Unexpected Release Radar updates

[lefibbo]

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

across all devices (Android app, Windows desktop app, web browser, ...)

Operating System

see above

My Question or Issue

For a few weeks now, I have been noticing unexpected changes to my weekly Release Radar. I usually check the Release Radar on Friday, then listen to all the songs on there throughout the weekend, save songs I like to my personal playlists, etc.

What I mean by unexpected changes is this: After the intial update on Friday, my Release Radar will often get another update on Saturday or maybe even Friday night. After this second update, most of the songs from the intial update are usually still there but some are replaced by different songs while others simple change positions in the playlist.

To me, this is an inconvenience because I'm not always able to save songs I like to my library right away, and it has happened that wasn't able to find a song I liked because the Release Radar has changed in the meantime.

Here's an example of the kind of changes I'm talking about.

This was my Release Radar as of Friday, October 22, 2021 around noon:

1. Sickle and Peace, Mastodon
2. Enemy, Swallow the Sun
3. Magura‘s Last Kiss, Ignea
4. Speed Dating an Arsonist, Diablo Swing Orchestra
5. Road Trip, Ninja **bleep** Party
6. Like It‘s the First Time, Skinny Lister
7. Fisher Island Sound, Beirut
8. Field of Sorrow – Orchestral Version, Orden Ogan
9. Deceiver, Deceiver, Arch Enemy
10 Grim Awakening, Sarke
11. Warm Seas – Nothing But The Truth, The Pineapple Thief
12. Halloween, Faun
13. Immaculate Deception, The Agonist
14. Silly Boy Blue – Alternative Ending Mix, David Bowie
15. Alles verkacken, The toten Crackhuren im Kofferraum
16. Culture War, Twelve Foot Ninja
17. Bartzabel, Behemoth
18. House of Cadmus, Khemmis
19. Nuages, Wiegedood
20. Trance V: Cerulean Sun, Anomalie & Sakis Tolis
21. Passenger, Wilderun
22. Bela Lugosi‘s Dead, Frayle
23. Empire of Lies, Grand Cadaver
24. Blooms of Oblivion, Emma Ruth Rundle
25. Orphan, Whitechapel
26. In Colour, The Gathering
27. Dominion of Cain, Nothgard
28. Yörn Torni, Havukruunu
29. Refuturing, Maybeshewill & Marcus Joseph
30. KFM, Die Ärzte

And this was my Release Radar by Friday, October 22, 2021 around midnight:

1. Sickle and Peace, Mastodon
2. Enemy, Swallow the Sun
3. Magura‘s Last Kiss, Ignea
4. Speed Dating an Arsonist, Diablo Swing Orchestra
5. Road Trip, Ninja **bleep** Party
6. Like It‘s the First Time, Skinny Lister
7. Fisher Island Sound, Beirut
8. Field of Sorrow – Orchestral Version, Orden Ogan
9. Deceiver, Deceiver, Arch Enemy
10 Grim Awakening, Sarke
11. Warm Seas – Nothing But The Truth, The Pineapple Thief
12. Halloween, Faun
13. Immaculate Deception, The Agonist
14. Silly Boy Blue – Alternative Ending Mix, David Bowie
15. Alles verkacken, The toten Crackhuren im Kofferraum
16. Tangled, Twelve Foot Ninja
17. Passenger, Wilderun
18. Nuages, Wiegedood
19. House of Cadmus, Khemmis
20. Bartzabel, Behemoth
21. Trance V: Cerulean Sun, Anomalie & Sakis Tolis
22. Blooms of Oblivion, Emma Ruth Rundle
23. Orphan, Whitechapel
24. In Colour, The Gathering
25. Dominion of Cain, Nothgard
26. Bela Lugosi‘s Dead, Frayle
27. Empire of Lies, Grand Cadaver
28. The Necklace, Kayo Dot
29. Yörn Torni, Havukruunu
30. Coast of Barbary, Four Stroke Baron

As you can see, three songs have been completely replaced, seven songs have changed positions in the playlist.

I don't think these additional updates are supposed to happen. I would appreciate

a) some feedback on why this is happening, and

b) a bugfix that gets rid of these unexpected updates.

Thank you!

[redeyeloon]

The same thing is happening to me. This morning a Cat Power track was at the top of my list and I loved that it was at #1. Three hours later I go back to hear it again and there is no Cat Power track in my list at all. Same thing happens accross multiple devices and OSes. Come on, Spotify, this has been going on for almost 2 years. Please fix it and stop gaslighting us into thinking it's OK.

[DUBSREDA]

Please fix this thing. Release radar is changing during the week. 

[deepey]

Does anyone have a solution to this? It’s happened intermittently to me for months, but after New Year’s it went crazy. Repeats of the same songs two weeks in a row, random changes to the songs and their order while I’m trying to make my way through the playlist, disappearing songs. What is going on with this feature? It’s the main reason I use Spotify but it’s becoming painful. 

[charbeas]

I am having same issues even with brand new phone and reloaded app.  Any updates or fixes???

[stevenixon]

Popped on here to report the same thing. Every week I start my Release Radar, and, about 50% of the time, I end up with the songs changing order, being removed, or adding new ones. I can track this happening because I have a job that checks daily if the playlist is updated and adds new tracks to my archive playlist. I can see up to 5 tracks being added mid week.

Worse is the changing of the song order. If the new tracks just appeared at the bottom that would be fine, but I listen to this list over multiple days in the car for around 20 minutes a day. If I start on Friday, then pick up Monday and Tuesday but the song order has changed the playlist will pick up where it left off and then move to the new song that comes after it. 

This week I managed to listen to 13 tracks before the playlist finished. The track I was listening to went from near the top of the playlist to near the bottom. 

The playlist states "Updates every Friday". Can you please just leave it at that schedule. I don't have the same problem with Discover Weekly or any of the other updating playlists I listen to.

[Bizatts]

This has happened to me twice since Friday. 

[Bizatts]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Google Pixel 8

Operating System

Android 14

For the past couple of weeks Release Radar keeps updating past Friday. This past weekend the playlist 

changed 4 times. 

[Bizatts]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Google Pixel 8

Operating System

Android 14

For the past couple of weeks Release Radar keeps updating past Friday. It has changed seven times since last Friday. 

[Bizatts]

This is still ongoing. I've tried deleting cache and storage along with a reinstall.

[st0rmtrooperx]

This is happening to me several times a week where my Release Radar keeps adding songs, removing songs and changing the order of songs. It's supposed to update every Friday, not every day! It's happening every single week now where I didn't used to have this issue. It's also happening on both my phone and desktop app which makes me think this is not a device issue but an actual bug with the playlist. Please fix this!

[LoTuS]

Same here, very very boring behavior. It's very difficult to “follow” the playlist or listen to it several times because it changes all the time, so you don't know where you are in your listening...

[st0rmtrooperx]

Following up from my comment yesterday, here are screenshots of my release radar playlist yesterday (Tuesday) vs. today (Wednesday) on the desktop app, phone app also showed these orders. Please fix this, very annoying!

Release Radar (Tuesday)Release Radar (Wednesday)

[Amontgomery9]

I've been having the issue for years. I see a post from a moderator from 2021 saying it was due to changes and testing. Why is it still happening then? And it's not like it slowly updates throughout the day, which would be bad enough for a playlist that's supposed to be updated once weekly. I have been slowly making my way through this week's playlist for four days, and it is still changing.

It's starting to get really annoying that the price keeps increasing, yet nothing seems to improve.

[GXY128]

I know it's an old post but this still happens, it's very annoying but I think it's basically intended so unlikely to change. However I do have a workaround that works well for me at least.

I simply have another playlist I've created, and as soon as I can on a Friday and Monday I right click the Release Radar/Discover Weekly playlists and the option "Add to other playlist", and it adds everything into my own playlist and therefore will not be automatically updated. On Mobile I think you have to be in the RR playlist and then this option is under the 3 dots at the top. Sometimes it helps to have the option "Show unplayable songs" turned on because then you can see if something has disappeared because it's been removed from Spotify completely, happens fairly often to me.

Then when you check midweek it's usually clear to see that Release Radar has changed a fair bit, whilst Discover Weekly has not.

Also if I don't listen to the playlist for a week, it's pretty obvious that the following week contains a lot of repeats, which I can then avoid.

Is more hassle than I'd like but once you've got into a routine with it, it does get around some of these problems.

[Bizatts]

I would like to note that on my end for the past two Friday releases my playlist has not constantly updated.

[Bizatts]

Scratch that haha, It updated a couple of times yesterday. Ended up with a very reduced amount of songs.

[JMUSublime]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Android, Windows

Operating System

Android 14, Windows 11

My Question or Issue

For the past few weeks, Release Radar has been updating not just at 12:00 AM Friday, but multiple times in the upcoming days - whether it is shifting the order of tracks, removing some tracks and adding others, including older tracks from previous weeks. . The instability of Release Radar makes it difficult to use for music discovery, as I may be listening to a song, and then cannot find it again unless I go out to last.fm and check my scrobbles. Please either resolve the instability, or at least provide access to previous iterations of release radar (i.e. the last 3 updates) for review and listening.

[Yankaman]

This has started happening to me very recently, after getting a Release Radar playlist that had nothing to do with my music taste. Today is Thursdays and all but two songs in the playlist are new as compared to last week’s Friday. At least the genre is back to what it used to be!

[myfunkyhat]

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

Device

(OnePlus)

My Question or Issue

I've noticed in the last couple of weeks that my release radar playlist keeps changing the order of the tracks and even some of the tracks in it each time I go back to it. Is there a way to turn this off as it's seriously annoying. I like to listen to the list each week and see what's come out from artists I follow (and things I like go and see if it's from a whole album or EP), but as it keeps changing I don't know what I've listened to and what I haven't and need to start again each time.

Many thanks

[Yankaman]

In case it helps anyone, this started happening to me after logging into Spotify on a Samsung TV and got fixed after logging off / changing user in the same Samsung TV. I am not 100% sure that was the trigger, but it’s the only variable in my case. Hope it helps!