Websites/Apps using stats from API are inaccurate

[ice__spider]

Plan

Student

Country

US

Device

iPhone 12

Operating System

iOS

My Question or Issue

This is something I’ve been noticing within the past couple of days from the user end, along with all of the dozen other spotify and third-party website users that I’ve asked. There’s an inconsistency in the data on Spotify stats provided by third-party websites like StatsForSpotify, Receiptify, SpotifyPie, Musicalyst, etc when it comes to each website’s “Top Songs of All Time” ranking using information from the Spotify API.

Specifically, there are songs that do not make sense filling the Top Songs of all time lists for me and everyone I have consulted. Songs that I know I have listened to a lot more are not even on the list, while songs I haven’t listened to as much (including songs that have only been out for a handful of weeks) are now up at the top - and this just doesn’t make sense. These songs match more to what has been listened to most in the past 4 weeks-6 months rather than “all time,” yet it’s consistent among third party websites. 

I’m no expert, but I am a little bit tech savvy with a lot of common sense. I figured that it’s unlikely that all these different websites all made the same exact mistake at the same time, so the issue has to be with Spotify’s end - have any chunks of data been accidentally deleted recently or excluded from access by the API? Is the API working differently? 

I reached out to Spotify support messages and was referred to post here. Let me know if anyone knows what’s going on, because while it’s not very important to me if my 2024 Wrapped gets messed up because of issues with (possibly missing?) data, it IS important to me if issues with data affects some artists’ success or livelihoods. 

[nscp1]

I looked at my own stats and can agree that the numbers are very funky and incorrect. Hoping they can fix this!

[zoe334455]

I don't have any information about why this is happening, but I can confirm it is also happening to myself and a couple friends of mine that I had check their stats. The good news for you is that I requested my extended streaming data from Spotify and it's all intact, meaning your Spotify data and therefore your Wrapped will likely be fine. 

It seems like the long_term (and maybe medium_term and short_term) time_range has changed recently for the Get User's Top Items call to the Spotify Web API. In the past, developer websites that make this type of call would give the user their all time data (i.e. from the account's creation) but now the documentation clearly states that the long_term time period only encompasses the past year. 

If there was a change to the API, I'm surprised we can't find any information about it anywhere. Hope someone else can provide additional info on this! 

[akupac]

Me too, i found very strange in the moment, and now I know why.

[ice__spider]

That’s the best explanation I’ve heard in days! Thank you! 

[Cheese_Dad]

same

[Ximzend]

Maybe they changed "all time" to "in the past year" at the backend.