Why am I getting random podcasts instead of the next in the series?

[Sweetoonz]

Plan

Free

Country

New Zealand

Device

HP Laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

I have just started using Spotify, and am using the Chrome browser version (I have not downloaded an app). I'm listening to a single specific podcast. Whenever I finish an episode, a completely random *different* podcast starts playing, instead of the next episode in the podcast series. In the queue, it says "Next from [podcast name]", but then lists random podcast names, and I can't seem to delete them. How do I get it to only play the podcast I'm listening to? I want it to autoplay the next one in the series.

[Joan]

Hi there @Sweetoonz,

Thanks for reaching out. This behaviour is quite strange. We tried reproducing this on our end but our results are inconclusive. Could you please provide us the following:

• Is this on all devices or only on specific one(s)? If possible, could you install the app and see if it happens there as well?
• When did this start happening?
• Does this happen with any podcast you start playing?
• What exactly plays afterwards? Is the podcast completely random, a specific one or random episodes from the podcast you're already on?
• What do you see in the queue whenever this happens? If you manually queue the desired episodes, do they play as expected?
• A video of the behaviour. If the files are too large to attach here in the Community, you can send them to us via Google Drive or as unlisted YouTube videos.

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

Keep us posted.

[Sweetoonz]

Hi Joan,

Many thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I'm away from home today, so won't be able to answer everything until I'm back in tomorrow...

The easy ones to answer are:

* I only use Spotify via Chrome on my laptop, so it's only the one device.

* I've only used Spotify once (yesterday; 30th April), so that's when it started happening for me 🙂

* I've only tried it with the one podcast - I'll test with some others tomorrow.

* I've attached a Snip that I took yesterday of what I see with the podcast - you can see in the queue that, whilst it says "Next from Peak Performance Perspectives", the podcasts listed underneath are not related to the show at all. Peak Performance Perspectives has four episodes (it's still very new), so I'd be expecting to see the next two listed. I'd had to start Episode two manually because it jumped from Episode One to a completely different podcast.

I'll need to play with queuing manually, trying the other podcasts, getting you a video and trying the app when I'm at home tomorrow. I hope I wouldn't have to manually queue the whole time, given the other podcasts I'm looking at listening to have hundreds of episodes!

[Sweetoonz]

Hi Joan - thank you for replying so quickly. I tried to answer your questions and my reply was rejected as spam. I don't know why. So this is just letting you know that I appreciate your support. I'll try to test your points when I'm back at home tomorrow, but I may have to reply as a PM if the moderators don't let me answer publicly.

Thanks! ST.

[MihailY]

Hey @Sweetoonz,

Apologies for the misunderstanding, you reply was flagged as spam by our system but is now visible again. If this happens again, let us know and we'll take care of it.

In the meantime, another thing than can help in our investigation is checking whether the same behavior persists when using a different account.

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[Sweetoonz]

Sorry for the delay in finishing the answer - work got busier than expected! (plus as a tech clutz, it was challenging to work out how to record something without pointing my phone at the laptop screen... 🙃)

It's behaving really weirdly in Chrome - with the small podcast, I was able to add another episode to the queue, and it played successfully. But when I jumped back to the previous episode to try to test again (and had turned the recording off, obviously...), it kept on just playing the new episode (even when I was pressing the 'play' button on the first episode!). When I cleared the queue, it then added all the episodes from that podcast, and had nothing else in the queue so a small win, I guess?

However, I did capture it twice on a separate podcast - videos here:

https://youtu.be/yeTePxmoPCc - this one shows me manually adding the next podcast in the queue, and it playing ok once the episode finishes

https://youtu.be/B88MsGYVu-4 - this one shows the ending of the *next* episode (and not the last in the series) - the subsequent episode in the series doesn't play, but a *totally* random one does.

I'm also not able to remove *any* of the 'Next up' random items - see screenshot for my options.

However, I did download the app, and this behaves as I'd expect it to (just queuing up the next episodes of the podcast I'm listening to.

So - not sure why the browser version behaves so weirdly? I didn't particularly want to download the app, but now I've got it, I'll have a play and see how it goes.

[Vasil]

Hey @Sweetoonz,

Thanks for letting us know! Glad this works as intended on the desktop app 🙂

My assumption is that something is off with the podcast formatting itself and that it's interfering with the successful playback of the podcast episodes on web. On our end we couldn't even start playing the podcast on the Web Player, let alone queue up the next episode when the first one finishes. All other podcast titles did play fine and we had no issues with the one in question playing on the desktop app as well, so that would be the best way to go (for the time being at least!).

We appreciate you taking your time to look into this with us and wish you a good day.
The Community is here for you in case any further questions come up. Cheers!

[Flipnormal]

I’m having same issue on iPhone. On a podcast series that used to be totally fine at going to the next episode after the current one ended…now it instead skips to some other entirely different podcast from my subscribed ones, and it’s randomly different each time. 

also the skip to next or previous episode button  is not there at all. 

what I’ve realised is that it will only auto play the next podcast episode in ascending order…and then it assumes it’s got to the end of that playlist and skips to a whole new podcast show. 

I want to be able to play the very latest episode on a podcast playlist and for it to then also go down the list in backwards chronological order. 

This would be very useful with the sleep timer for certain podcasts that are conducive to sleep and I can start on the latest episode…and then go back through them automatically until the sleep timer stops play. 

At the moment I get an abrupt joe rogan crashing on instead! 

[AlejaR]

Hey there @Flipnormal,

Thanks for posting here and for the info shared.

We'd suggest you try the following to see if you notice any difference:

• Clear the cache of the app by following these steps.
• Log out and log in twice in a row onto your Spotify account. This could sound a little bit odd, but this way the system will force a resync of your account in general.

If the above doesn't do the trick, then we'd like to gather some additional info. Please send us:

• The make/model and OS of the affected device.
• The exact Spotify version you're running there.
• The link to the podcast in which you notice this behavior.
• Does this happen across all your devices?

Keep us in the loop!

[brotorious]

I'm having the same problem in the desktop app but not in the mobile app. In the mobile app, when an episode of a podcast finishes, the next episode plays. In the desktop app, an episode of a different podcast I'm following plays instead. My "next up" section lists an episode from each podcast I follow on Spotify, as though it is trying to send me a round-robin through my followed podcasts. This is exactly what I don't want it to do. I have never wanted this behaviour from a podcast app and this is the only app I've ever seen try to do this.

[MihailY]

Hey @brotorious,

Thanks for reaching out.

As @Flipnormal already noticed, the app plays the episodes from oldest to newest so if you start the last episode of the podcast with Autoplay enabled, the app will continue playing suggested content from the other podcasts you're following.

If something different is happening on your end, please send over a video of it and share your device's OS and Spotify version so we can investigate further.

We'll be on the lookout for your response.