Discover Weekly keeps recycling the same songs

[eskhn]

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.

[Arisu]

This is totally an issue, I want my 30 new songs I've never listened to before every week !

[itiban]

still no chance anybody sorts it out?

[might_be_wrong]

I don't think Spotify cares about this issue to be solved, or perhaps they think the algorithm is good enough (hint: it isn't). It seems impossible to get in touch with any actual staff, but there is a tiny little help page for Discover Weekly here: https://support.spotify.com/uk/using_spotify/playlists/discover-weekly/

They say that plays from the Discover Weekly playlist itself don't count towards future suggestions. So you need to keep on listening to music on other playlist to generate new (and hopefully better) suggestions. If you only listen to Discover Weekly all week long, the library content it is generated from does not change and I guess that is why the same songs keep popping up. So if you happen to have a really cool Discover Weekly playlist, copy the songs to a different playlists and keep on listening there. However, it is still unclear to me how long into the past the algorithm actually looks, so considering that this of course is all just a theory, I have no clue how much time it would take for things to improve. 

Again, Spotify, this sucks. If you are not willing to help, at least be more transparent about how the algorithm works so we can figure things out on our own. 

[jon92828]

Me too. The main reason I like Spotify is for Discover Weekly, and since the songs are no longer changing, that reason is gone. Google Play music has a killer feature (upload your own music). Their Discover Weekly equivalent was pretty terrible a year ago, but I'm sure it's improved while Spotify's is getting worse.
I'll jump ship soon if Spotify don't want to resolve this.

[Johnnyrobbs]

Hey y’all i found something that isn’t quite what I’m looking for but it
might help. You can go to discover weekly radio, by going to the top right
“...” and go to radio. At least in there you can like or dislike songs. No
clue if that is a persistent effect or only for that radio, but at least I
can tell them to never play Grateful Dead on my discover that day way. Let
me know if this helps!

[CloudCapitol]

I see this is a fairly old thread, but I'm having the same problem. My "Discover Weekly" is playing ONLY songs that I've already heard before – that I've either already got in my library and/or continue to get in Discover Weekly over and over. Whey does Discover Weekly bring me songs I already have in my library? That's not helping me discover anything. Ditto for songs that have been in there week after week. 

[Krumpet]

I got to this thread from a google search - I felt like Discover Weekly was way too timid in offering new songs. After reading here I realized I was BARELY getting new suggestions at all!

Still waiting on some way to get Spotify to expose me to new music.

[nuoroda]

Spotify,

it seems you do not care at all!!

Last week I listened to Beach House all albums, and on Monday Discover Weekly I find songs from Beach House. Such a good discovery..

Shame on you

[hdnhrt]

Hi,

After many months of improvement, I find the Discovery Weekly again a little repetitive, with songs remaining from one week to another, or old songs reappearing despite being put in a playlist a long ago. I do record my Discovery Weekly every week, so I know exactly when it fails. Please consider making Discovery Weekly more adventurous at least, so it can really help discovering music rather than listen to music I already know...

At some point, I imagine that the system revolves around itself, rather than finding out unexpected corners of music. That would make sense, but not the fact that some songs are clearly already known by the user. Where is the "delete duplicates" function in Spotify's system ?

I'm still discovering great artists through Discovery Weekly, so it's all fine, but maybe some fine tuning would be appreciated by many users.

Cheers,

Hadrien

[PygmyLepper]

I'm even getting songs I've already disliked in my Discover Weekly.

This week there are 2 songs already disliked. This is the third week in a row I've had disliked songs turn up. It's so hard set on giving me the same songs over and over again it's even ignoring my dislikes.

[paul10]

Some of us don't have the time to search for songs due to life commitments.

Also, I've found it refreshing on the Tuesday. But it seems like only half of them. But all of them seem to be 'new' Also. I have one song on my 'I don't like this song' on the playlist! Yesterday, it was two.

[hdnhrt]

Hi there,

i feel like Spotify doesn’t care about Discover Weekly anymore. I’ve already created a topic about the playlist refreshing twice a week, with evidences and long explanations. Despite that, no one from the staff has ever answered. The thing is, probably most people won’t notice the issue, or will just ignore it. And a dozen of music freaks are not Spotify’s target. Maybe the issue is more important than it looks, but I don’t think avoiding duplicates and refreshing on Tuesday is a hard task for a now public company.

Anyway, Cheers,

Hadrien

[bloodorange503]

Why is this still an issue for me? I have gotten I'm Glad by Captain Beefheart and Why? by Andrew Bird more than 3 times each and I'm Glad twice in one playlist. Spotify has enough money to make this issue go away. I have complained more than 3 times. I think it's time to go with Pandora or someone else. Spotify can't pay it's artists, sells people on an idea that will get us new music but doesn't care enough to get people or algorithms that work. This is dumb and Spotify just gives us brand messaging and bascially telling us 1) it's getting fixed, or 2) there really isn't a problem because, you know, we're a megacorp with no accountability. Enough is enough, fix this. You guys are really bad at this engaging this and I'll take my business elsewhere. 

[mzedeler]

I have the same issue. Discover Weekly is recycling many of the songs, so out of the 20 songs on the playlist, up to 5 of them are duplicates that I've heard many times before.

For instance, I've lost count of how many times the songs below have been on my Discover Weekly list:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2pdulgTSVNLaZkwCi32Jk3

https://open.spotify.com/track/6H0DXOPil8UBKGp5RlIcdj
https://open.spotify.com/track/6UB895HYS3pnftcY4ckbDw
https://open.spotify.com/track/6BkeuHmO4P69Ln2BSonrXi

And those are on my list this week, so I have to skip every 5th song.
I find it sad because I really like Discover Weekly, but this is a major pain. How hard is it to make it exclude songs I've listened to before?

Michael.

[GioD]

Bruh I get the same problem with other playlists it's crazy. They're always bring back the songs I don't like. Like, it feels like abit much to have to tell them all the time that I don't like a particular song

[chnebx]

So I must be the only one on earth, but all the tracks suggested in my "discover weekly" playlist have nothing to do with the kind of music I usually listen to :

completely different genre that I absolutely don't like, and all of them, there isn't any single track or artist that I had listened before !!

It's a completely weird playlist that seems to come from another account, it used to work well before but now I spend my time disliking all of these tracks in the hope that Spotify will wake up and no changes so far, great experience....

[OverWims]

I've been having problems recently where I will get lots of covers of songs I already have saved from the original artists. I will also get remix or non-remix versions of songs I already have the other version of and I will also get songs in chinese or japenese even though I have no songs saved in these languages and don't want them either.

Spotify really need to fix their discover as right know it doesn't sound more like a "discover" than a "rediscover"

[alexpunct]

I have the same problem, starting a few months ago Discovery Weekly playlist started to include songs from other playlists I listen to instead of recommending me songs I've never listened like it used to do. Please don't include songs I've already listened to or from playlists I already follow!

[gzxmx94_]

Same issue here, for the last 3 months I get songs that I already listened to on Spotify.

[cagriahmet32]

I can’t really detect when it started but I observed that when I delete a song from my “Liked Songs” or “Liked From Radio” he same song with a different artist is suggested in DE.