My playlist songs change every now and then

[Lurkers]

Plan

Premium

Country

Brazil

Device

(Custom PC, Samsung J7 Prime)

Operating System

(Windows 10, Android 8.1)

My Question or Issue

Every 5 or 6 months around 3 or more songs change on their own my playlists. Sometimes a normal version becomes a karaoke version, or change to any other song with the same name.

Its my own playlists. I'm not using anyone else's. Not sure whats happening.

Has this ever happened with any of you?

[Lurkers]

I take it back: This time many songs were changed! It wasn't around 3. Why this happens? I can go and replace those for the original ones, but this is a dealbreaker! I can't trust Spotify with my playlists!

[Vasil]

Hey @Lurkers,

We're very sorry to see this has happened to you. It is definitely not expected behaviour.
Would you mind sharing the songs that are getting switched so we can take a closer look :?
Also make sure nobody else is added as a collaborator to the said playlists so that only you can have access to edit them.

We'll be on the lookout for your response.

Thanks!

[Lurkers]

Hello,
For example, this song:

Note that it has the same "Date Added" as the ones around it, except for Ironic. But now it's a "

Also this one:

The "Like Only a Woman Can" has the same date as the ones around it, but it's now a Karaoke song.

This:

Song 40: "Blood on the Dance Floor". Look at the date added. But listen to this song. It's no song. It's just a guy talking in some foreign language for 1:45. Song 39 is the correct song that I added but left this one there for you to see.

This also got replaced:

This one too:

By the "Date Added" you can see no one just replaced them. Even if I had other people using my PC/celphone, which I don't, they couldn't just replace songs without changing the "Date Added".

I also have no apps installed on Spotify:

This is the thread link for the last time this happened:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Songs-on-playlists-being-automatically-replaced/m-p/53...

I then contacted your support via email as instructed on the posts, and after several emails they finally said the problem was the apps I had at the time.

I asked them about the "Date Added", but they said its still possible. I removed all apps, but it kept happening but usually just one song every now and then. But now again, several songs at once.

Thanks for your help,
Ed

[Vasil]

Hey @Lurkers!

This detailed info was indeed appreciated. Thanks a lot!
It seems to us you've used an external playlist as the basis for this one.
It's likely you didn't have the original version of these songs in your playlist from the start and the file got changed.

Would you mind creating a test playlist, specifically constructed within the Spotify app, solely consisting of official releases from verified artists?
I'm curious if they would end up getting changed like the other ones do. But if they don't then the abovementioned is the most likely cause.

Keep us posted!
Thanks 🙂
 

[Lurkers]

Hello Vasil.

This proposed test could take several months! And it's gonna require me to build a very large playlist and keep listening to it often to memorize the songs on it.

Also, about "you didn't have the original version of these songs from the start": The songs I had were available on Spotify with the name of the original artist and their album. Same on the last time it happened. If somehow they weren't the originals, they then get changed by a Karaoke song? Or by a guy speaking for about 1 minute? That's not even a song at all. I thought that when songs on my playlist become unavailable on Spotify they just get grayed out. That happened to me in the past.

Question: Can you look at your logs when those songs got changed/replaced anyhow? Or when I even changed/added songs on my playlists?

Thanks,

Ed

[Yordan]

Hi @Lurkers!

It's possible that the app you used to transfer the playlist to Spotify had added the wrong versions of the songs in the playlist, since both have a similar name. Most likely the service was searching for the songs' names / artists and adding the first suggested result it could find to your playlist on Spotify, be it the version you wanted or not.

Songs you manually add to the playlist won't change unless the artist (or label) decides to take them down temporarily, thus making them unavailable (greyed out). It's also worth noting that while highly unlikely, if a song is removed entirely from Spotify, a new one could theoretically take its place and share the same URI.

As for a workaround, we'd recommend copying the playlist's current contents (using Ctrl + A to select all items, then Ctrl + C to copy them) into a new one. You can replace the wrong versions of the songs with the correct ones manually.

Hope this clears things up. Cheers!

[Lurkers]

Hi Yordan.

Look at this:

This song also changed. The very first song of my Bossa Nova playlist.

I listen to this Bossa Nova playlist quite often. The first song was Djavan, "Flor de Lis (Ao Vivo)". Now it's some instrumental version of the song without vocals from Luiz Avellar. I LOVE Djavan and LOVE that Flor de Lis (Ao Vivo) song, so much that I put it on the very top of my Bossa Nova playlist. No, it was NOT the wrong song before. It was a song from the artist Djavan, and it was exactly this one:

https://open.spotify.com/track/3XFDArxkofBMOLrc1sW0ER

If you change one tiny bit of this song I can identify it right away because I've been listening to this song since I was a teenager. Maybe it was from a different album, but yes, it was that exact song. Every soundwave of it was the same.

If the app that imported my iTunes playlists got the wrong version for this song when I used it, I replaced it for the right version very quickly. I did this for many songs this app imported. It got incorrect versions, so I went on those playlists song by song to replace the wrong ones because I love those iTunes playlists and had them for almost 2 decades. They have been a part of my life and it's hard to imagine having wrong songs in there.

So, you said: "Most likely the service was searching for the songs' names / artists and adding the first suggested result it could find to your playlist on Spotify, be it the version you wanted or not." Believe me: It was the version I wanted in that playlist before. I had listened to this Bossa Nova playlist many many times after I switched to Spotify. Anything wrong with it I would be able to identify right away, specially with the 1st song! If the app that I used got a version that's not the one I wanted, I replaced it on that date: Jun 21, 2021.

Two other things:

1) Note the periodicity it's happening. I imported my iTunes playlists to Spotify on June 21, 2021. 1st time this problem happened was on November 21, 2021. Exactly 5 months later. Now, it happened again ~6 months later. And it always happens with all songs at once. It's not slowly song by song. So maybe it's some periodic Spotify event, maintenance or cleanup. Maybe the 1st time this Spotify event happened was ~1 month before June 21, 2021, so that's why the 1st time it happened to me was just 5 months later and not 6.

2) You mentioned this Control+A, Control+C workaround, but it might not work. You also said that if a song is removed from Spotify, another one can take its URI. So, it will share the same link. Copying and pasting won't work. Maybe that's what happening. The URI's don't change, but the songs in them do. Also, every now and then I add songs to these playlists or change songs order. Having to do this everytime will not be pleasant, specially to just having a chance of working.

3) Look at this:

On my Hits playlist, 2 songs got grayed out:

Song 12: Laid so Low, from Tears for Fears

And song 49: How Can I Go On, from Freddie Mercury

On my Oldies playlist, also 2 songs got grayed out:

Song 6: Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head, from B.J. Thomas

And song 70: The Second Time Around, from Shalamar

On my Country playlist, 1 song got grayed out:

Song 57: Nothing, from Zac Brown Band

On my Brasil Pop playlist, 1 song got grayed out:

Song **bleep**: O Astronalta de Mármore - Ao Vivo, Nenhum de Nós

And more grayed out songs from 80's, MPB, and other playlists.

I'm not sure they were grayed out before. Was this part of this theoretical periodic Spotify event?

Regards,

Ed

[Yordan]

Hey @Lurkers,

Sorry for the delayed reply.

Has this happened again recently? If yes, then please share the following so we can investigate further:

• The affected playlist's link.
• The link to the song that's currently in the playlist.
• The link to the correct song that should've been in the playlist.
• A rough estimate (including the date) to when the change happened.

As for the greyed out songs, they're probably temporarily unavailable in your region.  As much as we'd love to have all the music in the world on Spotify, the content may vary over time and between countries. This depends on permissions from rights holders, so it's not always up to Spotify to choose which versions of songs / albums should be available.

We'll be on the lookout for your reply.

Take care.

[Lurkers]

Hello Yordan.

Well, I'm doing something: I'm slowly fixing my songs playlist by playlist, setting Like to my favorite ones, and once each playlist gets completely fixed I'm saving both the list (songs URI with CTRL+A / CTRL+C) and screenshots. About half are done, but since this only happens every 6 months there's time to do them all.

If this happens again and I can confirm with these saved lists and screenshots it's indeed an issue on Spotify's side and not on my side, I'm moving to Youtube Music.

I can understand the grayed songs. Yes, its not fun, but its understandable (as long as this stays small).

Thanks for your help