Release Radar is hopelessly broken

[LeMule]

Plan 

Premium

Country Canada

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 11

My Question or Issue

Release Radar is getting worse by the week. Today there were only two songs by bands I follow, and the rest is either awful remixes, bands copying the names of more famous bands, or bands I've never heard of. I had to hide 28 songs and I'm sure they will probably just re-appear next week. 

Does Spotify not understand we ONLY want releases from bands we follow? If I want to discover new bands I'll listen to Discover Weekly (which also just churns out the same songs week after week now). And if there aren't enough new release songs to fill the playlist then just make it shorter or include multiple songs from a new album. 

[dsherret]

I used to listen to the entire release radar playlist every week. Now I need to selectively go through and investigate each song to see if it's actually from the artist who it says it's from.

[Mika87]

Same for me..

[Joan]

Hello folks,

Thanks for reaching out. Ultimately, just like other auto-generated playlists, the Release Radar is based on your past music habits. While yes, it includes music from artists you follow, new releases from similar artist are also added in. The more you listen to your favorite content, the better recommendations you'll get. You can also select the songs that you don't like and choose the "Hide this song" option. Likewise, you can like the songs/albums you do like by clicking on the heart icon. This will help the suggested playlists/albums to be updated so it can include more personalized results. We also suggest taking a look at this article for tips on how to improve your Made for You playlists. 

On another note, keep in mind that the content shown in the Discover section can vary, and it doesn't have a set timeframe for when it gets updated. It depends on different factors like your recently played content, listening habits and content that other users with similar taste listens to. If it hasn't updated in a while, we'd suggest to keep listening to more music you love and giving us feedback (hearting or hiding songs) so we can learn what you like! It’s worth noting that Release Radar doesn’t eavesdrop on your private listening, so be sure not to be on a Private session when you’re aiming to feed it with your taste.

Hope this clears things up.

[dsherret]

I understand what you’re saying, but that’s not exactly how it‘s working in practice right now. Artists with no listeners are hijacking the names of more popular artists in order to end up on peoples' release radar. The songs contain no material from the popular artist. It makes the release radar playlist unlistenable.

For example, this is the third song on my playlsit. The artist "Lil Jayson" has added "White Lies" as an artist so it ends up on my release radar:

Now here's the fifth song:

In this case, the artist "speedin" has added "Lights" as an artist so it shows up. When I go to White Lies and Lights pages they don't show this song listed, so obviously Spotify has a way to identify when people do this. They should tweak what shows up in the release radar to exclude people who do this.

[Rymaack]

This is a serious problem that Spotify has with their software. I have a few artists who's names are constantly being hijacked by random people uploading their music.

The artist "Home" is a great example. He hasn't released any music in years but people are using his name on their music that is uploaded to Spotify and it constantly shows in my release radar.

There seems to be a loophole that is allowing people to slap big name artists on their music without the big name artist approving it.

[LeMule]

@Joan I don't *want* similar artists in Release Radar. Just the ones I follow. And there is a big problem with new, unknown , usually hiphop artists copying other band names (Oasis and The Cult come to mind) to get on the playlists. Its hard to believe Spotify can't distinguish two bands with the same name. 

[zerometa]

Release radar used to only contain releases from my followed artists - that is how it SHOULD be.

If I want random selections of artists based on my listening habits then I can use the radio or discover functions.

Please make release radar only contain my artists, and nothing else.

[FenrisulfrRedfox]

Release radar continues to resend me songs I'm not interested or songs that are from the same album. Recently it has sent me songs that was on the previous weeks release radar.
The discovery genre in the search genre has recommended my artist that I have blocked. I had to individually block every song from them and some how still get them reccomended me to me.
I had Uninstalled the app and then re-installed it hoping that it would help however it did not.

[longshank]

The quality of the Release Radar has declined massively over the last few years, reaching a point where it has become challenging for me to enjoy. I get so many fake artists releasing music under prominent group names, and I also have an issue with repeatedly getting music suggested I don't listen to. I once listened to a 'Phonk' playlist for half an hour, and now my release radar is 30% Phonk 😭 no matter how many times I remove from the playlist, they appear again the following week, diminishing the overall utility of Release Radarit. It is such a shame because one time, it was a great way not to miss my favourite band's new music.

[Kings4thecup]

That’s not how it works. You clearly don’t know how your software works. I’**bleep** on my release radar for WEEKS now. Half of my release radar is from stuff that came out WEEKS ago…while 80% are bands I don’t listen to, never have and it’s music I don’t like. It used to be amazing. Now it BLOWS. PLEASE SPOTIFY FIX THIS!!! NO ONE is happy with it. It’s AWFUL. 

[rwldebruijn]

Hear hear! Release Radar should only contain songs of artists you follow. PERIOD. Everything on Spotify is aimed and discovering new music, and that's fine. But this one playlist should be place a that focusses on your favourites. Just as it once was.

[jfccombe]

I normally don't write stuff on forums like that but the Release Radar has been getting worse and worse.

And this week it has reached a new low. 30 tracks and only 2 of them from artists that I am interested in. I have never listened to most of the artists on the playlist and never even listened to the genre they belong to. 

RIP Release Radar. I am giving up

[aceface11]

I'm so glad (in a way) that I found this thread as you are all echoing my thoughts.

Release Radar used to be pretty stellar, now my Discover Weekly is superior in almost every way.

Radar constantly includes artists or songs I've disliked or want to hide, it doesn't even align with my listening habits. This week is chockful of remixes/dance music which I do enjoy but I only ever dip in and out of. My usual style is eclectic, everything from metal to pop and in-between (and my Wrapped confirmed this). I don't understand what has happened to the algorithm, it's like it becomes fixated with a small part of my musical DNA and obsessively caters to it.

It also needs to get more intelligent with detecting what is song and what is spoken word, look at the Above & Beyond weekly show as an example. A lot of the time I get the "shout out/message" segment in my Radar and not a song.

[psychedelicbiker]

Something definitely seems to have changed in the past few weeks.  My release radar was great for years.  But in the last few weeks it is predominantly filled with music from only a very specific weird genre that I have little interest in.  And unlike before almost all the bands I've not heard of.  Please don't fob us off like your last comment, it was completely unhelpful and dismissive. 

[dsherret]

---

It also needs to get more intelligent with detecting what is song and what is spoken word, look at the Above & Beyond weekly show as an example. A lot of the time I get the "shout out/message" segment in my Radar and not a song.

---

I get that too. For example, this week:

But more egregious are the artists who continue to hijack the release radar. A simple fix for Spotify is "do all these artists have the song on their profile?"... if not, don't include the song. I counted 8 songs on my release radar this week of people doing this.

I'm actually thinking of writing a script that uses Spotify's API to looks at my release radar playlist, then create a new playlist that has all this garbage filtered out. I just wish Spotify would fix the issue before I end up doing that though.

[tarkotarko]

i used to wait for fridays, just for "release radar"

but it is not exciting anymore because i keep getting music out of my interest.

i click on "remove" but same artists keep showing up..

i don't know what else i can do? 

this is very annoying..

i hope you read this and take this serious..

[releaseradar_sucks]

its so **bleep**ing annoying that I swtiched to apple music today lol

[davidhorvath]

I thought it was just me🤣 My RR this week was 95 % artists not heard of and nearly all with <1k followers.  These would always come up in Discovery. You would this AI algorithms  would do better. I'm through with RR.

[Jakeh_d]

I spent about 6 years waiting every Friday for my release radar. It used to show multiple brand new release from my favourite artists. Now I miss what they are doing and I'll find out weeks later that someone has released something... I've had some tracks hang on for multiple weeks even though I've said I'm not interested. the algorithms just don't listen and show you what they want anyway.