App keeps playing podcasts I’m not following and don’t want to listen to.

[SylasG]

Plan

Premium Family

Country

United States

Device

iPhone XS Max

Operating System

iOS 16.3

My Question or Issue

My Spotify app keeps persistently playing this specific “Unwanted Fraternity” podcast at the end of what I’m listening to every single time one of my podcasts finishes playing.  I do not follow this podcast, I don’t subscribe to it, I never searched for it or played it intentionally.  But it keeps showing up as “Recommended Listening”, shows up in my “New Episodes” section, and plays by itself regularly.  I do not want to listen to this podcast!  But it keeps coming up as “playing recommended listening for you”.  Why?
I cannot find any method to stop this podcast from playing by itself in my app.  There’s no way to block it?

 I don’t understand why this show keeps getting forced onto me.  Someone please help?

[SylasG]

Hey @Naomib,

Thanks for keeping in touch.

Could you please give us the exact steps to reproduce the issue? We'd also need to know where you're starting the episode from. Is it from Your Episodes/ New Episodes/Home page/Podcast page? 

It's also a good idea to check if you have Autoplay turned on on your device. If you have it - try to turn it off and let us know what happens. More info on how to control Autoplay can be found here. 

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[BcLand]

When I'm listening to podcast while I work, several episodes will play, and then it automatically switches to a completely different podcast. Then I have to stop what im doing to go back to the podcast I was listening to. Its annoying and unnecessary. Play make it stop doing that. I don't want to have to use a different app to listen to the podcast I want to listen to without interruption.

[12101398995]

Any resolution to this?  Happening to me as well and is super annoying.

[Wrrick10]

It’s definitely the “auto play similar content” button in the “playback” section your settings. As soon as I disabled the toggle no longer auto played shows I followed in the past after episodes of podcasts I do follow ended.

[Drstrng3love]

When an episode ends on the current podcast I listen to ends the there's a chance that it will jump forward around 10 episodes or goes back to earlier episodes. The strange thing is that it normally progresses to the next episode correctly about 50% of the time. It has been progressively getting worse. I have spotify premium duo plan I'm which I am the main account holder and I use it on my Samsung S23. I have cleared the cache as well as turned off all options for auto playing similar content. I have no queued episodes and podcasts have no shuffle. 

[Fireworksr]

It's so frustrating. Episodes of shows I've never listened to by choice play after podcasts I follow finish an episode sometimes.

It really doesn't need steps to reproduce, episodes of podcasts I've rated as one star, never liked or followed and have finished any started episodes for (even though I never choose to listen to it in the first place) so there is no reason it should play except that the spotify algorithm plays things outside what you want sometimes and it sucks.

[1231775184]

honestly im about to stop using this app because im listening to true crime podcast, and instead of continuing to the next episode it throws in a completely different podcast than what im listening to. every time! and i cant stop it from doing this. i cant remove the podcast from my queue like you can with songs. i never followed these podcasts. never listening to a single episode. 

[1231775184]

why is this happening under my queue lists??? i did not want ANY OF THESE PODCASTS! please just keep playing the podcast that im on

[Güera]

Thanks for this. The only problem with that is, for podcasts that's awesome, but for music I actually prefer the autoplay-similar option. Hoping Spotify can offer us some additional options soon.

[Ash102]

Hi, I am in the UK, my children like listening to sleep music at night, lately they've been waking up in the middle of the night scared, because crime podcasts keep being played after the sleep music goes off I have nothing in my cue. I have never listened to crime or murder podcasts, I don't know how i can get it to stop, it's super frustrating!! I have gone to my recommended podcasts and said not interested in all the crime podcasts it's keeps recommending. My daughter is now terrified of being kidnapped, she is 8 and Is afraid to leave the house, instead of I am sitting there now until they fall asleep and making sure I turn Spotify off.

[Naomib]

You need to switch off auto play similar content. This was happening to me too, and this fixed it. There's a screenshot above. Poor kids, it's an annoying feature at best but this is awful for your little ones. 

[kathleen45]

This happens t me too and for shows I have never listened too. I tried marking the episodes as listened to and what would be helpful is a function to block a show so we don't have it pop up in the queue. It is super annoying. 

[Ihearttrains]

Is it possible to turn off the queue? It used to just play the next episode of one of the fallowed podcasts. Now you have to spend 10 minutes a day cleaning out this stupid queue. I’m about 3 seconds from canceling Spotify because between sports podcasts I’m really getting tired of Spotify trying to throw in some ww2/nazi nonsense podcast

[jefferyshall]

You want a short video of it happening? Like as proof? Have you not seen the 1000's of posts ALL OVER THE INTERNET on every possible platform complaining about this?!?

Pretty Damn simple to fix too, I don't know what the **bleep** Spotify is doing with all those developers on staff!!

Just add to the "three dot menu"

1. Don't play this podcast again

or

2. Remove this podcast from all queues and recommendations

They can call it whatever they want just give a damn way to STOP playing specific podcasts.

Oh and it probably wouldn't even be an issue if Spotify wasn't just randomly adding and playing podcasts, we never asked for, liked, search or clicked on, in the first place!

[Xavibear]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

Device

(iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy 9, Macbook Pro late 2016)

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

How do I stop podcasts that I don't follow from automatically playing?

[Diplfish]

This is happening to me too. But with The Pitch. We need a button to dislike or block podcasts we don't want. I'm paying for Family Premium, and this issue is enough to push me to another platform for Podcasts. I've switched before, and I will again if I'm stuck listening to something with no way to remove or skip it entirely. 

[brmehan]

I am having the same issue as well with a podcast that I've said "Enough, thanks..." . I've cleared caches, re-downloaded apps, logged in and out and in and out. It's ridiculous that this can be happening in 2024 when a simple "hide" button would suffice. 

[alicemeganmiller]

This has continuously gone on under my account for the last year. I'll be in the middle of listening to music and then 'BAM!' the Joe Rogan podcast begins blasting on my account. I've NEVER elected to list to listen to him, in fact, I don't care for his podcast in the slightest. This happened again this morning - worship queued up and bam. Here come Joe. It's slamming every episode of the podcast into my queue, not just single episode. My auto play has been turned off for years. I NEED A SOLUTION.

Can you remove his podcast from my account? 

[IE-FG]

Plan

Premium

Country

Ireland

Device

Samsung S21 Ultra

Operating System

Android 14

My Question or Issue

Over what may be the past 4 or 5 months, a bi-weekly podcast series (the creator of whom likely pays Spotify to 'bump' his listenership) appears in my New Episode listings.  I haven't opened those new episodes to listen, albeit I did open one, solely to rate the series one star (in the hope my negative rating would end Spotify's promotion of the podcast series to me).  However, nothing has changed and it's super annoying.  Can I block that podcast?  If that's not possible, Spotify should offer the option to subscribers, because on the face of it, you're p*ss*ng off subscribers (who collectively contribute far more monetarily to Spotify than any single content creator does).  Things are back to front in that respect, so please give subscribers better control ✊

[Flachmom]

I've unfollwed, removed from my library, and clicked the 'not interested' icon on several podcasts and they keep showing in my queue. Very bad user experience.