[All Platforms] Consolidate duplicates

[Kerumen]

It would be nice if Spotify can recognize identical songs to avoid duplicates in your Liked songs and playlists.

This is pretty common for songs released first as a single then within an album.

For example, if you like the single one, the UI will not show the song as liked when you browse the album. And if you like the song in the album, you'll end up with a duplicated version in your library.

This also happens a lot for songs that you listen in Daily Mix or Discover weekly. If it's not the exact same song you have already liked before, the UI is inconsistent and you can save a duplicate.

Apparently, there is already an internal merge mechanism as the play counter is not split between the different versions of the songs. Maybe this can also be used to consolidate the UI.

Repost of https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Your-Music-Remove-Duplicated-Songs/idi-p/4546787 which didn't get enough kudos.

[Aalfred]

It would really good if you could execute that. It is really annoying if i have the same song twice or more in my playlist

Let's make us Spotify better 🙂

[ntgism]

To that I would like to add that sometimes a song may be in more than one album. For example, the official release by the artist, a compilation album, or a remastered edition and so on. And it has happened to me, adding pretty much the exact same song to a playlist, only difference being the album. But the song is the same

[watertank]

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@Daisy wrote:

Hey everyone,

Thanks for your patience!

As the saved version is not the same version saved under The Artist/Album, this is currently expected behavior. We'll make sure to let the right team know this is something you'd like to see different in the future.

Thanks again for your reports, we appreciate your feedback.

 Hello...

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[casigoldi]

this is extemely annoying. Also because the library is fixed to maximum 10.000 songs (which is the most shitty thing ever - https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Increase-maximum-Songs-allowed-in-Your-Music/...). I've added some albums multiple times - because I though they weren't added. Now I have to find all the duplicates.. 

[kpwxx]

As others have said, they are the same version of the same song from the same album, so although the file may be labelled as different, it's this labelling that's incorrect.

I don't expect it to apply to e.g. the bonus version Vs normal version of an album, or the single Vs album version of a song. Those, I accept that they are not the same even if they do happen to be the same track, because sometimes the versions do vary.

However, when it's literally the same song, and the saved version is for some reason not visible on the artist page or search any more yet somehow still on Spotify, this just makes no sense at all.

Also, there's a limit on songs 😱 why?! When the limit is reached it then makes the feature, in essence, useless!! Why would you do this?!

[jlmoriart]

>As the saved version is not the same version saved under The Artist/Album, this is currently expected behavior.

Of course it's expected behavior, given the system that Spotify uses. The point of this thread is that the system itself, where there are different versions of albums that are not "connected" in any intelligent way, leads to a terrible user experience where one might end up with many "versions" of the same album in their library, and where a user has to search through their library if they're ever unsure of whether they've already added an album or not. (Since they can't tell by looking at it, since they might have a different version!)

The fact that you're calling this "expected behavior", as if the problems we're experiencing were some sort of feature introduced on purpose by your dev team that we just turned out to have problems with, is embarrassingly defensive. It might not be a "bug", but it is, at the very least, a design problem on Spotify's part. There seem to me to be several obvious solutions.

1. Connect interchangeable versions under the hood, and just list both as "in your library" whenever you see them, when really, underneath, only one is.

2. Keep versions visually separate, but allow users to set whether to be prompted by Spotify when adding duplicate versions of albums to their library. (The prompt could give the option to "Replace", "Cancel", or "Add Both")

3. Connect different versions of the same albums via a "versions" tab on the album page itself, and allow a user to pick which one is included in their library (or multiple versions, if they really want.)

This last option would be amazing because sometimes different releases are different enough that a listener might actually prefer one or the other. Coldplay's "Parachutes" has two versions, and I much prefer one, but I lost it on spotify after trying to rebuild my library, and could only find the other. Same with Claude Bolling's "Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano".

Additionally, Spotify could add a feature where shuffled libraries that include different versions of the same song (on purpose) can ignore duplicates so that the flow of the shuffle isn't broken by a repeat.

I canceled my Spotify subscription since my last post in this thread (ended up using my own library and plex, which has worked ok), but maybe Spotify could retain itself some loyal customers by fixing obvious problems like this, especially since it seems like this problem will come up for the users that use Spotify most.

Cheers

[jimmypike27]

Yes, there can be multiple versions and it's ludicrous to expect this to happen.  AND It happens with the same version too!

[Loxer]

Same issue in:

macOS High Sierra 10.13, macOS Mojave 10.14, Windows 10 Pro 1803, Windows 10 Pro 1809, Windows 10 Pro 1709, Windows 10 Pro 1703 and Windows 7 Service Pack 1, iOS 11 (All versions), iOS 12, iOS 12.1, Android 7.1.1 and Android 6.0.1

Saved on my Songs folderAppearing as not saved in artists page, and if I save it I'll get a duplicate of this song 😞Same hereAgain, same

I've got other cases as well and it has started a while ago like 5 versions or more, currently I'm on version 1.0.90 and 8.4.73 in all the mentioned platforms

[frapo]

What the **bleep** does it mean “it’s expected behaviour”?! Not a single song is supposed to be displayed as saved in the artist page? Well, then a good 80% of my library has unexpected behaviour because they’re usually shown as saved. I wanted to change that 20% or less of my library that had what I thought was a problem, but apparently it’s the other 80% who must be fixed then. 🤔

[olejorgenb]

This is one of things about spotify that annoys me the most. One thing is different albums (eg . "remasterd 2018",  "best of", etc), but some albums exist multiple times. Eg. spotify:track:1tsTrRqHpmOy8CzA385ezM and spotify:track:519ZkNbtI2B9pC6rhGhbs9 - same album/song, but it seems to published twice. I would _expect_ spotify to handle cases like that seamlessly! 

Another example: spotify:album:7GfjVvF6WCVKZBe0UZli1v and spotify:album:0D7iYOSQ1pnJwjDyPdYfzk - in this case spotify even _knows_ that the albums are the same! It show a little menu bottom-right with "one more release" (but only on one of the albums.. (wth?)) - but the liked song is only marked in one of them.

Note that the open-source (mostly volunteer I assume) https://musicbrainz.org/ project solves this problem