Can't like or unlike songs on Android app

[drewseff]

Plan

Premium

Device

Samsung Note 8

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

For a while now I've been unable to like or unlike songs on the Android app. Clicking the heart button, in any of the places it appears, does absolutely nothing. I can add/remove favourites on the desktop and web apps just fine, however those likes don't appear in the "liked songs" playlist on my phone. It's as though that play list is stuck in time from many months ago. My phone shows it having 2699 songs while the desktop app shows 2,730.

Others have experienced this issue on the forums here and I've tried all the suggestions I can find, to no avail.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled.

I've cleared the cache.

I've logged out and in multiple times.

I've checked whether I have the newest version (I do, 8.8.54.481).

I've gone into offline mode and back again.

I've restarted my phone.

I've tried multiple combinations of the above steps.

Nothing I've tried has made a bit of difference.

I can't correlate the behaviour change with any other change on the device. I suspect the issue is server-side, as clearing all state on my phone and reinstalling brings it back to the same broken state. I don't have another device I can test this on.

I'm at my wit's end with this! Please help. Your prices are going up in August and I'm considering dropping Spotify over this as I mostly use it to find new music and most of my listening happens on mobile, and I can't add favourites there any more, so I find the quality/interest of my daily music has decreased.

FWIW I'm a software developer who works on a product with millions of users so know what it's like to see reports like this without much context. I'm happy to dig into debugging this on my side and provide whatever information I can.

[OscarDC]

Hey @drewseff,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome. 

We appreciate all the info you've included in your post. In order to check if this behavior could be account-related, we'd recommend creating a new account just for testing purposes (using a different email address) to see if the issue persists. 

If the link is redirecting you to your current account, we'd suggest opening the link in an incognito/private window or logging out from your account page before clicking the link. 

Let us know how it goes. We'll be on the lookout.

[drewseff]

Hi @OscardDC, thank you for your suggestion.

I created a new account, signed into it on my phone, and was able to add and remove liked songs. When I then signed back in with my original account, the problem returned. Clicking the heart icon does nothing.

So the issue appears account related, rather than specific to my device.

[Dian]

Hey @drewseff,

Thanks for the reply and the troubleshooting tried.

In such a case it'd be best to contact our customer support team so they can help you in transferring your account content to a new one. Here is how to reach out to them. 

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

[drewseff]

I contacted support and unfortunately they couldn't really help. The only action they offered was to create a completely new account and transfer over a few of my settings, but doing that would lose all my history, meaning that all the data the recommendation system has on my music tastes and preferences would be lost. Here's the message from the support agent:

---

Here’s what we can transfer:

Saved music
Playlists
Followers
Notification settings
Any personal details registered, e.g. your date of birth

Note: For security, we can only perform 1 account transfer per person.
This doesn't include:
Artists/people you follow
Your listening history

Note: This means playlists made for you like Discover Weekly and Daily Mix will start fresh on your new account.

---

I follow loads of artists and have a lot of history there. If I'm going to lose all that, I might as well shop around for alternatives to Spotify as at that point I'm no longer as invested in the platform.

Apparently my case has been sent to the Escalations Team and I should hear back by email. Let's see!