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.

[nyke192]

This should be fixed! It's very annoying to have this song under new songs from the real Dio.

[masivodano73]

This is crazy that Spotify doesn't care enough about the artists or their customers to actually address this.

I'll keep doing a weekly update here too.  Great idea!

And if Spotify doesn't ar least give a meaningful response I'll be shopping around. The biggest drawback to switching is losing my Playlist.  But I may have to make the switch because is pretty bad.

[masivodano73]

Maybe what we should be doing is submitting copyright or trademark complaints. 

[rick_cotter]

How is this solved? Where you direct us to reach out is not some easy one step. This issue is festering as each month passes. 5 of my top 9 Release Radar are like this this week. Doesn't the Spotify crew use the product? I'm tired of reporting each song. Use crowd sourcing (just an in-app feedback), perform musical style analysis, look at record label mismatches as inputs to a few humans making final decisions. Please. Please. Please.

[arcadechan]

Hi all,

I've made several posts over the past year regarding this issue but it got to the point where I took it upon myself to see if this was possible to fix by coding something myself with Spotify's API, and of course it was. You can try out this custom Release Radar app I built at https://detoxify.dev/

It will find all the artists you follow and generate a playlist in your account that has every single and every album from the artists you follow that have been released within the last month from the date you generate. If you generate the playlist again your old playlist's content is replaced, so make note of that! Also, being that this playlist generator looks back a month, ideally you only have to run this once a month, not once a week similar to Release Radar's schedule.

The point is, this is totally solvable. Here is what's going on.
There are two issues going on with Release Radar:

1. Release Radar appears to be generating by looking at "names" of the artists you follow, not their unique artist ID that Spotify already uses to differentiate between artist with the same name. 

2. Spotify's quality control is sometimes failing at the artist level because for example the rapper Devo's release is placed under the 80s band Devo's artist page. This doesn't happen as often but you should click on the artist name and you might just find it redirects to the artist you follow, and upon scrolling down might see the other artist's album show up as a "single release" or under "Appears On".

There is obviously a solution: whatever algorithm is being used to generate Release Radar should use the unique artist ID of those that you follow, and not the name. 

Plenty of other people in this very thread have brought this up as well as myself, and if Spotify after a year has done nothing to fix it, its better to assume that this feature is never getting resolved (maybe not many people use Release Radar so there is no net benefit on Spotify's part to fix it). 

My only suggestions are to just use a completely different service if what you're trying to do is be notified or find out about the latest releases from your favorite artists. 

I've personally stopped using Release Radar altogether.

[masivodano73]

This is amazing! Thank you for this! I'll give it a try.

I do like listening to Release Radar to hear a sample of new tracks to know of I like them before digging further into it. It boggles my mind that Spotify simply will not fix this, when as you have demonstrated, it is an easy fix. I have always found it interesting that these fake l auto autotune rappers only seem to polute my release radar and not daily mixes etc.

Thanks again!

[masivodano73]

More songs by X, Black Sheep, and Bully imposters in this week's release radar.

[-StigtriX-]

Hi!

This is still a problem and I think it goes deeper than your system not being able to discern the difference between artists with the same names.

The artists I get wrong recommendations for the most are:
Dean (also known as Dean TRBL)
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3eCd0TZrBPm2n9cDG6yWfF?si=NwETFxkZTzGxydeJNJ0n7w

Loco
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2e4G04F77jxVuDYo44TCSm?si=plp1P3KYQ_GuJ18s2Ick_w

Both are South Korean artists.

This is what Spotify thought was Loco this time:

https://open.spotify.com/track/62nAKaBIFUaVkKkvMMSLqb?si=22jFdkDiS0qFq_VcCTnzzA

It even links to the right Loco if you click the artist name...

You really need to start sorting artists by region or something, because this is getting ridiculous. At least use unique artist names for the backend or something, like using "Dean TRBL" in the system or "Dean-SouthKorea-K-RnB", while only displaying "Dean" in the interface.

Something I also find very weird: why is Akeboshi listed with two different profiles? One with his name in hiragana (Japanese) and one with romanji (regular alphabet)? The two profiles have different songs. There is no way he would have so few listeners if all his songs were in one profile. This hurts exposure.

明星　<Akeboshi>

https://open.spotify.com/artist/5STm6pQxk2nHd7JVcQCBoa?si=GScsf31RQluhhkNPx1LUjg

Akeboshi

https://open.spotify.com/artist/7whUoQAv5bVu2Cv4ZmgTyw?si=3xVBhwnzSMCYYtdrDDIMGA

[user-removed]

I'm tired of nearly 50% of my Release Radar slots used up by hip-hop collabs where a half-dozen bedroom artists have squatted on larger artists' names. If I was a betting person, I'd say this is deliberate exploiting of the algorithm to get plays on their songs, basically the musical equivalent of domain squatting.

Either way, it's been 8 months since the "solution" to this issue was posted (aka "we'll look into it"). Is this problem still being "looked into" or is it being ignored in perpetuity as the community has come to expect from Spotify?

[rollulus]

I can't believe how dumb the decision is to correlate artists by name rather than by ID. Hello software engineering 101!

The yield from my release radar this week:

1. a nice new song from an artist called "Immortal". Oh wait, this is not the infamous Norwegian black metal band I listen to when I want to relive my teenage angst , but a totally unrelated obscure artist. And according to google, this artist only exists on Spotify. And on a YouTube channel where some robot dumps Spotify tracks as videos.

2. hey, new work from Destroyer... who all of a sudden calls himself "DJ Destroyer" now and makes afro beats that make my ears bleed! That's a departure from Canadian electronic folk. Silly enough, Spotify now even links to the real Destroyer!

3. after this disappointments, let's move on to a golden oldie. Someone dug up a new song from Cream. Surprise, this is not Eric Clapton, and I cannot even describe the genre without getting offensive. 

Call me paranoid, but could it be that artists try to exploit Spotify's lack of engineering quality?

[ThomWim]

This week I got fake new releases by:

* Live (not the rock band)

* Vanilla Ice (not the rapper)

* Rakim (not the rapper from Eric B. & Rakim, but another rapper)

* Cream (not Eric Clapton)

* The Cult (not the hard rock band)

* Estelle (not the "American Boy" singer)

* Donovan (not the folk singer)

* Lit (not the rock band)

[decuman]

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1binm59tmJzoZLvLETVYBP

This (highlighted) is not Jesu I liked/favorited!
https://open.spotify.com/track/6nYvJ84FvTN0qmjwGOdsgJ
but who cares! right? as we dont see any actions or explanations from spotify team so far.

[clnr]

Friday again!

This week Spotify thinks Death Metal band LIK, Black metal/folksinger Myrkur and Progressive rockers Goblin all play Hip Hop. All three tracks reported.

[ThomWim]

This week's impostors are Boston, Lulu, Ciara, and Tesla.

[clnr]

Add Death and Ahab to that list. Neither of those bands plays hiphop.

[kevshea]

Looks like others are finding this problem too!

In the last month I've had the wrong "Vast", "The Cult", "Boston" and various others I can't remember turning up on my release radar playlist.

BTW: why on earth is this marked as solved?

[spotix]

Spamming this thread YET AGAIN hoping that one day maybe, just maybe, this will be fixed. And it honestly boils my blood that this is marked as solved.

Onslaught is a metal band, not hiphop spotify:track:2LVmEUzLC7AnHfqzWtH5e8

Zeke is a punk band, not hiphop spotify:track:6fR6lTnfAAPVBnbccJbQEY

[epetaculo]

Same issue here

The Cult: https://open.spotify.com/track/16YIn8XwsC2YzBg3KGDZfq?si=VNgbqVqqTu2rRXwZ_8p5Cg

Genesis: https://open.spotify.com/track/4WiphHe4EWDy12gMjIegQ6?si=yQEx9NNNSWCOitsdNfZkMQ

OS: Windows 10 (20H2)

Spotify version: 1.1.48.625.g1c87c7f7 (Microsoft Store version)

[rollulus]

In my release radar a release by a DARKSIDE impostor that's definitely not Nicolas Jaar. I don't know why I even bother to check the release radar, Spotify doesn't give a damn about quality and this is "solved" anyway.

[as1011]

Come on Spotify how has this still not been solved? As the original post by @abcdefgabcdefg pointed out, it's literally a 5 minute fix.