[All Platforms] Consolidate duplicates

[Kerumen]

It would be nice if Spotify can recognize identical songs to avoid duplicates in your Liked songs and playlists.

This is pretty common for songs released first as a single then within an album.

For example, if you like the single one, the UI will not show the song as liked when you browse the album. And if you like the song in the album, you'll end up with a duplicated version in your library.

This also happens a lot for songs that you listen in Daily Mix or Discover weekly. If it's not the exact same song you have already liked before, the UI is inconsistent and you can save a duplicate.

Apparently, there is already an internal merge mechanism as the play counter is not split between the different versions of the songs. Maybe this can also be used to consolidate the UI.

Repost of https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Your-Music-Remove-Duplicated-Songs/idi-p/4546787 which didn't get enough kudos.

[UndeadWaffle101]

Is there no way to overwrite the metadatas with songs that have the exact same info as the duplicates so this issue doesn't happen? It's so annoying especially since both versions are still technically on the app. Lately there have been so many times where this has happened to me where a song or a FULL ALBUM I know I have liked shows up in a Daily mix or the AI DJ but shows I don't have it liked. I go to the artist, see I have the song liked but that this is another version of the same exact song again. This issue is clearly not "Solved" and I feel like it should be a priority as it makes Spotify seem a bit amateurish of a platform.

This is such an annoying and bad bug especially if we have premium and download the songs because this means Spotify may play the non-downloaded version of the song using our cellular data and playing at a lower quality. Not to mention re-liking the song can result to duplicates of the same song in your likes or just removing the history of when you either first liked it or discovered it, putting it back to the top of your likes.

Additionally, if there's a "deluxe" version or alternate version of an album, Spotify should take a note from competitors books and make it so there's just "one" version of the song so it likes all versions of that song into one. Utilize the database and metatags, identify songs from an artist that have the same name and just merge them all into one. Make it smart, use the technology like you are for the DJ!

It's such an annoying bug and I'm so tired of this happening over and over again for years now and would love if it can be focused on a bit more. Thank you. 

[NekoJash]

I would love to see this implemented. I have so many songs as duplicates in my playlists.

[mw0]

The duplicate tracks/releases are a huge issue on Spotify. It's particularly frustrating given the fact that Spotify is clearly dealing with it on their end (by consolidating the play counts), but they're not dealing with it on the user end. This leads to so much confusion when trying to determine if I've already "liked" a song. If I liked a song on one version of the album, that needs to be represented on whatever version of the album is currently appearing. This is a music platform, we need to be able to organize our music libraries without worrying about an album being re-uploaded multiple times to Spotify due to whatever's going on with the distribution side of things. It's really terrible design.

[Chaosrider1]

They don´t care. Hasn´t been fixed till now.

[phts]

Here is an app, which can find liked tracks/albums which do not exist anymore, and let you at least fix them manually.

https://github.com/phts/spotify-phantom-liked-tracks

For example it found:

> [https://open.spotify.com/track/3HzWxmvpQU3QHQ59zw1X4V] Black Sabbath - Heaven and **bleep** - 2009 Remaster
! Track "Heaven and **bleep** - 2009 Remaster" belongs to the album [https://open.spotify.com/album/0Dj2B19o99FcJii6aPvMTr] which does not exist in the artist [https://open.spotify.com/artist/5M52tdBnJaKSvOpJGz8mfZ]
! Possibly suppressed by:
   "Heaven & **bleep** (Deluxe Edition)" [https://open.spotify.com/album/4a5cLDpHPzyFkJs8DnzRNQ]
   "Heaven & **bleep**" [https://open.spotify.com/album/46gHYWaRr052RGEiL5Dg7T]

Welcome!

[quailamity]

Hello! 

I noticed for some of my songs in my playlist, they have the green checkmark that indicates it is liked and in a playlist, but when I look them up in "Search," they do not have the checkmark at all and it is just the plus sign. This sometimes makes me accidentally add the song again when I try to look thinking I don't have it saved. This occurs both on the mobile app and the desktop app (though I at least can look up if I already have the song on the desktop app since I do not have premium). I included pictures as reference. Maybe I'm being dumb but could someone provide an explanation of why this might occur and/or any fixes? Thanks!

[Joan]

Hi there @quailamity,

Thanks for reaching out, we'll gladly help clear out any confusion about this. It's possible that the different paths are taking you to different versions of the same song, hence why sometimes it appears as likes and sometimes it doesn't. You can try copying the links to the different ones and comparing them. If they are different, then that's the reason. If the link is the same, but the checkmark is still inconsistent, please let us know so we can look into this for you.

Hope this clears things up.

[hiro64]

Sad that this remains a problem more than 10 years after a few of the comments here!

[EnigmaticEffigy]

This is one of Spotify's major user experience issues that has been a pain for over a decade. Spotify does not care about its listeners, both paid and unpaid.

I'm seriously considering abandoning the platform because of this and numerous other issues that stay unresolved and unanswered.

[banankakan]

I also have had this issue for at least a few months. That is when I noticed it. I wanted to make a post about it but since this was here I will just leave a comment,

anyways, this only affects songs that were added to playlists at least 8 years ago, or that have been in my liked playlist for a VERY long time. I have used Spotify since closed beta, and I still have my starred playlists. 

i have nit added all of those songs to Liked mainly because I am unable to add that many songs at once, and I don’t really listen to that music today anyways so it is no problem. 

still, I have maybe 15k songs from that era in the Starred playlists or other playlists made at the time. 

i suspect that anything added to a playlist before the new system launched is not counted and so no checkbox displays. 

i also noted that if I go to a page, like The Offspring, I ser I have 42 liked songs. I look at thise songs and then back out and go to the album, and none if the songs have a checkmark. So it even affects songs added to liked long ago. I have 32k liked songs, so it may be an issue with having too large a library, but honestly I think it is ridiculous that you should be unable to have a large library organized effectively (I don’t think this is intentional, but that is the effect it has, and I have considered to transfer services after 10+ years)

it is possible these albums have been deleted and readded or replaced or something, but I doubt that has happened to The Offspring, and they seem to link to the same album. There is no other version of it.

Offspring page:

 After clicking ”Ypu liked” on the Offspring page:

 After going in to the album: