Songs on playlists being automatically replaced

[Lurkers]

Hello,

Every now and then a song or two on one of my playlists gets automatically replaced by the same song but from another album; a live performance version or a different studio performance. It's very annoying. Then I have to search for the old song, find it and put it back in place.

Yesterday this happened with several songs from a playlist. I've replaced a couple, but then 2 songs later I find another one replaced.

Why is that happening? I'm using Windows 10 / Spotify premium.

EDIT: More than half of the songs of this playlist got replaced!

EDIT 2: Other playlists as well got lots of their songs replaced! Spotify, what's happening??

[Lurkers]

Hey @TomesOfTomes,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community and welcome.

Tracks in playlists can only be updated by its owner. However, some songs could be replaced by the "same song" (title/artist) but on a different release due to changes in the permissions from rights holders.

Some releases of songs and albums might get taken down from the Spotify platform in certain countries. When the track is reuploaded again, sometimes it could be reuploaded with different metadata which leads to a different version. This may explain the “track switch” you had in your playlist.

In case this happens with different songs, we'd recommend logging out everywhere to prevent the playlist from being edited by another logged in device.

Hope this helps. If you have any additional questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

[Strgeo]

In the event Spotify has to remove a track instead of automatically "replacing" the track with an "intelligent" guess, why not create a setting where the user can control whether to allow Spotify to replace tracks? This only applies to play lists created by the user - "shared" playlists will be edited by their originator or changed by Spotify. 

[MSebring]

Here is another example of the stupid stuff that playlist creators frequently have to deal with:

In 2020 I added songs from this playlist: "Roadrunner: The Beserkley Colletion" to one of my playlists.
At that time, when I played those songs, I got the correct versions of those songs from that album.
Now, if you try to play "Roadrunner" or "Pablo Picasso" from that album, you get different versions of
the songs from a different album instead, and that's what I get when I play those songs from my playlist.
(The replacement version of "Roadrunner" is quite different from the original.)

But now there is a newer version of "Roadrunner: The Beserkley Collection" which plays the correct
versions of the songs which I had originally added to my playlist. But as a playlist creator, I had no way

of knowing that the original version of the album was replaced by a newer one, and that the songs in my
playlist (from the original version of the album) were replaced by different versions from different album
until I was listening to my playlist and happened to hear the inferior version of "Roadrunner".

This whole replacing songs with a different version of the same song from a different album is a horrible
thing for people who care about music.

And again, I put titles with links to the albums in my post, and you replaced them with embedded albums.

[MSebring]

The point I am trying to make here is: This problem exists in peoples' playlists
BECAUSE it also exists in the albums that they originally pulled the songs from.

If you listen to "Roadrunner" from the two different versions of that Jonathan Richman
compilation album, it is obvious that they are two different versions of the song, but when
I put the version from the original album in my playlist, it was the same version that appears
in the later version of the album. Also, if you listen to any of the earlier songs on the original
version of that album (using the Spotify app on a PC) you will see a different album cover in
the bottom left hand corner of the screen. That does not happen when you listen to the same
songs from the new version of the album.

Getting back to the original example I reported, here is the original "The Essential Jerry Lee Lewis" album

I had pulled many songs from. If you play any song from that album (using the Spotify app on a PC) you will
see a different album cover in the bottom left hand corner. Like "Roadrunner" in my other example, some of
the songs are not the original versions that appeared on that album. I discovered this problem the same way.
Listening to my playlist I heard a re-recorded version of "Breathless" that sounded nothing like the original.

[MSebring]

I haven't seen the problem of songs being replaced by totally different songs for some time,
and when I have seen it, it was songs that came from certain multi-artist compilation albums
and they were always replaced by other songs from the same album. I sometimes wonder if
that problem might stem from someone resequencing the songs on the album. For example:
if I had put the fourth song from the album in my playlist, and after the sequence was changed
I was still getting the fourth song but it was a different song. I am not certain of this though.
It's just a possibility that occurred to me.

[MSebring]

Thinking about this problem has got me wondering:
When a song or an entire album of songs is removed from Spotify,
for every song that is removed, someone or something has to decide

whether to just gray the song out, or to replace it with some kind of link
so that anyone who tries to play the song will get another song instead
(usually the same song from a different album).

Does Spotify's AI do this?  or
Does someone from Spotify do this manually?  or
Does the owner of the song/album have to do this manually?

For a long time I was thinking that Spotify's AI was running amok,
but now I'm beginning to suspect that playlist creators are simply
at the mercy of the people who own the songs and albums.

[MSebring]

Is there any way to get someone to notice that this problem is not resolved?
People are still experiencing the problem and your answer wasn't very helpful.
I have provided information that shows that songs being replaced in playlists
is generally caused by those songs being replaced within the albums that the
playlist creators got them from (something that the playlist creators have no
control over). This is a big issue for many of us because the original versions
of songs are sometimes replaced by alternate inferior versions (often despite
the fact that the original version is still available on a different album) and 
occasionally by totally different songs.

[amrosko]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

Device

(iPhone 8, Samsung Galaxy 9, Macbook Pro late 2016)

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

The Mariinsky Orchestra recording of The Nutcracker recorded in 1998 has (for some reason) replaced what should be track 9 with what is track 2. Track 9 is nowhere to be found. What should be the snow pas de deux is the Christmas tree. I have asked friends in different states to confirm the issue and have used several devices but the issue is consistent. The track simply playing the wrong file.