Spotify metrics do not register songs listened to from other people's playlists

[ab1210]

Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

All

Operating System

Any, Windows/iOS for sure

My Question or Issue

Spotify's listening metrics fail at registering artist or track listens when they are listened to from a playlist curated by another Spotify account. 

Ex: I've listened to > 12 hours of a certain playlist this month, created by another Spotify user. 

All of my top tracks are not from that playlist, even though I've only listened to the listed songs a few times - many less times than the playlist.

This reflects specifically also on Spotify Wrapped, which is a huge bummer - it's not at all a reflection of the tracks I have listened to over the year, it's a reflection of the times when I am not listening to playlists instead. 

Would really appreciate the metrics to look globally to all tracks. 

[Elena]

Hey @ab1210,

Welcome to the Community and thanks for reaching out. We'll do our best to help you further. 

The behavior you're describing seems very odd. Usually, Spotify counts artists/ tracks/ playlist no matter if they are listened from a playlist you've created on your own or from a playlist curated by another user. You should also see a reflection to your Spotify Wrapped as well. 

Can you make sure to Remove access for any third party apps from here, that may interfere with Spotify's performance? After you check this, please do log out > restart > log back in.

It might also be a good idea to check if you are listening in Private session. Anything you listen to while being in this mode will not affect any of your recommendations.

Please do share with us where you see that information that the songs from that playlist are not being counted, so we can investigate further. 

Let us know if we can elaborate more on something!

[ab1210]

Hi Elena, 

I've removed all access for third party apps, the only other I'd had was Playstation app. None of this listening has been in private sessions either - I did run a client update, logout login, close and restart just in case. I will say, this is a problem I have noticed for the past two years, so I don't believe it's at all recent. 

I originally had a suspicion what is happening is Spotify doesn't note tracks that are coming from playlists that are not 'public', fully - aka, playlists only shared with a few people (not on a profile, but accessible with a shared link). I just did some testing around this, though, listened to X song a few times in a row on a playlist I have access to but isn't fully public. Sure enough, I'm not seeing any of them in my top plays - which is not a high bar, because the songs already there I've only listened to a few times, as most of my listening is on these playlists.

But then I tried listening to tracks on a playlist owned by another Spotify user that was public - I'm seeing the exact same behavior, none are recorded into history ("Top played"). I listened to a playlist that was purely my own - those are recorded. Additionally, I tried a track from a Spotify-curated playlist - nothing. 

I originally thought Spotify is not recording track information for these types of semi-private playlists - which is separate and distinct from listening on private mode, but I no longer think that's the case, I think it's not recording from playlists outside of the user. In my opinion, they should have access to these metrics, as even in 'Friend Activity' the tracks will show as being listened to. They're simply, I believe, not recorded at  all. 

I'm not sure if Spotify has lag on metrics, to be fair, but I know there are tracks very high in my 'top' list that have been played only twice. 

[Alex]

Hi there @ab1210,

Thanks for the detailed reply.

The Top Played count your total listening time per track. So, you might have listened to some songs more times over the years, than to some songs you've been rewinding for a week or two. 

In general, we can't share exactly how the algorithms work behind the scenes, but such playlists will update only when the algorithm has gathered enough data based on your listening activity.

It shouldn't matter if a song is played from a public or private playlist, as ultimately it gets streamed from the main Spotify Library.

It's a good practice to add songs which you like to your Liked Songs, as this has an effect on the songs you'll receive in your recommendations and Made For You playlists. 

Hope you find this info useful. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[ab1210]

Hi Alex, 

Appreciate your response! While I absolutely appreciate the level of detail here, I would expect "Top Tracks This Month" to be fairly accurate to playcount/listening time. Is that mistaken? Additionally, I would assume Spotify Wrapped, as a year-end summary, would look to tracks played over the year/playtime - the past two years were certainly not accurate to listening time. They excluded a majority of my listening-time (it was different private playlists between years). The different content of these playlists was not reflected, at least in terms of within-year listening time. 

I listen to a lot of music. Occupying a near-top spot on "Top played this month" was a song I had listened to precisely once, I absolutely suspect this is due to the fact I listen to other-user playlists that are not necessarily public. I appreciate this isn't how it should work, but it's definitely the behavior I'm seeing for year-end and updating tracks, which I've offered as an FYI. 

Over the past week of troubleshooting, I wound up recreating these playlists - I've now seen the playcounts for "Top listened this month" are updating, when previously they would not update for those listened tracks. I would suggest Spotify might have a bug in their code here. 

[Alex]

Hi there @ab1210,

Thanks for the reply.

We've passed your feedback about this to the development team at Spotify, as they're always trying to make the app better and more user friendly. We can't say for sure when this inconsistency will be addressed though, as it most likely depends on multiple factors.

Again, we appreciate your feedback and the information you've gathered.

Don't hesitate to reach out again if you need help with anything else.

Take care.