Spotify adds random songs to my ”Liked Songs” playlist

[AmaliaK]

Plan

Premium

Country

Romania

Device

Samsung phone & personal computer

Operating System

Android & Windows 10

My Issue:

Spotify keeps adding random songs to my ”Liked Songs” playlist.

What does this mean? My ”Liked Songs” playlist contains all kind of songs I don't know anything about. These aren't songs I accidentally liked. These aren't songs I recognize. Furthermore, I hate most of these songs.

Nobody else has access to my Spotify account or to the devices I use Spotify on. Two apps have access to it though - one is Spotify's Web Player, the other is Shazam.

The songs I search using Shazam go to a special playlist. Also, the app doesn't automatically like them for me.

This has been an ongoing issue for me. At first, I thought maybe I wasn't paying attention and accidentally liked these songs. I unliked everything I didn't like.

Then it happened again. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I don't understand how the ”Liked Songs” playlists works.

Now it happened again. It's very annoying. I was trying to enjoy some time off listening to music I like, and instead I woke up having to remove awful songs from my playlist.

I hate this. It is annoying and time-consuming. I also don't know how to stop it or prevent it from happening. It also affects my Release Radar and Discover Daily - two playlists containing almost nothing I enjoy listening.

[AmaliaK]

Hey folks,

Thanks for the replies. 

Can you make sure that Smart Shuffle is toggled off for your Liked Songs?

Something else that could be doing this is is another app which is linked to Spotify. It's worth checking the list of apps connected to your account and removing access.

A third possibility is that you've logged your account in on a device like a TV / speaker to which more people have access to and can like songs sometimes. You can log out from those by signing out everywhere. 

Hope this helps.

[AmaliaK]

Hey folks!

This issue seems to be related to your third party apps. Please remove them as shown here.
After making sure you have no third party apps left, go through the steps here under "Still have access to your account?".
Once this is done, you can manually re-add any of the third party apps you wish to have. Note that if you add the one that has been causing your troubles to begin with, your issue will re-appear.

Hope this helps; keep us posted on how things go 🙂

[MonsterMonster]

Sept 2023 and it's still an issue. Currently listening to my like songs and the next thing I'm listening to a song I've never heard. Right now it's Big **bleep** by Ivorian Doll. Never heard of them and I don't want to like it. But if I look at the displayed song on my app it shows the heart as not being highlighted. This isn't a comprising of security but suspect rather Spotify trying to be smart and including songs it thinks I might like via some AI algorithm. It's **bleep**. 

[MonsterMonster]

Here's another example after listening to Silver Machine by Hawkwind, which Liked with filled heart but up next is Debussy with the heart not highlighted. I'm sure someone likes Debussy but not by me! 

[MonsterMonster]

And another song is added A Guy Called Gerald. Maybe there's a Spotify bot called Gerald that's is misbehaving. 

[MonsterMonster]

Skipped to next song which do like and have liked with filled in heart but skip to next song is The Who which I've never like hence no filled in heart. 

[MonsterMonster]

From this liked song Mistadobalina to not a liked song of Kelly Clarkson. There is a pattern of a problem with Spotify. 

[MonsterMonster]

Okay this is stupid. I've been through my liked list of 208 songs and have removed at least 42 song that have not been Liked by me but would seem to have been Recommended to me by Spotify. I did this by clicking the circle with a minus sign to the left of the outlined (not filled) heart icon. The resulting message suggests that this farce and inconvenience of not-liked songs being inserted to the Liked playlist library is down to Spotify. Now the problem is that there has been some suggested songs that I potentially would have liked but I just do not want in my list just yet. But I suspect the Spotify algorithms will now falsely think I do not like artists that I already like. It's a mess!

Edit I tried screenshot of popup message saying something like "Removed. We will no longer recommend this song to your liked songs" 

[Eni]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for getting in touch about this here in the Community. 

@HediaA, just to confirm, have you tried following the steps @Dian sent previously?

@MonsterMonster, we checked the screenshots you sent and it looks like you have the Smart Shuffle turned on, that's why you're getting recommendations in your Liked songs playlist. No worries, you can turn it off easily by tapping on this icon: 

Keep us posted on how it goes.

[MonsterMonster]

Success! When pressing the Shuffle button there are three modes; Off (white arrows), Shuffle On (green arrows) and Smart Shuffle (green arrows with diamond star. This third option is the culprit that seemingly adds random songs to the play list. I've been clicking this button to turn or off not realising that thus third state exists. I bet this is the same cause that others have been experiencing. Thank you, I was getting really narked today after hearing unknown songs being played, having to skip and the the pain on seeing dozens of these songs inserted into the queue. 

[Lyubka]

Hey @MonsterMonster,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

We're glad to hear that you're able to enjoy your music now. 
 

If you ever have any other questions in the future, feel free to post in the Community again 🙂 

[Ezeki33les]

It's the 'smart shuffle' 

Tap the shuffle button and choose the normal shuffle option. 

Had the same drama. The added tracks were absolute  a s s  and kept sliding into my playlist . Awful feature. 

[Xoduz]

Experiencing the same thing, and found this thread after a long while searching for a solution. I've been using Spotify since 2008, and I don't have a habit of using the "like" feature. Imagine my surprise when I today found nearly a hundred "liked" songs in my Liked Songs playlist...

If songs are indeed being added to this playlist via the "smart shuffle" feature, that is... mindblowing. Why would Spotify automatically like songs for me that it automatically and randomly chose to inject into whatever my active playlist is? Absolutely mindboggling.

[alding]

This happens to me too and I think it is ridiculous that Spotify claims this comes from another app such as Shazam. It is an internal Spotify problem and I can prove it. Over the past year I have used "brown noise" to help me sleep. I have only used brown noise through the Spotify app, nothing else. Now when I play my liked songs some of these brown noise tracks show up! I am happily listening to my liked songs and suddenly I get shhhhhccchhhh (my best approximation of brown noise). I also get songs inserted that I don't like.

The list is called "liked songs". Is it too much to ask that it should contain only songs I have liked?

[gvantsa]

Hi can someone help I have the same problem and I tried everything thats is written above.
Smart shuffle is off, there is no app linked to my spotify, I signed out from everywhere but the songs keep adding in my liked sings

[ams89]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Samsung

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

My Liked songs playlist now has songs I didn't like. I'm assuming its based on songs I may like and are similar but I don't want to listen to them when I go to my liked song playlist. I just want the songs I already liked without having to move them to another playlist. 

[Ttornelas]

Hi, it’s also happening to me, I think I pressed some intagram add that looked legit from Spotify and I’ve been having random songs added to my liked songs since. The only apps I have linked are google maps and Waze. Enhance, smart shuffle and autoplay are all off.

[JulioSAO]

I think the smart-shufle "feature" user interface is very confusing. I discovered it thanks of this thread. It should have a much more explicit UI since you can turn on it easily and is very annoying when you have a playlist and start listen music not in the playlist 

Of course it never should be enabled by default.

[Ttornelas]

I keep having this issue and it’s really annoying. My liked songs playlist just had a whole album (like 10/12 different songs) from some guy called Mike Sarge, which I had never heard of, I don’t like, and don’t want to like, and it’s not a suggestion from smart shuffle, it was actually added to my liked songs playlist. Nobody has access to my Spotify, and I have no weird apps linked to it. This screenshot doesn’t show it as I had already removed the unwanted songs from my list, next time it happens I’ll get a screenshot of it, but the songs were here, and they wouldn’t go away if I hadn’t removed them. I only use Spotify on an iPhone 13 mini. I do use smart shuffle when I want to get fresh suggestions but I fast forward if I don’t like it, and using smart shuffle doesn’t actually add the songs to your “liked songs” playlist unless you press the add/like button, it just adds these new songs to the queue, and then they’re gone if you don’t like them.

[MonsterMonster]

In my case it was Smart Shuffle causing these unwanted "liked" songs to be added. Since the last update when I click the Shuffle button a tip came up saying that Smart Suffle will add recommended songs to your queue. That message only appeared once. This rubbish Dumb Shuffle feature is the default when pressing the Shuffle button highlighted with a diamond. Press it a second time and the diamond disappears and reverts to normal Shuffle. This Dumb Shuffle has been around since at since 2022 yet Spotify blames everything else including suggesting that users account security has been compromised and to create a new account. I suspect some high up VP came up with this stupid idea of Smart Shuffle and railroaded it through despite the disruption it's causing to the user experience and listening stats.

[Ttornelas]

Thanks for the reply. I understand that, and I do understand how smart shuffle works, it adds random songs that you might like to your QUEUE, but what I am complaining here is that these weird songs were actually added to my Liked songs PLAYLIST, as if I went there and pressed like/add, which I didn’t and which is a lot more annoying since I have to be removing them one by one from my playlist.

[Ttornelas]

To be clear, these songs actually show up on my playlist the next time I open the playlist even if I don’t use smart shuffle, and they would still sound even with smart shuffle OFF