Rap genre contains only a small list of popular playlists in Ukraine

[romaniv]

Plan

Premium

Country

Ukraine

Device

Lenovo Legion Y530, Samsung Galaxy S9

Operating System

Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS, Android 10

My Question or Issue

If I go to the Rap genre on Spotify, it shows only a section with the popular playlists, which somehow contains only a few of them. The sections with All-Time Best Releases and Latest Releases are not shown at all. I know that USA subscription contains all these three sections, and the list of popular playlists is huge there. But for Ukrainian subscription, it lacks all of this. I'm a big fan of rap music and it's quite disappointing the Rap genre page is so poor of content. I don't understand the reason to do this and hope it will be fixed.

[romaniv]

UPD: This problem is actually still present and nobody gave me any response.

[Elena]

Hey there @romaniv,

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community!

Apologies for the delayed response, we just came across this thread.

As we haven’t seen any similar reports about this, could you let us know if you’re still having troubles with this?

If you are, can you let us know if you've already tried to log out > restart your device > log back in? It's also a good idea to try a clean reinstall to clear any old files that might be causing issues.

Screenshots of what you see in the Rap genre in browse will be very helpful to our investigation as well.

Keep us in the loop here.

[romaniv]

Yeah, I've already tried the steps you provided above. But nothing changes.
Here I provide the screenshot of what I see on the Hip Hop page.

[Alex]

Hi @romaniv,

Thanks for your reply and the screenshot.

Since Spotify launched in Ukraine only recently, the music recommendations in the Genre section will slowly be filled up. This is due to licensing constraints, as not all albums/artists are available for streaming in every region. We recommend keeping your app up to date, because the music availability gets updated and increased regularly. 

Hope you find this info useful.

[romaniv]

Actually, I don't think this is related to the licensing staff. I listen to many American rappers, I mean really many of them. And I haven't found any unavailable artist or album yet.

So the problem is not with the availability of songs, but with the missing New Releases section under the Rap genre. This section doesn't exist at all.

So if I want to check new rap releases, I can't do it on Spotify. Instead, I should visit a third-party service and find that information there. Then, when I search that new album on Spotify, it is available and I can listen to it.

So why can't Spotify provide this information to me? Especially if this functionality is already present for other regions. This just doesn't make sense at all. And I'm sure it can be easily fixed.

[romaniv]

So, is it going to be fixed or I can switch to another service? This is like a basic functionality that is missing for Ukrainian users. And it's really strange because other streaming platforms offer this.

Just let me know, so I can decide which service I should stick with.

[Jeremy]

Hey there @romaniv,

Thank you for your post. 

Can you let us know which version of the app you have?

We want all the world’s music and podcasts on Spotify, but availability can vary over time and between countries, depending on the permissions from rights holders.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Cheers!

[romaniv]

I use the iOS version 8.5.84

[Jeremy]

Hey there @romaniv,

Thank you for your post. We're sorry for the delayed reply. We just came across this thread.

We want all the world’s music on Spotify, but availability can vary over time and between countries, depending on the permissions from rights holders.

We add new content to Spotify every day, so if you can’t find something you’re looking for right now, it may appear (or reappear) soon.

If you have any questions we're always one reply away.

Cheers!

[Den_dp]

So my vision is - Spotify thinks that people in Ukraine have very special expectations about the New Releases tab under the Hip-Hop section (which is mistaken) and that's why we don't see it.

By "mistaken" I mean the fact that New Releases for hip-hop is just a collection of new releases from a variety of worldwide artists, and in general this page is equally the same for most of the world.

Also, I did an investigation and found, that Spotify in some European countries and Russia already have this page visible/enabled (can be found in Browse > Hip-Hop > New Releases), and, interestingly, It contains exactly the same artists as the New Releases for the USA.

So if the Hip-Hop > New Releases page works as-is for Europe, Russia, and the USA, why it can't be enabled for Ukraine?

To address this question I created this idea https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Make-New-Releases-on-the-genres-page-available-for-Ukrai... so feel free to vote and share 😳