Radio recommendations always play the same 20 songs for years

[goddestroyer]

I've been a spotify premium subscriber since shortly after the service came to USA. For several years i used the radio features to discover dozens of new artists i had never heard of and it was one of the most valuable features in spotify for me. 

for the last year or so, i have basically stopped using the radio features to discover new music because the recommendations are so bad and they do not honor my 'thumbs down' or 'hide song' actions when i don't like the recommendations. within 20 song skips, spotify will play the exact same song i have already tried to indicate that i dont like on dozens of occasions. 

It's as if all my radio channels only choose from the same couple dozen of songs, and they are not anything im interested in at all. 

I found the "liked from radio" playlist that was automatically generated from like 2012 and i deleted everything out of that playlist in case it was affecting the limited radio selections. that seemingly had no effect as i continue to hear the same songs. 

for a while i thought it was an issue of not enough sample size in training the algorithm, so i had thumbs up'd and thumbs down'd hundreds if not thousands of songs, but they arent impacting the recommendations that are played. 

currently, on the windows spotify client there are no thumbs down / up options, there is just a "hide song" button, which currently does not work. nothing happens when i click it, there is no confirmation, and the song i dont want to hear keeps playing. same issue as described by many people here:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/BUG-Hide-this-song-not-working/td-p/4820721

I have freshly reinstalled the app, and i have the same behavior on android or windows, indicating its a server-side issue and not a client-side issue. 

the radio options have been useless for me for more than a year, only playing the same handful of songs i dont like. 

is there anyway to clear out my stored recommendation data on the server? something is not working and i need to start over with the recommendations

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Surface Laptop 2

Operating System

Windows 10

and Android

[goddestroyer]

[angop]

I have the same issue. Also seems like no matter what playlist radio I'm listening to regardless of genre, the same songs play.

[Alex]

Hey there @angop,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

Could you send us a link/URI of the song that always plays? Also, let us know if this happens only when you play Song Radios or also with Artist Radio.

Another thing - do you listen only to songs from the Made for you playlists or do you use the search function?

Thanks. We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[goddestroyer]

@Alex

---

@Alex wrote:

Could you send us a link/URI of the song that always plays? 

So if I had to estimate, there are a few dozen, maybe 100-200 or so songs that are continually played.

Here are some of the worst offenders, songs that i have clicked "do not play this song again" on maybe 60+ times over the last few years, and still they will re-play within 5-10 track skips later even after declining them. I don't like any of these songs and they are barely similar to what I wanted recommendations on:

Licking an Orchid by Yves Tumor

https://open.spotify.com/track/3pihS07XVQEavaS9n7kObt?si=78O46SwbRk2W_BD5Bl-B3g

Back, Baby by Jessica Pratt

https://open.spotify.com/track/6qPr2b9A2aw4n0rbDoUFUg?si=Rh46UYTCTaKqnGljbDMQww

Suddenly by Weyes Blood

https://open.spotify.com/track/77iRifbhkJGvGBBRNykUwN?si=zqwH8vheSz2GR2MsiIBSvg

Kingston by Faye Webster

https://open.spotify.com/track/0EDQwboQDmswDRn58wcslg?si=6ASkR_vBQ1KipKHvj0a0CA

Green Arrow by Yo La Tengo 

https://open.spotify.com/track/0jgsq6l1yMZIlJX4AFXAgA?si=HKEcwNFmTBqNlM_VPhliLA

Time Moves Slow by BADBADNOTGOOD

https://open.spotify.com/track/1I40L32fTSSkBkPeArX9Ul?si=tqsE5OtyQBWu2LQyH05Rjw

Don't Bother Calling by Moses Sumney

https://open.spotify.com/track/5dqNCR3ANsOIMeQLpk54wU?si=F6AgECVgQDy2MiysM5gTkg

I could provide many more, but as i said those are some of the worst offenders. I can guarantee you these songs will play if i start any new radio based on almost anything. They will probably play within the first 20 songs recommended. 

What makes the whole situation infuriating is the ones Spotify demands I listen to all the time I'm not interested in at all!

---

@Alex wrote:

Also, let us know if this happens only when you play Song Radios or also with Artist Radio.

---

There are multiple entry points for the recommendation algorithm to kick in:

- when autoplay is on and your current playlist expires

- seeding a new radio station based on a song, album, artist, or playlist

- "made for me" playlists

Ideally, i would use all of these if the recommendations worked. I do create radio stations all the time based on my curated playlists, based on single songs, and based on artist. the same songs cited above will play on all stations. 

The one caveat to this is I also love obscure / international / cultural music in addition to popular western music. for example, i have seeded a radio station in spotify based off of a playlist containing 4 obscure classical indian music, and that works generally pretty well to bring in somewhat-related recommendations without these cursed songs cited here, because classical indian music is so different and unrelated. 

However most radio seeds based on almost any western alt/pop/rock/indie music will inevitably play these cited songs.

---

@Alex wrote:

Another thing - do you listen only to songs from the Made for you playlists or do you use the search function?

i play from my own curated playlists heavily, like every day, mainly because the recommendation/radio algorithm is broken for me as described in this thread, so i HAVE TO play my playlists since I have given up on discovering new artists with spotify (which used to be 50% of the value in the app to me). 

I also use the search feature more than 20 times a day to search for music that is both on my playlists and not on my playlists.

I don't listen to "made for you" playlists very often. Every month or two i will check them out. 

One extra piece of information worth looking into on your end:

My spotify account is very old i've probably had it since the first few months after Spotify's USA opening. it was initially opened up with a link to my facebook account. 

I have since deleted the facebook account, and I had to go through spotify's support in order to disconnect the facebook account from my spotify account. I think that was done around 2017. 

If recommendations are somehow tied to facebook/social graph data then I wonder if the recommendation algorithm is looking in the wrong database to generate recs based on my pre-2017 plays when a fb account was linked. 

[Mihail]

Hey @goddestroyer,

Thanks for getting back to us with the examples.

We're sorry for the confusion and would like to shed some light on the situation.

The way that the Hide this song feature works is that it removes the song from any playlist made by Spotify or somebody else than you. The song will then be marked as "Hidden" meaning the song will not play in that playlist. 

Since Radio playlists get generated anew anytime you start them, it's possible that the song reappears in another session of that radio. One possible workaround for this is that you go to an artist and from the context menu (the three dots) select Don't play this artist.

If you'd like to be able to block a certain song account-wide, we'd recommend you take a look in our Idea Exchange and see if someone has already submitted an idea for this feature to be added  and if not post your own.

The Idea Exchange is a great way for us to see what our users are interested in and how many people like a certain idea. You can read more about it here.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[stopcrippling]

Two years later, it seems like this problem is even worse. My sense is the "Playlist Radio" heavily weights back to songs and artists you listen to a lot already, so everything bends inward. It's like the music version of the Daily Me.

[Mario]

Hey @stopcrippling,

Thanks for writing about this. 

It'd be great for you to add your +VOTE to this related Idea. 

It's growing quickly and every vote counts. More info on how your feedback reaches Spotify here.

Cheers!