Advanced search is broken

[Escombro]

Album searches by year ("year:1978" for example) used to return hundreds of pages of results ordered by popularity, it was by far the best feature of Spotify in my opinion, now those same searches yield a miserable 50 albums in a completely random order, in other words: useless. Please fix this.

[Peterline6]

Yup. I'm not even expecting a rollback at this point. They must have made this change on purpose.

[stoney09]

Any update on this? The search tool, which used to be so handy, is now ruined. 
Just doing a simple search of 'Label:"ninja tune" AND year:2023', then clicking on albums no longer functions correctly (does not display all the albums for 2023, only a few)
Please fix 🙏

[Ivelina]

Hey folks,

So we can do a further investigation, it'd be great if you could give us as many details as possible, such as:

• Does this happen on multiple devices (makes, models, OS-versions)?
• Could you give a detailed description of what exactly isn't working?
• It'd also help if you could send over some screenshots so we can take a look at those as well. You can attach it to your next response by using the Insert image option in the post editor. 

Thanks for the cooperation!

[Peterline6]

Hi Ivelina,

The problem is that the "AND", "NOT", "OR" search operators haven't been working for months now. It was a very convenient way to narrow down searches, and it's been down on all devices (specifically in my case Windows, Mac, iPhone) since last summer now.

[phat1984]

There are examples of what is not working all over this thread. Search queries that have YEAR in them don't give the correct result for albums. I can quote my example again: My example is this: label:"relative pitch" AND year:2023. While on the "tracks" tab you can see a lot, the "album" tab shows only one album. The expectation is to see twenty-something albums.

Happens on all devices.

[Anemo]

This is not just a device or software version issue, even the API search is broken, the issue is within Spotify search itself.

EDIT: here's the link to the advance search documentation : https://support.spotify.com/us/article/search/

[Peterline6]

This, exactly.

[Maria]

Hi there folks,

Thanks for posting in the thread.

Could you also let us know what devices and operating system you're using, so that we can forward this to the right folks? It would also be helpful if you could include the Spotify version too.

If possible, a video or screenshot showing what's happening from your end would be great as well.

Many thanks!

[Peterline6]

Hi Maria,

I'm sorry but everyone here keeps saying that it happens across all devices, regardless of the operating system or app version. This is a search API issue, plain and simple.

[MihailY]

Hey @Peterline6,

If the issue happens across multiple devices you can disregard this question. What would help us a lot though would be to provide a few more examples of search queries that are not working as expected. The more you provide, the easier it would be for our tech team to narrow down the possible cause of the issue.

Thanks for your help!

[Peterline6]

Right, thanks for your help. So here goes.

Below, you can see that I searched for " "soundtrack" NOT "picture" year:2023", meaning I want a list of all albums with "Soundtrack" in their name, but excludes the ones that have "Picture" in them (such as "Original Motion Picture" for example). This kind of trick worked perfectly until last summer. Since then, it does exactly the opposite. With this query, I only get a list of albums with "soundtrack picture" in their name. The same happens when I replace "NOT" by "-". 

Long story short: advanced search operators have not been working as intended for months now.

This is a screenshot of Spotify on macOS (latest version), but it works just the same on iPhone, Web, Android and Windows.

[stoney09]

Hi, Here is some more info from my end. 

As already mentioned, the search issues happen across all devices and operating systems. This must be a search API issue.

The Spotify version I am using

Spotify for Windows (64 bit)
1.2.26.1187.g36b715a1

Issue:
A lot of the search issues involve incorrect search results when using combined search queries.

As you can see from screenshot 1 below, there are several albums from 2023 released on the label 'Ninja Tune'.
You can see this by doing a basic search by label e.g. label:"ninja tune"

Which gives you the following results

As you can see, there are several albums released in 2023. 

Now, if I add more to my search query, using AND to combine the label search with a year search e.g. label:"ninja tune" AND year:2023, the albums from 2023 in the first screenshot are no longer in the list of albums. 

This used to work fine. 

This is also the same if you click 'Songs', you don't get all the correct results back. 

Please fix 🙏

Edit: This issue may not be caused by the combined search query, it could just be that the Year search is broken, as originally stated by the OP. But the issue is clear to see when using a combined search query.

[Escombro]

Back to square one here, year queries once again return useless 50 results, this can't be that hard to fix, you did it before.

[stoney09]

Any update please? Was the info we provided adequate? Do you need more info? 

Thanks.

[MihailY]

Hey everyone,

Apologies for not responding earlier.

We've forwarded this to the relevant team and are waiting for an update. We'll let you know as soon as we have one.

Cheers,

[labelm8]

It looks like the Spotify search-by-label has gotten less specific and uses partial strings, and as a result is returning bad results.

This seems to have started around the start of the new year.

For example, if you search for:

label:"lump records"

The first album result you get back was released on "Lumpy Records"

If I search for the label "Aus Music" I am getting back releases from Universal Music Australia.  This is the first time I've seen this in over 10 years.

It looks like it is matching on partial strings instead of using the full string. I'm not sure why this is happening.

Spotify PLEASE FIX THIS as it makes record label searching completely ineffective in many cases.

[Escombro]

In response to your questions:

Does this happen on multiple devices (makes, models, OS-versions)?

- As of now it seems to be affecting the desktop version only, which is where i spend most of my time on the app.

Could you give a detailed description of what exactly isn't working?

- Simple: search queries return only 50 results. On this thread i'm focusing on the search by year functionality ("year:1976" for example used to return a huge number of results)

[gypsybill]

Search by label has stopped working at some point since October of 2023. Previously one could search using the following syntax

artist:Bauhaus, label:4AD

and this would return every Bauhaus album released on 4AD

That is no longer the case and now searching [artist:Bauhaus, label:4AD] will not return full results that can be limited to albums but only shows a handful of songs. Clicking the green text that says "view all results for artist: Bauhaus, label:4ad" results in nothing at all happening. The search function is largely broken.

Searching for [Bauhaus label:4AD] is automatically simplified by the app into a search for [4AD] without any mention of Bauhaus and returning mostly songs that weren't released by 4AD

I know this function was working back in early October. Please fix it swiftly, the usefulness of this app to me is greatly diminished without the basic functionality of an advanced search.

Premium subscriber using an up to date version on Android and based in the US

[Joan]

Hi @gypsybill,

Thanks for reaching out. 

We tried to reproduce this issue on our end, but were unable to do so, so it seems like something on your end. Could you please provide us the following:

• Is this on all devices or only on the one Android device?
• Is only this search query not working as expected? If others are affected, could you provide some further examples?
• Does it happen with different accounts? If you haven't tested this, please do so. You can use the account of someone you know or make one yourself.

With this information, we’d be happy to investigate.

Keep us posted.

[ItsMeAvi]

 Plan  Premium  Country   Device  Galaxy s21 5g  Operating System  Android 14 one UI 6   My Question or Issue  There was a time where the search didn't show speculations or suggestions about what I'm about to search, I liked it that way as now 2 things happen:  1. There's an extra step on my way to find content, a bit tedious   2. The advanced search (label is what I use mostly) stopped working,  I type label:"Malka Tuti" and before I click the magnifying glass 🔎 I get results that seem to be ok but without the "albums/artists/playlists" etc. button to filter the results if I do click the magnifying 🔎 glass however I get the buttons but way off results, showing album from different labels.   That truly bumms me