Duplicate album/songs?

[Liam1310]

Problem:

If I like a song/number of songs from an album, then a few weeks later if I browse to the album from the artist's page, the songs do not show as liked.

However, if I go to my "Liked Songs" or followed "Artists" page, I see the songs as liked, and can navigate to the album, which shows the songs as liked... 

It's almost as though the original album I liked the songs on has been replaced by a new version on the artist's page.

It's really strange and quite annoying.  Happens to me a lot.

[moonblob]

This is my biggest bugbear with Spotify and seems to be occurring more frequently. It's really poor UX.

[Mihail]

Hey @Liam1310 and @moonblob,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

Currently the app identifies a song by both its name and the album it's part of. Because of this if a track appears on multiple albums, e.g. in two different versions of the album, it won't be recognized as a duplicate. It seems however that other users have also requested this to be changed and they've created this idea. You can add your support there by up-voting the idea. We'll inform on any developments there, as soon  as there are any. So make sure to subscribe, if you haven't already. 

You can also post the Spotify URI's of both the liked and unlinked versions a couple of songs you have in mind and we'll be happy to take a closer look. That way we can double check if you're experiencing a case of the scenario above.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[Liam1310]

Thanks Mihail,

That idea you shared seems different though,  I think they are talking about a song that appears on a single/EP as well as on an album.

My problem is when a song appears in my library as "liked", but not when I browse to the album through the artist's page. 

So it looks like I haven't liked it when I go via the artist's page.

Below I've attached the URIs for Jamie xx's Loud places, from the album In Colour.  

The album appears to be the same, there's only one version on the artist's page.

Liked version:

spotify:track:0Sl8C9oeS3b5Kv9bSvTPDr

Not Liked version:

spotify:track:1jy7SkRcmBCTcv4ZMtwz29

[moonblob]

Hi Mihail, 

As Liam points out, that's not quite the same issue – I'm experiencing the same thing as he is. 

I have noticed that in some cases the difference between two albums has been as insignificant (to a user) as the copyright. 

But sometimes I can't see a difference at all, as per these examples:

Original liked track – spotify:track:3comBhxjhdk133y7d1hI1n
Recently liked track – spotify:track:4dT9ieu9LwGqst9CT29TCm

Cheers,

Sam

[Mihail]

Hey @Liam1310 and @moonblob,

Thanks for getting back to us with the examples.

Your assumption is correct and this can happen when an album gets reuploaded by the distributors. If they have different metadata or URIs, the app will check backstage to link to the accurate track, but it will currently miss to transfer the liked status to the newer version. We've provided guidelines to distributors of what they can do to keep tracks fully in sync and basically overwrite old versions, but we know this is something that occurs.

We've made sure to pass your feedback and the examples you provided to the developer team, but we can't say if and when exactly this will be fixed. For now we can suggest to replace the "old" track in the liked songs with the new one and we'll keep working on improving this experience moving forward.

Hope this shines a bit of light on the matter. We'll be here if you have any other questions.