Songs in playlist don't have a checkmark on the artist page

[banankakan]

Plan

Premiun

Country

Sweden

Device

Device independent. iOS, MacOs, PC

Operating System

MacOs 10.15.7 (unsupported), iOS 17.5.1, Windows 10

My Question or Issue

There is an issue about this already (/https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Inconsistent-Checkmarks-for-a-Song/m-p/6147872#M49865) but it does not provide all the information and the answer to it was thus pointing out that the different songs are different versions most likely. This however is not always the case, as sometimes the same album gets removed and reuploaded (updated) and that creates a new URL for what is essentially the same version of the same song. I am making a new post that gathers more information about this and hopefully has a better chance of getting some attention.

The issue is simple. I have a song in my playlists. I go to the Artist page, and open the same album and the song there does not have a green checkmark. This is an issue for anyone who has used Spotify for many years since our playlists are very old, and the checkmarks are thus not visible on the "version" of the song that appears when you use search or the Artist page.

Here are some examples (note: the Date added is recent, but it was not added from the Artist page but from an older playlist. Thus the URL is older):

1. These Nights Were Ours - Lantlos (note: album cover is different shade, but it is the only version available and it is the same song in any way I can discern):

From my playlist: https://open.spotify.com/track/1hNklUvWhG8RSgYceRbr0L?si=3eb0e6347d9f4934 
From Artist page: https://open.spotify.com/track/4szkPDUBjYfL12BWA9LjNX?si=2dfd242cb99249b0 

 

2. Ancient Covenant - The Faceless:
From my playlist: https://open.spotify.com/track/0RNH4u7s0kyGRXP8VTmuBa?si=742cfd22c3554251 

From Artist page: https://open.spotify.com/track/6zXUsqQSxo9GlI1jsqIyad?si=929802545662431e 

 

3. Half-Truism - The Offspring (note: the album cover is different here and some of the song names have "Explicit Version" tagged onto them, but the one in my Liked Songs is not accessible in any way except from my Liked Songs or using the URL directly. You cannot find it in Search. I feel like it should be treated as the same track identifier even tho in this case it is more understandable than in the other ones that I did not find any real difference in at a glance. Still, even if there is a difference they should be treated the same in my opinion or the checkmark becomes useless):
From my Liked Songs: https://open.spotify.com/track/0wyaAxRo2DMvhKhQd6vCxt?si=a9e02523ebca4ddc 
From Artist page: https://open.spotify.com/track/7xm8RWCCBYvEVx1VyErDa3?si=49f143a2a1e94e86 

4. For the Future of Mankind - MFG (in this case, the one in My Library is the one without a checkmark, but the one on the Artist page under Liked Songs by is in a playlist and thus the checkmark shows up. Also, they capitalised "The" in one of the versions, but I argue it should be treated as the same song, because it is the same song and release. Just removing it from the Artist page without linking is not a solution to me. Anyways here we have 3 different URLs...):

From Liked Songs by MFG: https://open.spotify.com/track/457deJwdy2e5YkN7G39AOk?si=e57cb9039c1b4877" 
From My Library: https://open.spotify.com/track/70GJ6lS36umzNQkBzKqNgT?si=bfcaca8ee29d4dcd 
From my playlists: https://open.spotify.com/track/457deJwdy2e5YkN7G39AOk?si=087ee6497f774ea5" 

 

:
I have seen this with more songs before but I have also because of that removed the older version and added the new one for many, like Aphex Twin's album Syro.  Still I would think this should be enough links and screenshots to give you something to work with if you choose to do so. I really hope you do, as for any serious music lover this is a big issue. I have 32k Liked songs and 360 playlists. It can get messy if there is no clear way to tell what is already in a playlist. Especially because this will NOT ask if you are sure you want to add because of duplicates, because they are not considered the same version even tho for all intents and purposes they are in fact the same.

If you need more info then please comment here, but I don't get notifications to my email and don't know how to turn it on again, so I may be slow to answer. I will try to check this at least once a week for a month or so.

Edit: I unlinked all the URLs so they are not clickable becuase otherwise they who up as a photo. This way you see easier the URL is different.

[banankakan]

https://open.spotify.com/track/2VHcbMJ0xdc1tb0QcWdFaT?si=7115a56f04ce49bf
https://open.spotify.com/track/0PejkY8GZOUHAFiHtdLn23?si=fdc50970c82c41b5

Also true for Vibe Tribe - Destination Unknown.

The first one is in my playlist, if I click the album from the playlist it leads to the second one, that did not have a checkmark. Then when I went to the artist page there was a third with a different name Incore (Original Mix). When I added this one to a playlist the one from 2009 got a checkmark. So those are linked, but there is also this thrid version of the 2009 one that is not linked. It is a bit convoluted to show here. Basically this is a bit messy, I doubt it is fixable with so much music on the platform.

[Eni · Accepted solution]

Hey there @banankakan, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this. 

The behavior you're describing can happen when an album or song gets reuploaded by the distributors. If they have different metadata or URIs (which they have in the examples you mentioned), the app will check backstage to link to the accurate track, but it will currently miss to transfer the liked status to the newer version.

We've provided guidelines to distributors of what they can do to keep tracks fully in sync and basically overwrite old versions, but we know this is something that occurs. For now we suggest that you unlike the "old" track in the liked songs or saved album and replace it with the new one.

However, we understand where you're coming from and we appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us. We'll make sure to pass it onto the right team, as we always strive to improve your experience.

Additionally, it seems also that some other users feel the way you do and  went ahead and posted this idea requesting the feature to consolidate duplicates. You can add your support there by up-voting the idea. Despite its current status, you can still add your vote to it and if anything changes in the future, we'll make sure to keep everyone updated over there.

Hope this clears things up. If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you.

[banankakan]

i understand I can unlike old and like the new, but this has several issues. For one this is mainly a problem because I will go on an artists page and I won’t know if I have added a song to a playlist or not. I know I have listened to it, but I have 360 playlists. I don’t know if it is on the correct ones unless the system tells me. Manually looking this up is not a viable solution. 

also it would break the ”Date Added” as it would not reflect the new one, and the order of the playlist too. Which sure you can manually change but as I said, I have a lot of playlists. I really regret my playlist is amassed on Spotify and not another platform which is more friendly to power users. Moving now is impossible, even if I have backed up the playlists as CSV. 

[juventus18]

Some songs are on multiple albums. This causes confusion for me when adding songs to liked songs or other playlists. I already have a song in liked, but the same song will show (from a different album) and won't be liked. This causes me to like the song again and duplicate it in my liked songs.

An example is "Dirty Bump - Equanimous Remix" See the image below:Same song, different albums (duplicated in likes)

If you could make a song belong to multiple albums (similar to how a song can belong to multiple artists), it would resolve this issue.