Lost all hidden songs

[jesse-575]

Plan

Premium Trial

Country

USA

Device

LG V30 and nVidia sheild tablet

Operating System

(Android 9 & 8 )

My Question or Issue

I mostly listen to "Spotify made" playlists or Artist radio playlists.  I often will listen to one on repeat all day.  I like songs i like, and hide ones i don't. Yesterday morning, suddenly, all of my hidden songs are gone.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and i also checked from an android tablet.  They were totally gone.

This is really disappointing because hundreds were hidden.  And honestly, because i don't pay much attention to music i don't like, i don't really know which were hidden.

I contacted support and was ask why i hide some many songs?? What on earth?? Well, because i don't like listening to music that i don't like.  I prefer to have the app automatically skip these so i don't have to skip them every single time during a day.


Does anyone else use spotify like this?

Has anyone else lost all their hidden songs?

PS: The hidden song *feature* is still there, i tried re-hiding a few and it works. Just going to be a massive pain to re-hide them/find them.

[simpo1000000]

Yes, very annoying!! Hope this can be fixed.

[Eni]

Hi folks! 

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community.

@jesse-575, sorry for the delayed reply, we just came across this thread. Could you let us know if this is still happening on your end? If it is, would you mind letting us know if it is only happening with individual songs or with artists too?

@simpo1000000, could you let us know if you hide a song in a Made for you playlist and then it re-appears on the same device? If this is the case, it's well worth running a clean reinstall by following these steps to see if that helps. In case that this doesn't do the trick, sending us the the exact make/model, operating system and Spotify version of your device would come in handy.

We'll be on the lookout for your reply 🙂

[simpo1000000]

Hello Eni, thanks for replying.  I'll explain the problem further so all is fully understood.  On Spotify I save albums I like, but then hide songs I don't like on the album with the 'Hide Songs' function.  I do this on every album I listen to (100's) so I only listen to the tracks I like.  Spotify often slows down massively on my phone, so I have to un-install and re-install to get Spotify back to a workable speed.  When I did this full un-install, re-install (without the sd card inserted, then added after as where I store my songs).  However when I then opened up previously stored albums with songs hidden, all the hidden songs had been replaced, therefore removing hours and hours of work cleaning out the albums.  I assume this is not supposed to be the case with the 'hide songs' function, that it doesn't save your hidden tracks on your profile, otherwise this makes the function pretty useless, as you can never uninstall and re-install Spotify ever again as you will lose all the work?  This appears to be the same case if hiding songs on made for playlists.

I would hope this issue can be rectified and that hidden songs are stored, otherwise your going to have allot of unhappy people when they find what I have found.

This is the second time, previously you had a 'remove songs' function, however during a new version this function was removed and all removed songs were wiped, losing 100's of albums worth of 'cleaning'.  

Spotify needs to sort this out, as very close to leaving, and would imagine others to.

I have a Samsung Galaxy S7, Android, with a premium Spotify account.

Cheers

[Eni]

Hey @simpo1000000, 

Thank you for the detailed information you sent! 

Since we could replicate this on our end, we'd like to ask for more info so we can report it to the right team to be looked into.

Could you let us know the exact make/model, operating system and Spotify version of the device where this issue is happening on?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply 🙂

[jesse-5751]

Could you provide me with a spotify premium trial to test this with?

As you can imagine, not getting a reply from support for 6 or 7 months was kind of off-putting.  I canceled my subscription.

I would rather use spotify if the hidden songs feature worked better.  I had so many other issues with hidden songs besides just "losing" them. The often would only work on the android app, wouldn't work on PC app or in the web browser.

I am more than happy to test these issue if I had a trial.

[jesse-575]

Sorry, i had a bit of an issue with my "community" account.  The reply from jesse-5751 is from me.

Could you provide me with a spotify premium trial to test this with?

As you can imagine, not getting a reply from support for 6 or 7 months was kind of off-putting.  I canceled my subscription.

I would rather use spotify if the hidden songs feature worked better.  I had so many other issues with hidden songs besides just "losing" them. The often would only work on the android app, wouldn't work on PC app or in the web browser.

I am more than happy to test these issue if I had a trial.

[Alex]

Hi there folks,

@jesse-575, sorry to hear that you didn't get an answer from the support team in such a long time.

Just to clear things up - losing your hidden songs when reinstalling the app is expected behavior. Currently the hidden songs are stored in the app data on your device, so every time you reinstall the app those would get reset. 

Also, hiding songs is not synced across devices. So if you hide a song on Mobile from a recommendations playlist/ album etc. it might still appear visible and playable on Desktop or the Web player. If you click on Don't play this option on an Artist profile, you won't be able to play content from that artist on any device.

We'd recommend adding your +Vote to this Idea. Many users want to see this feature implemented and synced across devices. Here you can read more on how ideas work.

In the meantime we'd recommend instead of hiding songs on a album and then reinstalling the app, try to add the songs you enjoy to a playlist. This way the playlist will remain the same on all your devices.

Hope you find this info helpful. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[jesse-575]

That explains how i lost all my hidden songs then.  I think my phone got factory reset around this time.  I expected the hides to stay, just like the "likes" do.

I can't understand how anyone thought it was worth even implementing a system of hides where it doesn't sync.  That is so CRAZY.

I spent so much time hiding stuff, only for it to not sync??

I also just really hate the lack of transparency in this.  Like, i would have never spent the time hiding stuff if i knew it was stored locally.  I would have just stuck with skipping every time.

[simpo1000000]

Hi there, Samsung galaxy s7, not sure where I find the operating system, but android 8.0.0 if that's the one, Spotify version 8.5.98.984.

[simpo1000000]

Hi there Eni, Samsung galaxy s7, not sure where I find the operating system, but android 8.0.0 if that's the one, Spotify version 8.5.98.984.