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Major Spotify defect/bug in new Windows version - playlists can be permanently broken, UNUSABLE

Major Spotify defect/bug in new Windows version - playlists can be permanently broken, UNUSABLE

In the new version of Windows Spotify app, there is a major playlist issue that makes playlists extremely broken if you care about organizing them. If you select two or more files and re-order them, it doesn't actually re-order those files and then permanently breaks that playlist so that it is no longer accurate on Spotify's server.

 

I've already ruined about a dozen carefully curated discography and other important playlists by not realizing this sooner. I'm hoping you read this and don't wreck all of your existing playlists until Spotify fixes this!

 

To reproduce:

  1. Open Windows app
  2. Create a playlist and populate it with 5+ songs
  3. Make sure sorting is CUSTOM so that your order (e.g., not by Tile or Artist) is in place
  4. Select the bottom two songs and drag them to the top of the playlist
  5. Now go to any other app (e.g., web, iOS, etc.) and look at the order of the playlist: Your Windows order is not displayed!

Once this breaks, you can never fix it by re-ordering the tracks, and the order will be displayed inconsistently across all your devices. It essentially mixes up the songs somehow, I don't understand how it's possible, but it is.

 

Here's a video explaining it with the broken Desktop app on the left and the web app on the right. The web app functions just like iOS, by the way, I just can't show that with a screen recording.. I did have all 3 open to check:

 

https://streamable.com/e4wchw

 

Note that I checked the Song Credits and even played the songs.. it's not a visual bug, the songs that are broken actually play.

 

I'm not sure of other implications (what happens if you select 3+ songs, or if this issue happens with single selection), but as of right now, I think I need to abandon the Windows app until this is fixed. I'm already noticing I ruined many carefully constructed playlists, I don't want to cause any more damage.

 

(Premium account, Windows 10, latest version of Desktop app, tested on three different computers)

Reply
3 Replies

Hi ACAx1985

Thanks for the very detailed report, we'll get a fix for this into the next release. Until then, a workaround is to move single tracks, or select the multiple songs to be moved in top-down order only.

For an existing playlist you've had this happen to, you can attempt to undo the changes by
* First select all tracks and copy-paste to either notepad or another playlist for backup
* Delete all the tracks in the originally affected playlist (not the playlist itself)
* Now the backend should repopulate from the last known state
* If the above doesn't happen restore the tracks from your notepad or backup playlist by pasting them back.

Hope this helps, and thanks again for reporting this.
Dan

Thank you for the very quick response. I look forward to the fix! If you could reply when it is fixed, I would happily test this out in detail to confirm it is working in all scenarios.

Peace and love.

Should I uninstall Spotify from other devices before the Windows fix? I only have it on one Windows device and I suspect that is the cause. If I uninstall Spotify from my desktop PC, where I never use it, will that prevent this from happening again on my other devices?

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