Accidentally Deleted 'Liked Songs' and associated 'Date Added' data

[Dill24]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States of America

Operating System

Windows 11

I’m not sure if this is more of a help request, an idea proposal, or a bit of a rant, but I’m frustrated by the way some things work—and have been for a while. Here’s the incident that finally pushed me to write this.

I really enjoy the desktop feature that tracks when a song was added—either to a playlist or to Liked Songs. I even maintain a public playlist called Liked Songs so I can share it if I want.
(Side note: why does the default Liked Songs playlist have fewer features? I can’t share it or organize it in a custom order.)

Earlier today, I noticed a song missing from my custom playlist, even though the song count matched my default Liked Songs.
I added the song to my custom playlist, but then realized there was still a discrepancy: 574 songs in my custom playlist vs. 573 in Liked Songs.

As many of you know, when you bulk-add songs to a playlist, Spotify pops up a message if any are already in it—letting you choose to add only new songs or add everything (creating duplicates).

Assuming the same logic would apply to Liked Songs, and in an attempt to discover the source of the discrepancy, I selected all songs in my custom playlist and clicked “Save to Liked Songs.” Big mistake—it unliked and re-liked every song, completely resetting my “Date Added” metadata and ruining the chronological order I’d curated for years.

Ctrl + Z didn’t help. Meanwhile, I was still listening to Spotify auto-play my old order—one that apparently no longer existed. I came across threads like here and there suggesting that Spotify Support might be able to restore Liked Songs to an earlier state.

I reached out to Support and attached a transcript (with personal info redacted) to this post. I want to say up front: I do think the advisor did their best with the tools available and genuinely tried to help. Unfortunately, the “Date Added” metadata couldn’t be restored, and the restore process itself briefly added an incorrect number of songs. We eventually got close to the original count, and I thanked the advisor since I could rebuild the list from my custom playlist anyway. Still, I’ll probably never know what caused that one-song discrepancy that started this whole mess.

I have since read threads like this one that suggest that the Date Added metadata can't be fixed in the first place. I decided to post here as a sort of last-ditch attempt to see if there's any further insight or help I could get. 

This might be getting beyond the scope of a help request and into the realm of idea suggestion but I feel compelled to add it here:

If removing songs from Liked Songs causes such permanent metadata loss, then:

1. Why is there no confirmation popup for unliking in some cases—especially on mobile?

2. Why is this data unrecoverable, even for Premium users or through internal tools?

When I unlike a song from Liked Songs by clicking or tapping the little checkmark, I do get a confirmation prompt. But if I locate the song from Search on mobile (e.g., to add it to a queue), the remove button is placed very close to “Add to Queue”—and there’s no prompt at all. And in my case today, no confirmation popup appeared even when removing hundreds of songs at once. It seems backward that a multi-song removal wouldn’t ask for confirmation when removing a single song does.

I’d appreciate any insight or help with this—from anyone who’s run into similar issues or knows more about how Spotify handles metadata.

Beyond that, I’d love advice on:

• Which parts of this should be split off into separate idea suggestions, and

• How I can support or upvote existing ideas if they already exist.

Thank you for any help or feedback, thank you to the rep who assisted, and thank you just for reading this.

[MihailY]

Hey @Dill24,

Thanks for reaching out. Appreciate the time you took to describe your issue and to look into the topic on your own and I'm sorry to hear about your experience.

While our colleagues from chat and email support can reset the contents of your Liked Songs playlist to a previous state, I'm afraid that it's indeed not possible to restore the Date added attribute due to some technical limitations in our internal tools.

Regarding your suggestions for a warning, there actually is one (see screenshot) when you try to delete two or more tracks at once using the Delete/Backspace buttons on desktop, however there isn't one when using the context menu and when removing songs on mobile, so I'll make sure your feedback reaches the relevant team at Spotify.

In the meantime, feel free to vote for these ideas on the topic and share your thoughts in the comments section:

• Restore Original “Date Added” When Re-Liking Songs in Liked Songs Playlist
• Confirmation Before Removing Song From Liked Songs

We're currently unable to implement the first one, however, systems and tools change and if/when this becomes possible, the feedback from users like you would be very valuable.

Once again, thank you for your effort in presenting your issue and don't hesitate to let us know if there's anything else you wish to address!