Massive discrepancy between API saves and artist reporting.

[ponny]

I've saved a track and album for 711 users but it doesn't seem to be visible in the artist reporting UI.  The artist had a some saves beforehand so it should be nearly 800 now but their UI only shows about 400.

There seems to be something going wrong with the API or the reporting.  Maybe it's some kind of anti-bot protection?  I've saved an album twice (via me/albums) and the track (it's a single) once (via me/tracks).  I've also double-checked using their API (via me/albums/contains?ids=) that the save was successful for each user.   

Happy to have a chat with someone from Spotify if they need more details.

[ponny]

Just got this again.  Difference of several thousand this time.

[ohej]

Thanks for reporting this issue. We have filed a report with the team and will get back to you as soon as we can.

[ponny]

Thanks @ohej!

I've gone through via the API again via /me/tracks/contains this morning and checked the followers.  Here's the state of things as reported by the API:

Saved: 4983

Not Saved: 552

Access Revoked: 138

Other errors: 7 (gateway timeouts etc)

I've attached the graph of our requests from when we saved the album and track too:

Graph of requests

Despite all this, the "Artist Support" for that user has confirmed that their track only has 303 saves.  Something definitely doesn't add up.  Hopefully all this info helps. 

[ponny]

Any update on this one? The artist was really disappointed.

[ohej]

Hi

We've reviewed this from multiple angles with the teams both on the artist and API side. 

Essentially we have not been able to identify any issues. From what we see on the 20th there was added 5k+ saves which were processed correctly and does indeed show up on the artist page. Please keep in mind that you can't expect real time updates between adding the saves via the WebAPI and the artist dashboard. When inspecting the artist we do indeed see the numbers lining up. 

If this issue persists the best course of action is to report this via artist support since they will be able to provide more insight into when data is updated via the artist pages. 

[ponny]

We sent through the track saves on the 20th and on the 22nd/23rd (timezones are tricky) the artist was still seeing the 303 saves and Spotify's Artist Support confirmed that was the correct number.  I wouldn't expect real time data either but *several days* seems a bit much.  Are you able to check what kind of timeframe is considered 'normal'?

This was raised with Artist Support but they just said the lower number was correct and in the words of the artist, "they tend to deflect anything related to their API pretty hard".

The artist is doing another set of saves in the next few days so I guess we'll see what kind of delay is happens there.