Release Radar includes wrong artist with same name as desired artist

[abcdefgabcdefg]

I constantly find my Release Radar recommending songs by an artist (say A) with the same name as an artist (say A') that I might actually wanna listen to. This is extremely dumb as an issue because these two artists are listed as genuinely different artists in Spotify and the newly recommended song by a wrong artist is listed as a song of A' in the system. A reasonable conclusion is that at least Release Radar does not look into the artist IDs but just merely refers to their names. This happens to like 5 different artists to me and my Release Radar is contaminated by songs which I have absolutely no interest in. I believe this is a very basic bug that can be fixed in like 5 minutes.

[masivodano73]

I would like to add that in my humble opinion,  these "artists" that are purposely and fraudulently using popular artists names in order to get recognition and money should be suspended, banned, or in so.e way punished for this. It's not only making a mess if your service, but creating extra work for not only Spotify,  but now your paying customers. 

[ThomWim]

On the desktop, right click on the artist, then "share", then copy the Spotify URI.

[MadmanOnWheels]

Hi, Mihail

I guess you didn't look at the dates of these posts.

As the original poster pointed out, right after timerickson claimed that the other was a duplicate, this one is actually the duplicate. When you do this, you kinda take credit away from the one that originally posted things.

[to_be_still]

The crux of the matter though is that those "featured artists" that "solely" due to wrong metadata and interlinking show up on the release radar are the main culprit causing the annoyance. And if those artists themselves are the ones entering the wrong metadata and this keeps happening more and more, you should start asking yourselves if those are not simple mistakes but they are just abusing the system to be "featured" on release radars they have no reason to be featured on.

[jkeinonen]

Thanks, MadmanOnWheels.

I'm happy that important things regarding Release Radar are proceeding, thanks to Mihail. I think it was  timerickson who wrote that my earlier thread is a duplicate and technically that's true, although mine was first. But this one is where we are seeing procession, so a big 💓 to absolutely everyone working on this, either on the demand or the support side.

Release Radar's idea is great! Let's keep it useful.

[MadmanOnWheels]

Hey, to_be_still

I don't know how that stuff works. Is the artists entering that kind of information a possibility? If so, I hope that Spotify starts cracking down on them for it, because, even if they aren't familiar with the already famous artists and bands that have those names that they are using, too, they should have looked this stuff up, before putting themselves out there (in the music industry), under any name.

I believe that they're definitely doing this on purpose.  Their weaseling themselves into our "Release Radar" playlists isn't going to make us want to listen to them, so they're only screwing things up for themselves and the real artists and bands (and us), instead.

[to_be_still]

Hey MadmanOnWheels.

Let's put it this way. I definitely got the impression that those wrongly featured artists are causing it because they are (supposedly) doing it by mistake/not following the guidelines. If it's actually lucrative to get plays this way, or they only think it is, I'm not sure either.

[jakegerb]

okay whatever you say bro.
I just want to hear to the right artists I subscribed to.

[jeremycorbett]

It is that, but its also regular not cheaty artists that happen to have the same name appearing.

I can go to one of these artists page, and it is clearly distinct from the artist with the same name.

I'm sure there may be these scam artists who are entering the same codes as the legit artists and getting on their artist pages, but we are also getting artists that just happen to have the same name as another artist, have their own artist ID, but spotify for some reason are still pushing them to people who follow artists with the same name.

For example. the artist 'Ride' who I reported that came up on my release radar last Friday had a clearly distinct artist page to the band Ride who I follow.

[ThomWim]

I filled out the survey.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScdXRSzYb5zXmHR2dCcpMtEz_t-gHK8ZlVXqT-s0nYrCtU2Ow/viewform?...

For example, the song "Sharknado" by the punk rock band the Offspring is listed on the profile of an African(?) gospel group.

Under "artist I'm following", I put in the URI of the gospel group.

Under "wrong artist", I put in the URI of the punk rock band.

It sounds counter-intuitive, but who knows?

===

Similarly, a re-recording of the 80's singer Tiffany's #1 hit "I Think We're Alone Now" was posted on the profile of a Korean singer named Tiffany Young, who also goes by "Tiffany".

[arcadechan]

So happy to see traction! I'll make an effort to fill the form as often as I can.

I still believe it's more likely lots of these artists just happen to have chosen the same name as others, and the API is doing a string check on the artist name instead of a by unique artist ID.

I say that because as several have mentioned in this thread, there are two scenarios:
1. You click on the incorrect artist's name in Release Radar, and get redirected to the artist page of the artist you do follow, and sometimes even see the incorrect track/single release appear on the page of the artist you follow (cases where bad metadata is happening)

2. You click on the incorrect artist's name in Release Radar, and get redirected to a completely different unique artist page that does in fact belong to a different artist by the same name as the one you follow.

[Hubo]

Hey @masivodano73, thanks for sharing this here.

As far as I know of how Spotify is set up, it would actually mean that anyone listening to these songs would generate streams for the big artists they're linked to. So it doesn't sound likely. Most probably it's what @Mihail said and an error when uploading.

Feel free to give me a shout if you have any questions!

Have a good one,

Hubo

[MetalRayzor]

I'll believe we are getting traction on the issue when things get better instead of worse.

I was directed to this year long thread from one of the other threads where I've been complaining about this for at least that long. This week's Release Radar was as bad as it's ever been. Nine out of Thirty songs clearly in genres outside of my listening preference. Spotify even sent me an email - "New music from artists you love Nash Crime...". I have never listened to or even heard of Nash Crime and certainly never "liked" a song by that artist on Spotify or any other artist using that name or even any other song in that genre.

I sent in the suggested form to the best of my ability. I listed URIs for the songs from the misplaced genres but I rarely follow an Artist, and only occasionally, explicitly "like" a song or album. Spotify doesn't have any issues successfully curating the other lists in my feed with artists similar to those I listen to, it is always the Release Radar.  So, the problem is not specific to artists I follow. Some of the problem tracks are collaborations with names matching Hard Rock/Metal bands, others, I don't recognize at all.

[Mihail]

Hey @ThomWim,

we'd just like to confirm some things with you.

1. We couldn't find the track in the Release Radar you submitted. Did that track appear last week?
2. Are you following the gospel group the gospel group or the punk-rock band The Offspring?

If this didn't appear on your RR and you're following the punk-rock band, Sharknado being incorrectly attached to the gospel group's page must be again just an ID mix-up when uploaded. If that's the case, there's no need to fill out our form. That's just for Scenario 2 that @arcadechan posted. Nevertheless, I reported this myself via the steps here, as I'm quite the big fan of punk-rock myself! It should be fixed as soon as the team responsible gets to that report.

Cheers!

[jeremycorbett]

@Mihail

Just to check, there appear to be a number of issues at play here - could you confirm that you are aware of and investigating all the following possibilities:

1. Artists are accidentally uploading their work with the wrong artist ID so they appear as work by an artist with the same name? Do these need to be manually and individually reported? I assume the mistaken artist is then not receiving any revenue for their work and it goes to the ID artist?

2. Spotify is simply making a mistake with release radar where they are displaying artists with the same name rather than the same ID ?

This appears to be the case, as people are reporting getting songs on their release radars by artists they don't follow but have the same names as artists they do, and these artists do have their own profile pages distinct from the ones they do follow, so presumably have a distinct ID.

3. As (2) but it applies to supporting artists in a track rather than the main artist?

E.g. lets say there is no issue with a song by the French singer 'Singer A'  - The user who follows French 'Singer A' will only get songs by them and not the German artist who is also called 'Singer A'. But, if the German artist 'Singer A' appears as a featured artist on a song by 'Band B' who the user doesn't follow, is there an issue where that song might get presented to the user?

4. There appears to be an issue of artists deliberately creating profiles based on the same name as popular artists (for some reason these seems to be primarily rappers), and these acts are appearing on people's release radars unwantingly. Is this something spotify is aware of and is investigating?

Thanks for your time, and apologies for the wall of text, but I just want to make sure this is all absolutely clear to your users.

[to_be_still]

@Mihail

I want to add another point because the whole "plays are counted for the actual artist" makes it sound like those wrongly linked artists have nothing to gain. As long as they are not reported that might actually hold true but once they get their own page, what happens to their plays? I guess they keep it, right? Most likely because you cannot differentiate anymore between "wrong" and "right" plays. And I guess this goes for both cases where the main artist is wrongly linked or just one of his collaborators. I actually have a perfect example of why I think this is true from my current release radar. One of the 11 wrongly linked artists seemingly got reported and got its own page by now spotify:artist:6ddkQjfJbBztrb8IyQZPiF. His only 46 seconds "magnus opus" has over 50k plays. Did he get those because that song is such a banger or because he got mistaken for an artist with around 700k monthly listeners? To be fair, this is probably also the reason he got reported in under a week.

EDIT: To clarify, I do not think that all wrongly linked artists are due to bad intent but man, it is getting really annoying. Is there no notice if you upload something a la "Hereby I confirm that I'm artist XY" or "If you are not sure what your ID is or you are a new artist. Go here blabla"?

[Mihail]

Hey @jeremycorbett,

tackling your questions one by one.

1. We're aware of this and it has happened for a very long time now. As mentioned in my post here, unless we somehow automate the whole process, there will always be the element of human error that can cause this. We have a team who curates content, and fixes such errors when they spot them, but with hundreds of thousands of artists on Spotify (and growing) there'll always be misses. Manual reports help out in those cases.
2. Depends. Part of this is what we're trying to investigate here. If for some reason, at the time of upload of a new track, both artists bearing the same name already have their individual artist profiles and the IDs were correctly chosen, then the Release Radar shouldn't include the tracks of artists you don't follow. Lots of variables there though (does the Artist have their own ID? Did they have at time of upload or was it corrected after the Release Radar was generated?), but that's what we're trying to dig into.
3. If I understand correctly, what you describe is a variant of issue 1. This might happen if small, featured artists get uploaded with the ID of another artist with the same name.
4. This appears to be based on rumors and speculation. We don't comment on those.

Hope this gives you more insight, jeremycorbett.

@to_be_still - Stream counts are based on the lowest denominator, which is a single track. So if that track is moved, its counts move with it. o stay focused on the subject at hand, which is us trying to help improve the Release Radar, if a song is not enjoyed by someone, they should skip it to prevent a stream being counted. Otherwise, a listened to track rightfully should be counted towards whoever created it.

Regarding what you described in your edit - it is expected that due diligence is done by distributers when uploading tracks. The system however is set so that the process is as streamlined as possible. This is my own personal opinion folks, but even if there was a prompt like the one described, if would just be too easy to get into the habit of clicking "OK". I'm sure everyone can think of one or two examples of similar prompts that they agree to almost automatically.

We understand this causes frustration, but we hope you understand where we're coming from as well. We're doing the best we can and want you to have a nice surprise each Friday when you unexpectedly get a new track from a favorite artist. As with all tech, nothing is perfect and the only thing we can do is keep improving 🙂

We'll be looking into the reports to the form this Friday and continue investigating. Cheers!

[to_be_still]

Hey @Mihail.
Some (hopefully) final thoughts on this point "if a song is not enjoyed by someone, they should skip it to prevent a stream being counted. Otherwise, a listened to track rightfully should be counted towards whoever created it."
That would be a reasonable approach if all users were paying rapt attention all the time and actively look out for wrong artists even if they listen to a playlist which should consist only of artists they already like which I do not think should be assumed or expected (Edited for clarity). Moreover one does not have to listen to the whole song for it to be counted, right? It's something like 50% I guess? Case in point the example I mentioned before, a 46 second song should go quickly into the "count" category if it does not instantly make your ears bleed.
Essentially what I'm getting at, some of the stuff showing up functions like spam in a way, cast a wide net and you will catch at least some fish.

Anyway, if it happens by mistake or not, I get that you want to make it easy for the artists to publish their music but to me it sounds like it might be a tad too easy. It might also be a difficult problem to tackle and getting the users to handle it, is a convenient solution depending on your perspective. But then it should at least also be as easy as possible for the users to do it (hence my idea for the report function from the client but I don't see that happening soon if at all).
Of course this is general criticism and I'm aware that you are in an awkward position, sitting between the users and the engineers and it's good that you're responding and at least looking into solving part of the problem.

[MadmanOnWheels]

to_be_still,

I guess your point was that we should have a report button for this type of thing.

As far as your first sentence, we shouldn't have to stand over our devices, while playing music, so we can skip those songs, and I don't really skip over those artists; I just use the "Hide" feature on them, before playing the playlist, but even when I have hidden them, they sometimes still play.

[to_be_still]

@MadmanOnWheels
I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you think I suggested to just skip the songs? Because I only quoted something Mikhail wrote in order to then explain why I do not think those false plays are earned just because you could skip them in theory. Maybe I should edit it to make that more clear.