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.

[abcdefgabcdefg]

Here's an as short as possible version of a previous post in this thread, explaining the behavior of the Release Radar.

• I receive tracks from artists I don't follow at all in my Release Radar - This is intended and we don't plan on changing this. The Release Radar doesn't only help you keep track of artists you follow, but is meant to allow you to discover new music from others we think you might enjoy. It is also one way for Spotify to help artists get their music noticed.

• I get music that I don't enjoy at all in my Release Radar - This means our algorithm doesn't know your music taste so well. There can be many reasons behind this, but the rule of thumb to improve the music you receive in the automatically generated playlists for you is to listen to music without a private session, use the like and hide features, have more intentional music listening habits rather than opportunity based and when you discover something new that you enjoy, listen to it proportionally more than other content. Following these guidelines should give you better recommendations in time. It will still not be perfect and it can vary from person to person, but we're constantly improving these as we go.

• I get tracks from artists that are named exactly the same as ones I follow and enjoy, but it turns out the track is unrelated to that artist and they only have the same name. - This happens if a track initially gets erroneously uploaded to the artist you follow. It can be that the error is already corrected by the time your Release Radar updates, but it already captured the track on its upload. It can happen with featured artists as well. Currently, there's no technical solution in place than can prevent errors like this happening, as we rely on submitted metadata. If you spot an incorrect content, it's best to report it as described here. Make sure your report is clear. If you can't find an artist profile with the same name as the one you follow, it probably hasn't been created yet and is part of the reason the error occurred. Point that out in your report to ensure it can be processed efficiently.

[arcadechan]

I'd consider Release Radar a core Spotify feature, as much as I do Daily Mixes and Discover Weekly. Maybe that's just me, but it's a huge let down to have wrong artists suggested when a unique identifier like artist ID exists.

Here's 1980s DEVO's Spotify page, with a completely different DEVO's album showing up.
Devo Artist Page
Here is the wrong DEVO in the Release Radar. Clicking on DEVO led me to the page above.

Devo in Release Radar

The Spotify desktop app allows a song to be flagged with two options: "I don't like this song" and "I don't like <artist>". It'd at least be nice to have an option for "This is not the correct <artist>", but that'd require tracking the correct artist ID, which obviously Release Radar is not doing at all.

To top things off I'm subscribed to email notifications for Spotify's Release Radar and Discover weekly notifications. The email displays the same wrong artist information as does the playlist. Just doesn't seem worth it to be subscribed to these notifications at all if the playlists are broken. 

[nietoperek]

I've encountered a similar problem with my favorite Italian artist Emma.

Multiple artists figure with this name. For example, I found this in my Release Radar - the artist I follow was tagged, but who's singing is an English-speaker.

[Ulumsk]

This really detracts from the value of Release Radar and Discover Weekly for me. I've probably heard more from this obscure rapper called DEVO than the New Wave band I actually listen to. 

I guess I should start a heavy metal band called Drake to get some free emo rap fan listens...  

[Logancates]

I had this exact same thing happen and am just now realizing it and feel so dumb. I love Phoenix (indie pop band) and last year or so got a notification from Spotify that Phoenix released a new album, and when I listened to it it was all this weird Italian kind of aggressive rap. However, it seemed plausible because they had a lot of italian influence in their last album and frequently talk about experimenting with sound. I’ve gone this whole time thinking that this was actually their album and only now after doing some digging realized that Spotify f****d up and it was actually a totally different artist. Ugh. The amount of people I discussed this weird album with 😓

[jeremycorbett]

Why the **bleep** have Spotify mods marked this as 'solved' when its still a problem, for goodness sake.

You say you've passed it on to the tech team? Well near six months later and it's not fixed yet, so its not solved.

[Another_David]

Not Taj Mahal.

[diegoperl]

plan : premium

OS : windows 10

spotify desktop

same problem here, but this is not new, 

[decuman]

spotify:album:5uzeZLtTWO5D9eAQkusYvq

ANOTHER ARTIST HIJACK - That's not SCORN

Any official response or explanation on why actually happening?.. It is so annoying and frequent that I'm almost about to pack my stuff and move to other service.

[decuman]

I've disliked many artists I like already because of this isssue.

[shawndiaz]

Still an issue today..America, the great band of the 70's has not produced any new music that I am aware of, yet this is the second week a single has shown up in my Release Radar that is in a foreign language. 

[serdom]

This happens to me on a weekly basis both on Discover Weekly and Release Radar with different artists. What surprises me the most is seeing people complaining about this from 2017 and nothing was fixed till now, though, this problem is marked as solved 🤣.
I'm pretty sure this issue affects thousands of people and it should really become a high priority in the dev team. C'mon guys...

[Ver]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for getting in touch with us and sharing this information. 

We're constantly striving to better our app and we'll make sure to pass your feedback to the right team.

We've looked into this further backstage and as @Katerina mentioned the best way to report this is by getting in touch with our support team here. The folks there can give you more information about it and can see how to proceed further.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll be happy to help.

[spotix]

Wrong Wray, the Wray I want have an album called Stream of Youth. 

Wrong Hum. I want the 90's band Hum who just released an album called Inlet.

Every week there's stuff in there that shouldn't be

[serdom]

Certainly, here goes an example from this week's Release Radar.

In this song spotify:track:3BSvorWi4njibwpY8y7KER
the artist points to one of my liked artists spotify:artist:4byuw0pyzVNeEONKcPIpAA which is no the author of the song.

[to_be_still]

Which is the best way to report it? Clicking on "Contact us" -> "Report a broken track/album" then "I Still Need Help"? If that is the case it seems you can only report one song at a time which is a bit cumbersome, e.g. in my current Release Radar there are 8 songs with wrongly linked artists.

It would be great if the app could "simply" get a "Report wrong artist" feature which strangely enough I thought it had in the past.

[Mihail]

Hey there folks,

Thanks for your reports.

We've have passed on your feedback to the relevant team that is currently working on this. We appreciate the examples you send us, they help us out a lot in flagging such cases.

@to_be_still indeed, that's one of the ways to signal artist mix ups. You can also post other Spotify URIs in the Tell us more* section. Currently there isn't a "Report wrong artist" feature, however we're always open to new ideas 🙂 The best way to get yours noticed and considered is if you create an idea for it in the Community by going here - that way, other users will also be able to vote for it.

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

[to_be_still]

Ok, I submitted an idea for the "Report wrong artist" feature. Here is the link https://community.spotify.com/t5/Idea-Submissions/All-Platforms-Other-Ability-to-quot-Report-wrong-a... in case anyone wants to upvote it.

[clnr]

3 wrong instances this week:

spotify:track:1q7GJEqpsRWUM94s8RGPTz

Stoner band Sleep is not guesting on this track.

spotify:track:22CX5gj2p6tGAOwjNindO4

Postrock band Mono is not guesting on this track.

spotify:track:3sFtquvJR1Yj05IYcBT49C

Recommended by the name only, not artist ID.

For me most of the wrong recommendations comes from guest artists. Maybe that is a hint why this system fails so often.

And I've reported the issues to customer services already.

[to_be_still]

That the guest artists seem to be especially problematic is actually a good point. While I don't remember how it was the last weeks, this week in fact all wrong artists are guest/secondary artists at my end.

[arcadechan]

Hey everyone!

It's Friday and we all know that means... Release Radar time!

I've posted in this thread a lot before since I've been experiencing this "wrong artist" issue for well over a year now, so last month I told myself "hey, what if I can make a work around with Spotify's Web API?". So, here we are!

I am in no way affiliated with Spotify, simply an avid user, but I'm happy to announce I've made a small tool in the meantime using their API to create a workaround. The web app will first fetch the entire list of artists you follow (I'd like to assume you're following at least one artist), and will then search the last 3 albums and last 3 singles for each artist released within the last month. If it finds something it will place the entire album/single into a public playlist into your account.

Given that this tool searches for both albums and singles, there are cases where you will notice duplicate tracks. Just be aware that technically they are different releases!

This playlist can get long since it will add entire albums, so be mindful of that too and also consider you don't need to generate it that often. It might make sense to generate a playlist once or twice a month, depending on what you feel suits your needs, since as mentioned before, it looks back a month from the date you generate a playlist.

Again, since this is a basic app, it does not track previously generated playlists to prevent things like the same tracks from the last time you use it from appearing in the next playlist you generate.

This app will also not suggest releases from artists similar to those you do.

This app will also keep track of your generated playlist ID in a browser cookie, so that it can keep updating the same playlist without generating duplicate playlists. That being the case, the playlist ID will not be present if you chose to run this tool on a new device, resulting in having more than two of the same playlists.

You are free to set this playlist to private and it will still get updated.

https://www.detoxify.dev/

You can read more info about it at the about page.
https://www.detoxify.dev/about

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, comments, or concerns.
You're free to review all the code at my github: https://github.com/arcadechan/detoxify

Happy listening!