Random artists and albums appeared in my recently played

[Sinbaddylad]

Plan Family

Premium

Australian

Device

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

Operating System ALL

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

My Question or Issue

Tonight I have 8 completely random albums appeared in my ‘recently played’. I’ve never heard of the artists but more weirdly, if I google them or their albums, the only results are for Spotify or Amazon music. I’ve “liked” random songs from each artist, but I obviously haven’t. These artists just don’t exist.

the artists are:

Kjæle, Killian Joe, DeathSquad, Daniel Doxe, Exitos, Kim Max, Dean Connick. I. Don’t believe my account has been compromised as this appears to be a wider problem. Anyone else seeing the same issues?

[Mihail]

Hey @Sinbaddylad,

Thanks for reaching out.

In cases where users don't recognize content in their music library or recently played, it's a good idea to bookmark and follow the steps in this support page article as well as this one.

They feature some essential info regarding how to keep the safety of your account up-to-date. The steps in the first article under Passwords and Remove access to third-party apps are particularly useful since they'll help you make sure no one is accessing your Spotify through your credentials or other online services eventually linked with your account.

Hope this was helpful for you. If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[Sinbaddylad]

I haven’t been hacked and nobody guessed my password. This is a known issue when you look through the community. This is a targeted attack into Spotify. If one of the artists were known I’d understand, but they were. Nearly all songs have the same duration, all instrumental.

What are Spotify going to do about this?

[Mihail]

Hey @Sinbaddylad,

Thanks for getting back to us.

We appreciate the time you took to report this and have passed on the info to the relevant department. We take security matters very seriously and they will have a closer look into this. In the meantime we do recommend that you follow the instructions in the articles posted above, just as an extra security measure.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[Sinbaddylad]

It’s happened again. After logging out of all devices, password has been changed twice, completely random password. This time a new family member “DO NOT REMOVE” was added along with 8 new albums/artists. None exist according to Google. This is not a hack at my level. Even I don’t know my password this time as it was randomly generated.

Spotify is planting albums for listeners, that’s all I can say.

[Mihail]

Hey @Sinbaddylad,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

The behavior you're describing indicates that there's still unwarranted access to your account from other people. We advise you to change also the passwords of your email address and all services and apps connected with your Spotify account. You should also run a thorough scan of all your devices for malicious software and follow all steps in both articles posted above.

If that doesn't fix things you can you can contact our Customer Support team for further assistance.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on how it goes.  

[Sinbaddylad]

It’s very disappointing that the support team offered nothing other than I’d been hacked. No proof. None of my linked accounts have been compromised and my Spotify password has been changed multiple times this week. No explanation of my 28 albums appeared in my recently played list tonight, none of the albums exist (again) when Googled. I asked for the details of the 3 family members who had been added and was told the details don’t exist. I asked for it to be escalated and investigated and they closed the chat window.

This is a known issue when you look through the community pages. Clearly Spotify are being hacked regularly and people are having albums which are being promoted by Spotify added to their lists.

I’m off to Apple Music now. See ya !

[crunchy_piano]

Personally, I think it's a glitch for me. I didn't even know the artist's name; I only knew one song by them ("Team"), which I rarely listen to. It's literally the only song I know by them and the artist is always on my recently listened even though the playlist the song is on I barely play anymore and I rarely hear the song anymore either. Idk. 

[OscarDC]

Hey @crunchy_piano,

Welcome to the Community and thank you for joining the conversation.

The Spotify app only suggests new songs as recommendations and is based on your listening history most of the time. If the app starts playing a song or artist you didn't recognize, we'd first recommend checking if you have the Enhance feature activated as this feature adds some recommendations to your playlist based on the type of track, genre or artist.

In case it's not activated, it could be related to the play queue as well. Sometimes, you can add an entire album or playlist to the queue by mistake. In this case, we'd recommend clearing the play queue by following the steps mentioned in this article.

However, if neither of the options mentioned previously appears to be affecting your playback, it's possible that someone has accessed your account without your permission. If you already performed the security process mentioned in this article, since we don't have access to users accounts, we'd recommend contacting our Customer support directly so they can check the account and help you further.

Hope this helps. If you have any additional questions, don't hesitate to ask.