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Discover Weekly keeps recycling the same songs

Discover Weekly keeps recycling the same songs

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 9 tracks that I don't remember from Discover already. I'd like it if there was a way to get Discover to stop recommending edgy cybergoth music (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.

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68 Replies

Hi, @eskhn!

 

Welcome to the Spotify Community.

 

Could you let us know if this started happening after a specific update or event? Also, have you used the Private Session mode recently?

 

We'll see what we can suggest. 

Looking through my Discover Weekly this week I also noticed around 3 songs that I have previously listened to. This is the first time I've ever seen songs that I know I've listened to before. It might've happened last week as well, I didn't get a chance to listen through all the way last week.

I don't think I've used Private Session at all, or at least not in years, and I don't know of any events that could have triggered it. I searched, and it looks like this has already happened, exactly this way, to a bunch of other people too.

Thanks for the info, @eskhn.

 

Can you try unfollowing your Discover Weekly, and then heading to Browse > Discover > to follow it again afterwards? Does unfollowing and following again help?

 

Also, have you tried a reinstall? Just follow the steps here


After you've checked these, give us a shout 🙂

@ZullyBThanks. I unfollowed, reinstalled, and re-followed. I'll get back to you when the Discover playlists refresh on Monday.

Sounds like a plan!

 

We'll be waiting for your response.

 

Take care 🙂 

@ZullyBThe playlist is up, and I didn't get any double repeats this week, but there were still a good 10-15 tracks from previous weeks.

Thanks for letting us know, @eskhn!

 

We recommend listening to more music so that Discover Weekly gets updated. It is normal for this to happen, but don't worry, we'll pass you comments on to the right team. 

 

Let us know if you have more doubts 🙂 

 

@ZullyB What's the reasoning behind this not being an issue? I still say that constantly getting duplicates defeats the entire purpose of a discovery service.

I'd also say this should definitely be looked into in more detail. The Discover Weekly was my favourite feature and a reason why I pay for Spotify, and now it turned into the most annoying one. Almost my entire Discover Weekly playlists consists of repeats, to a degree that makes me believe that these bands are paying to be put into the service and there seems to be no way of getting certain songs out of there, they keep on coming back, no matter how little I want to listen to them. This was a great feature when it got introduced, but it has some serious issues now and to me is pretty much useless. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, but the repeats are the same over and over again. 

I have the exact same problem!

 

On mondays, I usually go through the playlist, and save those that I like. So If I don't save a song, then I probably don't like it. I love discovery weekly, but it kinds of sour the experience when half of the song I have "disliked", and some of the songs have even been on the playslist every week for the last four weeks.

 

It first started with repeats a couple of months ago, and with a very noticable increase three-four weeks ago. I never use private mode (but how could affect the data the algorithms used to find similar music?), and very rarely use offline mode. I can try to reinstall the app.

 

But this is still an issue. Something distinctly was changed in discovery weekly the past half year, please don't ignore it.

 Hi everyone,

I noticed the same issue in the last weeks or so. The Discover Weekly feature, which I absolutely love, keeps recycling the same songs every week. A friend of mine who just started using her Discover Weekly has exactly the same problem, with a huge difference though : she doesn't save the songs she listened to, and SPotify doesn't know about what we're listing on the Discover Weekly.

But here comes my problem, that can be illustrated with the following example. Last weekend, I listened to the WHOLE album The Night Land by Talaboman (a blast, by the way) and saved every single song in playlists. It was already recommended last week, and what pops up in this week's Discover Weekly ? The exact same track as last week, Safe Changes.

For the record, i saved last week's Discover Weekly playlist in order to comparewith the new one. I would like to know why it happens now (it didn't occur before, as far as I know) and if there could be a solution or a change in Discover Weekly's algorithm : "if X song was in last week's playlist, don't play it this week – please"

Thanks in advance for your answer,

Hadrien

This is definitely a huge issue. Discover Weekly is one of my main reasons for paying for Spotify and I have had three of the same songs in my discover weekly for three weeks on a row. Songs I didn't save, and songs that I did save.
This week, when the playlist updated, over half of it stayed from last week. 

To me this is unacceptable and there should be some kind of basic block preventing you from hearing the same songs twice. Hearing new songs is the main reason I listen to discover weekly and if this isn't fixed I'll probably move to another streaming service and would recommend everyone else do the same. This is a serious issue and I've seen multiple reports of it on this website and they've all been brushed off as "not an issue."

 

This is definitely a huge issue. Discover Weekly is one of my main reasons for paying for Spotify and I have had three of the same songs in my discover weekly for three weeks on a row. Songs I didn't save, and songs that I did save.
This week, when the playlist updated, over half of it stayed from last week. 

To me this is unacceptable and there should be some kind of basic block preventing you from hearing the same songs twice. Hearing new songs is the main reason I listen to discover weekly and if this isn't fixed I'll probably move to another streaming service and would recommend everyone else do the same. This is a serious issue and I've seen multiple reports of it on this website and they've all been brushed off as "not an issue."

 

Yes, this is a huge issue. This used to be a great feature and the main reason why I pay for the service. 

 

If you don't think this is an issue, then I don't think I need to continue being a loyal, paying customer.

 

If your developers can't figure this out, I don't know what I'm payign for... 

 

 

 

These are some timely responses/likes, because Discover reached a new low this week. Only 10 tracks that hadn't been featured before, and, for the first time, I started getting suggestions for the fourth time.

 

Combined with all the other people having similar problems, I'm beginning to feel like Spotify is willfully ignoring this issue. It can't seriously be that difficult to fix, and even if it is, refusing to even acknowledge it leaves a bad taste, to say the least.

I'm starting to think, according to another thread, that it's a known issue. Seriously, it never happened in two years of use, why would it stop working suddenly ? Hope they'll find a fix ! Keep up commenting there, apparently they are aware that something's wrong...

To recap the potential solutions offered, unfollowing and re-following Discover doesn't fix this, and reinstalling doesn't fix it. On one of the previous threads started by other people who had this issue, someone recommended playing tracks for less than 10 seconds and then skipping them, which was supposed to mark a "thumbs down" so they'd get left off Discover in the future, and that doesn't work. At the moment, it doesn't seem like there's any way to fix this.

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