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Incorrectly assigned songs in Grateful Dead live catalog

Incorrectly assigned songs in Grateful Dead live catalog

I'm not sure how many are aware of this, but there are a lot of live songs that are actually different versions than what they say they are. It'll say a song is from a certain show and date, but the song that plays is actually from a different year and show entirely. For example, I will be listening to a show from 1977 and hear Pigpen join in on vocals, which is impossible since he died in '73. I've run into this kind of thing countless times. As much as I love Spotify, this is very frustrating for someone who enjoys the Grateful Dead's amazing live catalog. If you want to have a listen for yourself, here are a just a few of the mismatched shows:

 

Werewolves of London - Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO 7/8/78

- This is obviously some poor quality audience recording and not the official live release that it says it is.

 

China Cat Sunflower - 8/27/72 Veneta, Oregon

- Uh... the version on Spotify has over 2 minutes of crowd noise before the band plays anything. And it's from some other show from a later year. This pains me since '72 Veneta was one of the their top 3 performances. 

 

China Cat Sunflower - DP Vol. 36 - 9/21/72 - The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA

- Another example of a great live version being some other show.

 

Morning Dew - Europe '72

- This one definitely makes me sad. Not the right version. Maybe something from '92, not '72.

 

(NOTE: I have noticed that the right and wrong versions share the same song lengths. This is maybe a glitch?)

 

I could easily list 20 more examples. I hope this gets fixed soon. Thanks and keep up the good work, Spotify!

 

Reply
3 Replies

@woahdude

 

Hello:

 

A few things to ask.

 

Can you perhaps provide the links to the content this is happening with? A band like the Grateful Dead might have multiple versions of releases depending on the various listening locations on the Spotify service, and there could be a slight issue or mix up which there could be found a technical fix for cross up play back issues of certain tracks?

 

Does this happen with all Spotify app access, desktop, mobile, and even webplayer as well? If one Spotify app plays the correct version but another app does not, a quick log out and back in sometimes clears small issues up like this with a particular app, sometimes a clean reinstall of the app fixes more difficult issues. https://support.spotify.com/using_spotify/troubleshooting2/reinstallation-of-spotify/

 

If all Spotify apps play the incorrect content, the problem is compounded in trying to determine what issue might be causing it an app bug from development design, an issue with the made available content from the label that provided the content, also Grateful Dead itself they must be the most notorious band ever to have been bootlegged with regards to live shows. Classic rock bands have sadly been used in some very unsavory ways by fly night very unethical "labels" say for example Canned Heat, they have fallen prey to fly by night labels making available dubious acquired studio and live material and marketing it as official or semi official content, making it appear as legitimate with close or similar artwork of more official looking content by more honest labels. 

 

Any official artist releases that are not playing correctly can be report this way:

 

If you've seen either

- a track, album, or artist in our catalogue with incorrect information (i.e. wrong release year, misspelling, etc.)

- different artists in the same Artist Page

- incorrect cover arts

- incorrect artists biography

or

- a track or album that isn't playing correctly (i.e. a song only playing one second of music)

Then you can report the error using the Contact Form. Once there, perform the following steps:

Step 1: Click on "I want to report a broken song or wrong song information".
Step 2: Click on the Green Button that reads "I STILL NEED HELP".
Step 3: Copy and Paste the track URI links to the songs into the field that reads "Song URI".
Step 4: Type up a description of the track issues in the "Tell us more" field.
Step 5: Click on the green button "SEND QUESTION".
Be sure to include all Spotify URI's in the body of the message!

After contacting Customer Support, you should receive an automated response from Spotify. The tracks will then be aggregated and reported to the content provider. Customer Support will update their database with the correct information as soon as the label or aggregator has sent Spotify an update with the correct data.

 

As far as reporting releases made available on an artist page you suspect might not be officially legitimate, sadly this next step might require the original label owners and / or those who control the copyright of the original content to make a claim on some content that is not legitimate, you can check out the procedure here: https://www.spotify.com/legal/infringement-form/

This happens to me to, but it is not consistent.

 

Songs change and then change back.

 

At first I enjoyed it because it was usually replaced with something good that I did not know. Now the quality is often poor and the jam is not always worth listening to; it's starting to get annoying, especially when I want to go back to something I've listened to before and it is replaced with something else.

I forgot to mention:

 

This most often happens on the desktop app. Sometimes on my phone if I pull up the same album the correct song plays.

 

However, it has started to happen on mobile as well, but less frequently

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