Spotify unliking songs on its own when I like them

[Fakename70]

“I’ve had a similar, but no less annoying issue. I have 2 playlists, both are/were complete live albums and individual  live tracks, as I deliberately curated them maybe as far back as a decade ago. 
For at least the last several months, I’ve noticed Spotify has taken the liberty of adding individual studio tracks that I guess they think I might like to my playlists as if they’re doing me a favour that I never asked for. 
How can I get rid of said tracks - I use Spotify only in the car when I’m driving and can’t fiddle about with editing my playlists on-the-fly - and how can I prevent Spotify from doing this? Does it happen because I use the Free version?”

[Yordan]

Hi, @Fakename70,

Thanks for joining the thread!

In general, Spotify will indicate if a song is suggested and not directly from your playlist. Check out the screenshots below for more info on what to look for.

Spoiler

Playing from your playlist.A suggested song due to the playlist having less than 15 songsPlaying recommended content from AutoplayPlaying a manually queued song.

Some features that may add suggested content are:

• Autoplay - generates a new queue of similar songs/episodes when your current one ends. More info on how to disable it in the linked article.
• Smart Shuffle - shuffles recommended content that matches your playlist's vibe alongside your regular tracks. This is the default playback method for free users on the mobile app in certain regions.
• Playlists with less than 15 songs - if your playlist has less than 15 songs, Spotify will automatically add similar content to increase its duration. You can bypass this by adding more songs to your playlist.

Another thing that might be causing this are leftover tracks in the queue from a previous listening session - if you listened on the desktop app or on the Web Player, you might have manually added songs to the queue. You can use the desktop app or the Web Player again to remove them by following the steps here.

Lastly, if none of the above matches what's happening on your end, it's possible that some songs have been reuploaded as studio versions under the same URI. In any case, feel free to share links to the songs & playlists you're having issues with, along with a screenshot from your point of view so we can take a closer look.

Cheers 🤘

[Fakename70]

This is a screenshot from 1 of my 2 playlists, both of which have been manually-selected by me to specifically include ONLY live recordings. The screenshot shows studio tracks added to this playlist by Spotify. 

Each playlist - 1 is actually titled “Live Albums” - is supposed to be completely live additions. I have not ever knowingly manually added any studio track to either playlist. Yet, because of Spotify I’m having to scroll each one - comprised of at least 10,000 songs - and delete what they’ve added without my consent. 

[Joan]

Hi @Fakename70,

Thanks for the reply.

Just to confirm, when a song is "replaced" within your playlists, is the original version (or live version as it were) still available in the app or not? If they aren't, then this is most likely a case of where an unavailable version is substituted for an available one. If the live version that got removed is still there, then we'll gladly look into this further.

The screenshots you sent were actually from the Liked Songs. and not the "Live Albums" playlist you mentioned. Does it happen with only one or the other or both? Please send us some screenshots from the playlist so we can take a closer look. Also be advised that the limit for songs in a playlist is 10 000, which you'll likely hit soon if you haven't already.

Let us know how it goes.

[Fakename70]

This is not an issue of songs being “replaced.” The problem is songs have been added, but not by me. It’s with both playlists: Live Albums (self explanatory) and Liked Songs (individual live tracks and entire live albums).
I’m currently alphabetically scrolling Live Albums song-by-song and removing the studio tracks that Spotify has added for my convenience, assuming I haven’t been hacked. I have 13 screenshots already from letters A-B, but, "the file type (j.peg) is not supported" when I try to attach 3 of them using either my laptop or mobile device. 
But, just as the 3 failed attachments show, I did not add the studio versions of “Bad Girls”, “Birds Of Fire”, or “Black Dog”. In fact, I’ve not ever added a studio version of anything to either playlist. But, they were in there before I deleted them today. If you can suggest an alternate way to get you the screen shots, let me know.

From the dates I’m seeing as I scroll, the majority of unwanted additions seem to have come in March of this year. Again, maybe I was hacked, I don’t know. But, I would’ve had no interest in nor reason to add studio tracks to either playlist in March nor any other month.

I reached the 10K max for both playlists long ago.

[Dessi]

Hey @Fakename70,

Thanks for the reply and the clarification!

If the screenshots you've prepared aren't getting accepted for some reason, you can try converting them to a different format, such as .png or .jpg. Another workaround would be uploading them to Google Drive (make sure to allow general access to the files) and sharing the links to them.

Since you mentioned all of these unwanted songs were added in a specific month, it might be worth following these steps to make sure your account is secured as a precaution, especially the part about removing access to third-party apps you might have connected. To check if this is still happening after securing your account, observe if there have been new songs added at the very top or bottom of your playlists and in case there are any, feel free to reach out again and we’ll investigate further.

Hope this helps.

[Fakename70]

I’ve not ever granted 3rd-party access.