[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.

[mbpt1979]

I agree, this is very frustrating as I do not want duplicates in my library and as I have over 4000 songs I like to save space for songs I dont have . I have reported this so many times with a very basic reply saying the same thing

[mbpt1979]

This needs sorting I dont want to ha e duplicates in my library it's such a basic function why do we not have it

[Luke]

Edit: This idea has been reposted here.

Updated on 2019-08-15

Hey!

Your idea was submitted a while ago and unfortunately didn't receive the amount of kudos needed to stay active in the ideas board (100 Kudos per year). 

In order to keep the Ideas Exchange clearer I'll close this idea for now, but this doesn't mean Spotify rejected this idea.

If you think this is an idea which needs to be implemented, you're welcome to post it in a slightly different form 🙂

Have a nice day!

Luke

[Owenkeys]

Theres already a web app for this if it helps. Heres the link, it works great.

https://jmperezperez.com/spotify-dedup/

[Rolly22]

Generally I like this idea. However, imho this should only work if the single and album version are really the same. Oftentimes, either the single or the album are some sort of extend version. Also, this recognition is heavily based on how Spotify stores identical songs.

[osornios]

Updated on 2019-09-26

Marked as new idea, which is a repost of this inactive idea.

[Jpgchief]

Yeah, it happens to me all the time, then later I realize that I have twice the same track in the Playlist so would be nice if Spotify helps us with this.

[MrJosephIles]

This problem has existed for as long as I remeber on Spotify. It's especially annoying for artists such as Kanye West who can't seem to help themselves by constantly fiddling with their back-catalogue.

It's especially prominent since with the new 'like song' system replced the old 'save song' system. When a song comes up on a playlist and you think "hey, I like this song", you're supposed to hit that like button. But there is always that nagging voice in the back of your head which says "hey, didn't I like this song before?" You press the button anyway, and then go to your library to see if your suspicion was true... low and behold: two songs in your library that are exactly the same! (Same reason why merging singles with album versions has become even more needed recently.)

I'd have no problem with a system where the act of liking an album just creates a mirror to the artist page/latest version of that album, so that any changes to said album are automatically reflected in your library. Maybe with a small banner to indicate that this has occured like a previous poster suggested. 

[Amegon]

This would help a lot. I sometimes search through playlists for new songs. I will listen to whatever is not liked by me. A duplicate song gets added. Later I can sort my list by name and remove them again, but I stopped doing so, since it just leads to listening again to that song in another playlist. If you could create somethink like a link/relation to other identical songs, then you could show song properties from the one user liked/added properties. If both liked then does not matter, just show current song property, if none exist then properties from any linked identical song. Album/logo/picture does not matter for me, as long as same song.

if connection is too hard then try spotify at beginning middle and end of songs, or allow users to mark/connect with songs with exact same length.

[schteff]

Sometimes an album is "shadowed" by another album of the same name by the same artist in Spotify (different publishers). 

I figured this out when I noticed that my liked songs were not visible when opening the Album from certain elements in the Spotify GUI. 

This album: https://open.spotify.com/album/2b1FnOpvqqMY6B3mAA7R6r

Is shadowed by this album: https://open.spotify.com/album/3zTgTkuv0Qnd2MOREf2jXl

My liked songs (the hearts) only appear in the first album, which is only accessible by following the links in the "Liked songs" list. That album is not present under the artist page. I would of course prefer if the hearts were present in both albums. 

This is far from the only example. 

edit: I cant seem to hide the album previews and only post the links. But the IDs for the albums are 2b1FnOpvqqMY6B3mAA7R6r and 3zTgTkuv0Qnd2MOREf2jXl