Google assistant not playing personalised playlists

[danz207]

Plan

Premium

Country

Australia

Device

Nest hub, home mini

My Question or Issue

Ever since Spotify wrapped 2021 came out, my nest devices no longer play my personalised playlists via voice commands. I can see the command come up on my next hub (eg hey Google Play my playlist top songs 2017), but it simply ignores it and plays something that sounds similar. People are reporting this issue on the Google community forums too.

[Laefie]

Hello! I would like to jump in and say that I had the same problem. But after going onto the Google support page that Kiril sent, it gives multiple commands that can be used with voice command. After a bit of testing, I used Shuffle my [playlist] playlist on Spotify. I was able to use that command with voice command and in routines. There were also way more commands that might work with you. Hopefully this helps/solves your problem!

[nhewitt1]

I am having the same issue being reported by most here. I ask Google assistant to play a specific playlist I've created and it returns similar playlist created by Spotify. The only way I can get the playlist I want is to go thru the app and select it; then cast if I want to listen on another device. It doesn't matter what device I'm using - neat hub, Google home, Pixel phone..... Same result every time. Most recent example: "Hey Google play my hanging out playlist" reply: "ok, here's a Spotify playlist called hanging out and relaxing" 

I've tried multiple playlists. I've unlinked and relinked Spotify in the home app. My wife has tried w her Spotify acct that is also linked to her assistant. It's always the same result. This just started out of the blue recently. And it's happened before. 

I don't know who's to blame - S or G - but the Spotify experience on Google Home / w google assistant has been really really poor for some time. 

[LaurieJuiceTea]

I came to add that I'm having the same experience. When adding my personalized playlist by name to a routine, it will find instead a similarly named public playlist on Spotify, but will never play my personal one. Even using the command "play MY spotify playlist <name>" does not work.

[Julian]

Hey folks,

Thanks for reporting this issue to us.

We're aware of an ongoing issue affecting Google Assistant users - where they request personal playlists like "Discover Weekly" or any other user created playlist through Google Assistant, but a different playlist/album with a similar name is played instead. This is also being investigated by Google. 

If you’re experiencing this issue, make sure to click +VOTE and Subscribe to the thread to be notified of any developments.

Could you also make sure to provide us with the following info, if you haven’t already:

• Affected device + OS version
• Name and link of the playlist you wanted to play
• Name and link of the playlist that the Voice assistant played instead
• A video where we can see the issue (if possible)

Thanks! We’ll keep you posted and let you know as soon as we have any updates on this.

[twikigrrl]

I have been having this issue for months (since Dec) and now I can’t even get it to play specific (not mine) Spotify playlists. 

for example, a real test I just tried:

”hey google, play the Spotify playlist called “best of rock 1981” but it said it couldn’t find it.

I have had a BIT of luck occasionally renaming my existing playlists to one’s with my own name - so renaming something from “Stuff I Like xxx” to “_mynamehere_ Stuff I Like xxx” but it’s very inconsistent.

Between not being able to play my own lists and not being able to play existing Spotify lists I’m basically spending on money for Spotify for no reason - I only listen at home on my google devices.

[quinthar]

Yep, just chiming in to say this is a huge bummer and sorta invalidates the point of using Spotify: the only thing I use it for is playing this one exact playlist, and I play it on my Google Home.  If it can't play my playlist, there isn't much point.

Specifically, I have a playlist name "Daddy Tunes" ("daddy" in the "I have a daughter" sense), and I've tried making it public or private, but Google Home is very hit or miss in playing it, even with the exact same words:

"Shuffle my Daddy Tunes playlist on Spotify"

I even made a Google Assistant routine for this to make sure it's getting the exact right words, and it still doesn't work.  It feels like this is a new thing: it was working rock solid for a super long time, but within the past few weeks maybe it's broken?

Can't wait for this to get fixed.

-david

[fritzseidel]

I have the same issue with my morning alarm routine. It plays the wrong one. Simplest solution: Just prevent people calling their playlists like the personalized playlists. This is making money with clickbaiting and I strongly recommend valueing your paying customers more than the ones you pay for making trouble like this 😉

[quinthar]

Incidentally, I named my playlist something very unique ("Deadly Chicken and Yeti"), and when I try to play it via Google Assistant (eg, "Play my Deadly Chicken and Yeti Playlist on Spotify") it simply can't find it it at all (eg, "I can't play Deadly Chicken and Yeti on Spotify because it either doesn't exist or isn't available").  So it is clearly recognizing my voice correctly and getting the exact name (and I confirmed the spelling was right while watching it auto-transcribe), but somehow just isn't able to find it -- almost like it loses the ability to search my personal playlists erratically/temporarily.  Glad to hear it's being worked on, can't wait for a fix!

-david

PS: The only reason I left Google Music for Spotify was over something equally dumb: it simply couldn't shuffle playlists over like 100 songs or something.  When you went to shuffle the playlist, it would just pick the first 100 or so songs, and ignore the rest.  Everything else was perfect!  But these little things can make or break a platform.

[Viewfan]

 

Guys, I think I may have found a fix. 

I went into my google assistant and set Spotify as my default music player. 

You can do that by navigating to: 

1. Google App
2. Account (top right user icon) 
3. Settings
4. Google Assistant
5. Music
6. Link Spotify 

Doing that gives Spotify permission to do things on your behalf. 

I used the voice command "play my ballads playlist". And it worked just like before!

Let me know if this helps you. 

[quinthar]

Hm... I unlinked it and re-linked it, and so far so good...