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Duplicates of the same albums

Solved!

Duplicates of the same albums

Plan

Family

Country

UK

Device

iPhone 5S & Windows PC

Operating System

iOS 10 & Windows 7 & 10

 

My Question or Issue

Why are albums seemingly re-uploaded to the Spotify database with what looks like no changes what so ever?

 

The result is an unorganised collection of music that is saved across multiple locations i.e. Library and Playlists (and in some cases downloaded) but is not the same as what is available on Spotify's side so users run the risk of saving or even downloading the same track or album twice if they don't pay enough attention.

 

Below is an example of what I'm describing and what the effects can be if not checked/noticed.

 

It's worth noting that this is not a case of artists releasing an "updated" or "extended" version; it's exactly the same album.

 

What is going on?

 

Album saved in my libraryAlbum saved in my library

The same album as found on the artist's page (not saved)The same album as found on the artist's page (not saved)

The result of saving the not-saved albumThe result of saving the not-saved album

Reply
46 Replies

Hey @Magic_13ananas,

 

Just to clarify, the recording is the same. The addition of the explicit filter is the change that will have been made by the artist, Once you remove the old one from your library, you won't be able to reach it again through Spotify unless you paste in the specific link. 

 

/T

 

Thanks @TomLegend,

 

Hopefully, the tech guys can get this sorted so it stops happening and all replacements are automatically overwritten in people's libraries/playlists.

Hey @Magic_13ananas,

 

No worries! If anything else comes up, you know where to find us 😊

 

/T

 

I'm having this problem too, mostly with albums I downloaded onto my iPhone to listen to offline. As I listened I added songs to playlists (which are also downloaded), then tried to remove the downloaded album from my phone afterwards. This seems to be when the duplicate album appears.

Sometimes I already had some songs from that album in playlists and for some reason it's added the downloaded album as a separate album rather than combining them. Other times it's because there's a standard album and a deluxe album and I've inadvertently added songs from both albums to playlists, so I have to make sure they're all from the same album then remove the extra one from my library.

Is there any way to stop this happening? I'm at the stage where I think I should just listen on my phone and only edit on my computer because it's causing too many problems and taking too long to fix.

I would just like to add that I would be thrilled to see this fixed too, and preferably retroactively to already-saved songs if possible. In case it can lead the tech-guys to the "right" solution to the problem, I will explain why the phenomenon is a problem for me personally:

 

I use the Discover Weekly playlist, Similar Playlist and other such features to discover new music. When I hear a song I like, I add it to one of a number of playlists (usually categorized by something like genre, or how much I enjoyed the song). The Discover Weekly playlist always avoids all tracks that I have heard before, but other methods of finding new music (like the Similar Playlist) do not always do this. So if I were to listen to (for instance) a Similar Playlist (generated from one of my existing playlists), I would hear many songs that I have already heard before; in fact, most of the songs in such playlists are songs that I have heard before (or duplicates as described in this thread). I would like to first remove all of these songs from the playlist, so I have a playlist with only "fresh" songs. I do this buy saving all songs in my "main" playlists, so that I can tell if I "have" a song by seeing if it is already part of my library or not (i.e. has a cross or a tick-mark next to the song title). Then, I remove all the songs that are already part of my library, from the playlist.

 

However, since a lot of my saved songs are in fact duplicates as described in this thread, they do not appear as part of my library; and so I have to actually listen to each song and try to remember if I have heard it before. This is time-consuming and discouraging.

 

I know, mine is a somewhat convoluted system, and the resulting problem might seem minor; but I'm doing my best within Spotify's questionable playlist system, and these duplicates are making some very obvious and extremely useful categorization schemes impossible. Again, I would really appreciate it if this was fixed (or, alternatively, if Spotify's categorization system was improved in some more fundamental way).

 

Regards,

Aleksander

Hi,

I have this problem, too. Already noticed it a couple months ago but didn't really mind then and forgot it shortly afterwards.

But now, as the Top Tracks 2018 playlist was generated I stumbled upon it again. In it were many songs that seem to not have been saved to my library (probably because they were links to songs in new versions of the albums), but when i search for that exact album in my library it shows as saved. 

 

For example this album by the Offspring:

 

"new" version which is also listed on the artists page:

https://open.spotify.com/album/09OM7urF0SXgJqbFcllYQs?si=TM2pKhZEScaWGt28x5JF8Q

 

The version in my library:

https://open.spotify.com/album/2chaxE4HIgWkWooppEUZAI?si=Rm51EjhuTtGqTLKWAhC2Ew

 

I know its not that important but I when I go to the artists page I want to see which albums I saved without unsaving all the old ones and saving the newer versions again, mostly because it would take a long time to go through my library and check every album for new versions. Just going to the artists page and saving everything again without going through my library wouldn't work for me either because than I'd have the songs two times in my library.

 

If I can help you in any way just ask

So glad to see this brought up. I have been having this issue for quite some time.  For me the issue is problematic because I will go to a favorite artist's page, and see none of the songs in thier top 10 checked. After checking the songs and putting them in My Library,  I end up with two versions of the same song because the album I HAD checked is no longer displayed or listed.  Probably not a big deal for most users, but I will be hitting the 10,000 song cap in short order and will need to spend time removing duplicate songs just to make room. 

 

Not sure why it's so hard to make the "albums" have different URL's, but the tracks within the albums all linking to the same URL.  If the track is the same with no remastering or updating. It should only have one URL.

I‘m glad to see I’m not the only onw having this problem. For me it‘s especially annoying since I have to replace all the songs in the playlists (and I have a lot of playlists) and I can’t even see which ones I have to replace (I just guess). I hope Spotify finds a solution

Thank you for bringing this up, it has been driving me insane for a while. My music "collection" is chaotic because in my mind songs were randomly being "unsaved" so I just kept saving them again. I have a lot of songs and sometimes I forget what I have and get pleasantly surprised when I "shuffle all". Now every time I open Spotify there are no pleasant surprises I just feel angry and stressed as **bleep**. Lol. I don't mind if music is being "reuploaded or replaced by the artist", I just want my copies replaced too so I don't have to deal with this **bleep**. Bye Felicia.

 

This has been happening to me alllll the time for at least a year and is super frustrating. I listen offline on my phone by default, so I like to save full albums and put them on shuffle. Usually what happens is I notice my song shuffle starts playing the same artist/songs over and over (which is another issue entirely) - this prompts me to search for an album I haven't heard in awhile and most of the time I'll find that a bunch of songs have been removed/unchecked from that album, while other albums in my downloads are showing as duplicated. Why does this happen out of nowhere without me editing anything? 

9 months later and I'm still having this problem.  Here are some screenshots.  

I'd like to add that this is very annoying because I keep getting songs appearing in my discover playlists or recommended songs section that I already have saved, and I to double check that they are in fact saved.

duplicateAlbum1.PNG
duplicateAlbum2.PNG

Yeah, just switched from apple music to spotify, and imported my library by a third party app. All songs are for some reasons (i guess the URI) connected to other versions of the songs than those up on the browse page. 

 

It's confusing not knowing if songs i browse is not saved, when they actually are. I don't want to use my time adding all of these songs manually.

I've the same issue on several albums for quite some time now too... Very annoying !

So did Spotify suddenly get new management, or just collectively decide they hated their users???

 

This was a great platform for years until I wake up one day and I wish I had my Zune back compared to this garbage.

Same issue for me. Its very annoying, and the larger the playlist the worse this is. Duplicates all over the place. 

 

Its unacceptable for a bug like this to still be in effect after this long. 

I am so glad that I have finally found that I am not the only one that this happens to.

 

Another thing that I have noticed which shows that a new version has been uploaded is that even if album art and track names are all identical the record company will be where the difference is. You can see that there is this same change in the post above. I believe this is also caused by a change in record company ownership.

 

For example:

Papa Roach - Infest - spotify:album:6VhJfrpUTWSthVGah4yykU - 2000 SKG Music LLC

Papa Roach - Infest - spotify:album:0BHa0ePkvGAVKymB4FU58m - 2001 UMG Recordings, Inc

 

Doing some wikipedia searching it looks that SKG got sold to UMG in 2003. Maybe they then released further albums under UMG from this point.

 

Obviously Spotify came out long after 2003 but it appears that there must be two different digital versions of this album and they must have switched them on Spotify at some point.

 

Still a pain having to uncheck both albums and head to the artist page and add the album from the main page again.

 

I'm glad to hear it's not just me; this issue has been driving me crazy. It happens regularly for me, with albums that I know haven't had a rerelease or anything; it seems like Spotify just arbitrarily shuffles around copies sometimes.  Can we please get something done about this?

Seriously Spotify it is very frustrating to go to one of my favorite artist's pages and see I don't have barely any of it saved so then I have go back a cross check this in my library just to make sure I do have them saved.

Same issue here

 

To show everyone how bad and severe the issue is, I am attaching a couple of screenshots from my library.

Screenshot_20190917-172123_Spotify.jpg
Screenshot_20190917-172039_Spotify.jpg

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