Unknown favourites/playlists in my list

[Puffin502]

Plan

Free

Country

Germany

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

Hi,

sorry if this is a repost, I can not find similar posts like this.

Lately I found that my list of favourite songs includes countless ones that are completely unknown to me as well as unknown playlists saved to my account.

I deleted these once before but today a new batch of playlists and songs came into view.
What in nine hells is going on, community?

[CrescentFresh]

This is happening to me as well. I have used the 'logout of every device' feature and only reconnected my computer and cell to make sure it wasn't a rogue session from a long time ago. As best I can tell this is being used to pump up the # of listens for new artists or playlist curators. It's like gaming the system and buying twitter followers to make yourself seem more important or to try and go viral. I have never heard of a single song or artist that has shown up in my play queue history or on the playlists that were magically added to my account. I have deleted them so guess I need to stick around and wait for it to happen again to be more helpful. Hope we find a fix.

[Bethany_Dawn]

Hi @Puffin502 and welcome to Spotify Community! 🙂
It looks like you listed the subscription as Free in your plan details. If so, then the mystery songs and playlists you are seeing are likely the suggestions made by Spotify. There are a couple articles you can check out regarding this and the Premium vs. Free features.

How Can I Stop Suggested Songs?

What's different about Spotify's free experience on Mobile?

I hope this was useful and have a wonderful day! 🙂

[Puffin502]

Hi Bethany,

thanks for your reply, I guess that is an explanation to the phenomenon but I am far from happy with this feature.

I get that Spotify and artists are interested in promotion. But I already get personalized recommendations right on my homescreen based on my favourited music, based on my playlists AND based on my recently listened to tracks.

Adding songs into my "Favourites" folder feels like tampering and it clutters said folder because these tracks can't be un-favoured en masse.
A homescreen ad says "You might like this"
But an added Favourite says "You like this"

And look where this has gotten us? I honestly thought my account was possibly hacked/messed with.
This is a terrible move by Spotify.

[Peter]

Hey @Puffin502.

Thanks for your feedback on this - we appreciate it 🙂

We just wanted to clarify that the following is expected behaviour on the free version on mobile:

• If you have less than 15 songs in your Favorite Songs, we'll add more songs.
• You will see a message telling you that the extra songs were added by us, but they can be replaced by adding more songs.

If any of you are experiencing something different to this, let us know and we'll look into it further. 

If you would like to suggest a change or improvement to the app, we invite you to create an idea in the Community by going here. You can get other users to vote for it, and the more votes it gets, the more likely it is to be implemented in future.

Hope that helps!

[Puffin502]

I don't use Spotify on mobile though, I use it on Windows 10.
And I do have more than 15 of my own chosen favourites.

I already deleted a hundred songs in june alone with yet more songs YOU added to my favourites.

As I already said I understand the mindset behind adding songs by less known artists. But this is horrendous. I barely find my own songs between row upon row of songs that are definitely NOT my favourite!

[Peter]

Hey @Puffin502.

Thanks for getting back to us 🙂

Do you mind sending us a screenshot showing how the added songs appear in your desktop app? This is to make sure that this is expected behaviour rather than something we need to look into further.

Thanks! We'll be looking out for your reply 😉

[Puffin502]

My favourites from my latest own entry to the to the second to last at the very bottom of the third screenshot

[Peter]

Hey @Puffin502.

Thanks for the screenshots 🙂

It looks like these songs are in your Liked Songs playlist on desktop (not to be confused with Songs, which appears in the Your Library column). Whenever you like ('heart') a song in a Made for You playlist (Daily Mix, Discover Weekly, Release Radar), it gets saved to this playlist, which is automatically created after you start liking songs in these playlists.

Just to be sure, do you remember ever liking these songs in one of the above-mentioned playlists, and if not, then do you at least recognise the songs in this playlist, or are they completely unfamiliar?

Thanks! We'll be looking out for your reply 🙂

[Puffin502]

No, I never liked any of these songs, I haven't listened to any of them, these are songs 100% unknown to me. I don't peruse the Release Radar or other lists except for the Mixtapes. None of these belong in these though.

[Peter]

Hey @Puffin502.

Thanks for getting back to us.

It sounds like someone might have taken over your account. Even if you're not seeing any other suspicous activity on your account, we'd still recommend that you secure your account by following the steps in this Spotify Answer.

You can then either manually remove the songs that you don't want, or you can reach out to our Customer Support team here, who can revert your saved music and playlists to how they were before this started happening.

Keep us posted - we'll be here in case you need any more help with this 😉

[SIPAnkh]

Well, how about users that have a premium account. We have the $9.99 account for two users, where one can be online and the other is using the service offline, ie only 1 user at the time can be on a live stream. My daughter is pretty much using it live while I do offline and connect only to download selected favorites. However, what is annoying I constantly end up with unknown favorites in my favorites, how do I stop this short of getting really upset and canceling altogether (it is becoming super annoying!) . We are Mac/OS X users and iPhone app users (I use it only on my iPhone 11).

[Petya]

Hi @SIPAnkh,

Thanks for your question! 

Bear in mind that Spotify is intended for single use only - meaning 1 account should be used by 1 user. 

It's normal that the app synchronizes the songs across different devices because that's the way it's meant to be when one user wants to have it installed on PC and on their phone for easy use.

If you want to avoid your and your daughter's favorite getting all mixed up, we'd recommend you to try Premium Family. That way you'll both use two separate accounts but will pay a discounted price. You'll also be able to listen to you own music without things getting messed up.

For the one of you who decides to create a new account, here's a way to save the existing playlists in the new account.

We hope this helps 🙂 Keep us posted!

[hersir]

When I go to Home -> 'Your favorite albums and songs' then I see ten albums that I have not chosen. Only one single song has a 'like' (which I removed).

Why are they there if they are not among my most played albums and they have no likes?

More importantly, I cannot get rid of them (no right-click option), so the category label really seems to be forced upon me by Spotify. Please explain.

Considering a user's favorites then MusicBee anytime will show me what music I have played most (I can even chose how many songs I want in a listing) and which of my songs have the highest rating.

Your rating system would appear to be basically binary which hardly reflects the complexity of experiencing music (and please don't ask us now to rate everything from, say, 0 to 5 stars).

Do let me know how to get rid of these 10 albums!

[Ver]

Hey @hersir,

Thanks for reaching out to us 🙂

We'll need more information about these albums. Do you see them in Recently Played or Shortcuts? 

If you can see them under Shortcuts, there is currently no option to remove content from Shortcuts. This idea seems similar to your suggestion. You can add your +Vote and Subscribe to the thread. That way you can stay up-to-date with any relevant news about this.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll be happy to help.
 

[hersir]

@Ver,
As mentioned, I go Home -> (scroll down and get to) 'Your favorite albums and songs'. In both Spotify for Windows and Android I have the referred to 'Favorites' and in neither I have 'Shortcuts'.

So again, none of these albums or their contained songs have a been 'Saved to Your Library' or 'Saved to your Liked Songs' - which sparks another question. Why does clicking a heart for an album and a song give two different definitions? If it means the same then use one term only to make it less ambiguous. 

When you write: "This idea seems similar to your suggestion" then I fully disagree - that reference is about customising the 'Home' page.  My question is why Spotify has added something it claims as my favorite albums and songs and how to get rid of it? 

In lack of a specific response, I speculate that somebody decided that if a user like one album and/or song of a given artist then anything said artist has done is a favorite, which is clearly a flawed logic and should be changed. 

Cheers and happy New Year! 

[Novy]

Hi again @hersir, 

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

Keep in mind that these recommendations are based on the listening history of your account. 

In this case, could you let us know if you usually play a lot of music during the day without pausing it? Has a friend or a family member used your account recently? This will help us take a better look at what's happening.

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

[hersir]

@Novy,

> ...these recommendations are based on the listening history of your account

Really? Then the score is not based on most frequent and it would seem we both agree that the category title "Favorite albums and songs" is a misrepresentation. Spotify must be designed to randomly add other albums of artists than what the user has (repeatedly) listened to, and this only from one genre (in this case blues).

What about all the different types of, say, classical music I've frequently listen to? 

It would seem that you're complicating a fairly simple issue of quantifying (i.e. we're talking about a simple counting procedure) what a user's favorites are (in terms of artist, genre, albums and particular songs). Metrics that, as mentioned, other apps have had no problem providing for its users.  There is definitely scope for improvements and I mean it in a constructive way.

> ...could you let us know if you usually play a lot of music during the day without pausing it?

> Has a friend or a family member used your account recently?

The answer to both questions is: No

Cheers and Happy Celebrations!

[Novy]

Hey @hersir, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

Keep in mind that it isn't possible to delete or remove these recommendations from our end. However, we'd suggest you to keep listening to your favorite music so that you can get better recommendations that adjust to the music you like. 

We'd also recommend taking a look at this article where you'll find a few steps on how to secure your account. 

We really appreciate your feedback regarding this, as it helps inform our decisions going forward and we'll be sure to pass this on to the right folks.

If you have any other questions, we're just one message away.

Have a good one!