[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.

[Joan]

Hi @banankakan,

Thanks for the detailed reply. There could indeed be an issue here, but the evidence for now is circumstantial and inconclusive. So that we can see if indeed the same songs are not appearing correctly, could you please copy the links from both places - where the song does and conversely does not appear as liked - and compare them? To be sure, send them to us here so we can have a look. 

Keep us posted.

[karhu]

This is still incredible frustrating, and would love if Spotify was able to work on it ! devs ❤️

[davideric]

You guys should add a "View Duplicate Songs" link to the top of each playlist, particularly the ones which are more than 100 songs long. You deal with alerting people of EXACT duplicates before you add them, but there are countless number of versions of the same song even by the same artist which aren't caught by your "duplicate catcher". In order to remedy this, and quickly illuminate duplicate songs in your playlists, you should have a link or button at the top of the larger playlists which allow you to search for any duplicate song titles, especially by the same artist (though you might offer the option to loosen the search to only duplicate song titles to ensure you get them all). This would make it easier for us to remove all the truly duplicate songs which aren't being caught by your duplicate catcher which only catches the "exact same recording".

[jannington]

Lol @ seeing the first post being from 2014. Spotify doesn't care, or their backend is such a tangled mess they don't want to chew on it.

This is likely a separate issue, but I'm also seeing duplicate tracks in my Liked Songs from the same album (same release, not a re-release).

No idea how this is even possible? 

[conordcallaghan]

I feel like either im on the crazy pills or this is a MASSIVE problem for a music service that is supposed to make organizing your library easier

EVERY SINGLE TIME i search a song that is in my liked songs, The song on the artist's page is not saved.

Take Kanye West - I have almost all of his songs saved. When i look at his discography, some albums say I havent saved a single song. I go back to my library, they are there.

I dont know WHY this is happening, but I can tell you how mind boggingly frustrating it makes keeping track of your library.

If i want to add a song to my library that i think i dont have, i have to look at my library, THEN search it on spotify. There is a complete disconnect between what my library says i have saved and what your library says i have saved

this means I CAN NO LONGER USE ARTIST PAGES TO SEE WHICH SONGS I HAVE SAVED. I feel like if i was in charge of an app that claims to keep track of music i would be very very very concerned about this

I dont know how many years ive had spotify but this is enough to make me consider getting apple. I am so tired of something that should take two seconds being doubled because you guys cannot figure out how to make ONE VERSION OF AN OFFICIAL ALBUM

please please please please please look into this. This should not happen on the biggest streaming platform in the universe

[davideric]

Well, at least someone is working on consolidating feedback/suggestions into one thread!  That's a start... to see how many people really are requesting a particular feature.

As far as putting a link at the top of a playlist to search for songs with the same name, well, that's a painfully easy computer script to write if you know how to program a computer. I'm not saying there won't be bugs to work out after you write it, but at least start the pilot phase and start getting feedback on how it's working.

Insisting on perfectionism is the biggest barrier to taking action to improve things.  Just label features accordingly, and customers will at least see that feature is "in the works".  

[Lanciano007]

I have the same kind of issues for months...and there are posts on this Community that also have opposite experiences about songs they didn't add anywhere, but do get green spots behind them. You can read my post about this issue here where I was advised to go by moderators to get help:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Community-Blog/The-Heart-button-is-being-replaced-with-a-Plus-butto...

Reading your experiences, I have a feeling It could be connected/related with this issue below in a thread from the same period...(started when the green spots arrived and broke hearts and partially the connections between Your Library, Searchbar, Discography and maybe more...) 

I have and had both issues...This issue got fixed and I think the solution for this one has to be sought in the same direction.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Only-playing-first-song-of-an-album-on-Discography-Vie...

[banankakan]

Appears as liked on artists page when you click You Liked: https://spotify.link/xjr7yTeA4Jb

The one that is in my Liked if I search for it within liked: https://spotify.link/6kXlyylA4Jb.

same song, different link. I guess that explains it. I am not sure why they are different links tho? On their page there is only one version of the album (there is a rerelease but it even has different album cover, impossible to confuse). Is this a case of an album being removed and the. Reuploadeed and thus the link changing? 

i noticed it with Aphex Twin - Syro as well, but I already readded it so I can’t compare the links sadly. It had vanished from one of my playlists and I had to readd it again. I understand this is kind of hard to avoid with streaming, but it is a bit annoying for some users (like me 🙂)

sirry for the late reply, I had turned off email notifications apparently

Edit: the one that appears if you just click on the album: https://spotify.link/wHfTX4NA4Jb

that’s three different links for the same album. I am confused

[Lanciano007]

@Banankakan

The third link you posted has a slightly different album cover (released june 17th 2008)....  https://spotify.link/wHfTX4NA4Jb

And I can't find the other album cover in their Discography list (from your first 2 links, released june 13th 2008) ...it doesn't exist there...and also when I search for the album in the searchbar it doesn't exist. The Album is unfindable, apparently only findable via Liked songs.

https://spotify.link/xjr7yTeA4Jb

https://spotify.link/6kXlyylA4Jb.

There's another thing I notice now: When I press Play for songs on my desktop player, some songs have a delay of a fraction of a second before playing the song. In the meantime I see that these songs don't have the green spot but a fraction of a second later their Album cover changes, the song get's a green spot and starts playing.

Unfortunately this still doesn't happen with the songs that don't get/have the green spot while they should, like the two examples I gave above...Goldkimono and Patrice Rushen...and many more. Seems their links with the green spots are broken.

[MiG93]

I listen a lot of songs but i notice recently that i have a lot of double sometimes they have little different by the artist or this is a different version so it is ok but sometimes the same song from different albums but still same play again and again so i would like something to remove all these double and enjoy my music with less repetitions