Same Songs, Different Albums - Are they the same?

[pittnerag24]

I spend a decent amount of time attempting to find my favorite version, or “best” version, of one song that may have different versions.  For example, the Rolling Stones have three different studio versions of the song “Start Me Up” that are titled differently. There’s “Start Me Up” “Start Me Up - 2009 Re-Mastered Digital Version” and “Start Me Up - Remastered.” These songs are on three different albums. But, when I looked at the play count of each song, they were all the same at around 331 million.  So are these songs on Spotify the same or each different? Can anyone enlighten me?

[San_D]

Good question. I don't have the full answer, but what I gathered is that the tracks have different Track IDs (a unique code assigned to each track) under different Album IDs (a similar code, but for albums). Suffice to say these tracks are different versions of the same song, from different releases/pressings. I think Spotify also maintains a "song ID" kind of thing which links all these different track IDs together, which is why the play count is same. If they do, that's a cool thing.

[pittnerag24]

Helpful - thanks!