to the Community 🙂

If you're listening to more new music on a daily basis your personalized playlists will update more regularly. Now, take into account that if most of the music you listen to comes from playlists like Discover weekly, Daily Mix, Daily Drive etc. the new suggested content won't update as often.

In any case, please try performing a clean reinstall of the app. This one is more thorough than a regular one, and can be helpful to get rid of any cache that might be causing the repeated suggestions. 

Since some of these playlists update weekly, please give them a check in the coming weeks and let us know how it goes. 

Lastly, in this article you can find info about disliking songs from your personalized playlists. 

Keep us posted!

[user-removed]

Hi Novi,

I did uninstall Spotify from all my devices, following the guides you sent me, not much changed so far, I hope next week, when discovers and new releases playlists will be generated, it will be better.

I'll keep you updated on this 3d.

[user-removed]

This week I had to hide 14 songs over 30, not really an improvement 😞

[user-removed]

After a couple of more weeks, everything is back as it was. I got more and more tracks I already listened many times in the past and even tracks that are in my playlist! This week I got 8 ok tracks over 30.

I believe the algorithm Spotify is using for make you discover new tracks is not efficient as it should.

[Eni]

Hey @user-removed, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

Just to confirm, are you listening to most of your music through personalized playlists such as Discover weekly, Daily Mix, etc.? If so, keep in mind that repetitions are to be expected.

If you aren't, we suggest that you create a new account and try using that to check if the same happens. If not, you can cancel your subscription on the old account and then copy your music and playlist to the new one that is working. Here are the steps to transfer your music to the working account.

Keep us posted.

[user-removed]

Hi Eni, thanks for your answer.

I could understand that one or two repetitive tracks, in my case, more than 2/3 of a playlist that should make me discovering new music are tracks that I already know. This is going on for months now, I really hope isn't somethings normal for Spotify, because even if I create a new account, soon or later it will happen again.

Are you suggesting to create another account with a different email address, then change the email to the original one, once the other account have been deactivated? I'd like to keep using my main email for my Spotify account.

Thank you.

[CarlosE]

Hi @user-removed,

Thanks for keeping in touch.

As mentioned, it's expected to have repeated songs in your discovery playlists depending on your listening habits, so we can't tell for sure that it will or won't happen in a new account.

That's right - we suggested to create a new account using a different email to test if this behavior is also present in the new account. In case it isn't and you decide to keep the new account, you need to close the other one so you can then register that email address in your new account.

Keep in mind that these processes take time. In the new account, you won't have some Made for You playlists like Discover Weekly and Release Radar for a couple of weeks, until the app starts to getting to know your taste again, as it's a new account without listening history/habits. Regarding the email, it would be released 30 days after the deletion of the account, so it won't be available to register in the new account until then.

Remember that there are other cool ways to discover new music, like the Radio feature, which you can start from an artist, album, song or playlist of your choice and you'll receive similar content. Find more info here.

Hope this info is useful. If you have any questions, the Community is here for you.

[Digamma]

That's a load of baloney, and generally bad advice. No service should ever demand that their user creates a new account (unpaid account, probably with ads too) to have them check if the algorithm isn't just jank (spoiler, it is). I already scrobble songs on last.fm, and can tell you that most of my songs re-appear on a half-year basis. I have songs that have appeared over 10 times in different discover weekly lists.

Actually have your programmers fix this software quirk (instead of just pretending like they did, as done here: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Implemented-Ideas/Discover-Weekly-Prevent-Duplicates-in-Discover-We...), and make them do a single list comparison before pushing the discover weekly to your users. Why is this so hard to do? I'm serious, do you not store your user listening history at all?

Have your algorithm create a discover weekly list A, then check that list against the user listening history B, and just replace any songs in list A that also exist in list B 

Tell me why your software development team can't implement something as rudimentary as a list comprehension and comparison check? It's three lines of code for crying out loud, five if you also check replacement songs against B.       

[user-removed]

Thank you @Digamma, I couldn't express myself better.

I like Spotify a lot but this is a big downside for me and I'm considering downgrading plan and/or moving out from this, after so many years of Spotify family account.

I guess everything comes to an end.

[user-removed]

Update: After doing a clean install as @Novy suggested, discover weekly got better for a week or two, so I had to delete Spotify from my phone all the times. I didn't wanted to install on another device because of that. Now I keep getting always the same songs even after reinstall the app and unfollow Discover Weekly for one or two weeks.

I'm so sick of this this that I decided to cancel my premium subscription after many years, now I'm using a different service which is going much better. I lost all my playlists but at least I don't have to skip song all the times when I want to discover new music.

Adios!