[Mobile] Block/Hide Artists on Spotify Playlists and Release Radar

[tender82]

The release of Friday's Release Radar is one of my favorite parts of the week and has been for about 5 years now.  Within the last year or two, a change was made where you can no longer hide particular artists permanently from your playlist.

For example, I listened to an artist called 'Rock a Bye Baby' once.  They play lullaby versions of popular songs.  They routinely show up in my Release Radar now, unfortunately.  Even if I click 'hide this song', it doesn't matter.  It hides that song but the artist returns next week.  If we had an option to block artists, Release Radar would be infinitely better.

I should note that this was a feature at one point and then it disappeared. I'm not sure that it's a bug because it hasn't been available for a while. It's also not an available option on any platform that I've tried.

I find myself not listening to other, unique artists on Spotify because I don't want to risk impacting my Release Radar without being able to easily manipulate it.

Thanks for considering my suggestion.

[Sp0tifyIsDeaf]

Couldn't agree with this more! This is not only applicable to mobile, but on all platforms. I want to FULLY disable multiple artist because I have zero interest in them en they are polluting my playlists (Daily mixes, Release Radar, Song Radio etc.)

I have the feeling that record labels have a say in this. They are forcing ('plugging') their artists music so it's played and generates revenue. But frankly, I really don't care what the reason is, I'm the paying customer and I want to listen to the music I like, not the music Spotify or the record labels think I should like.

[Eni]

Hi folks! 

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community. 

@tender82, we moved your post from the Ideas board to the relevant Help board, where it fits better.

If you don't want to listen to an artist, you can head over to their Artist page and on the 3-dotted menu choose the "Don't play this" option. Currently, this option is only available on mobile, but once selected it will be applied across all platforms. Note that if the artist is featured in a song/ album from another artist it might still be playable.

On another note, if you want to listen to a song/artist/album that you don't want to be taken into account for your recommendations, you can start a Private session by following the steps here. 

If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you 🙂

[Sp0tifyIsDeaf]

The fact that one has to use their mobile for this to work, doesn't make it an "Acceptable solution". And this doesn't work for podcasts that are polluting my screen space. So no, I won't accept this as a solution.

[samn]

We used to have the option of “I do not like this artist/songs” in release radar and YOU REMOVED IT.

Since then, release radar literally only has trash in it, artists I despise. 
I hide every single song. Unfortunately the playlist does not refresh to replace the hidden songs. I’m at the point where I’ve stopped listening to this playlist when o used to look forward to it.

discover weekly is still ok. 

Hiding tracks does nothing and the artists and songs are still back the following week! 

[Alex]

Hey @samn,

Thanks for reaching out about this.

You should still be able to hide songs on Release Radar both on Mobile and Desktop. On Mobile you need to be in the Now playing view to see the hide button.

Hope this helps.

[ImAnInsanePerson]

Not acceptable solution because, it isnt helpful, adds more frustration to trying to remove songs and artists, and like you said at the end of the post, doesnt even remove the songs from certain suggested playlists.

[ImAnInsanePerson]

What we are saying is, the hide button does literally nothing. It doesnt even HIDE the song as the common english word suggests. It only greys out the song which is... wait for it.. not useful. Navigating to "dont play this" on a specific artist is simply inconvient. There are too many artists that i actively dislike being suggested now to spend all day doing that to every one. This is why a dislike button under every song and artist is necessary.

Unfortunately, the fact is that this is all painfully obvious to everyone including the mods and everyone that works for spotify. Therefore they are doing it on purpose to appease producers etc in the music industry that are giving them a lot of money. They will likely continue to remove necessary features to do with customizability and personalization until the app is nothing but Taylor Swift and Da Baby and there will be nothing anyone can do about it.

[samn]

Agree with the above post.
Even worse, whilst playing the release radar playlsit off my android tv last night, it was PLAYING songs that were very clearly hidden, and also artists I had previously clicked "DO NOT PLAY".

A few tracks were even tracks that I had hidden last week, and were still added to my release radar this week (thankfully still "hidden") but spotify STILL played them. 

[Dawie]

Same issue with "Made for you" genre mixes. 
Spotify would excel in most of these (albeit very basic) except for one specific playlist.

Moody Mix.
It starts off fine with some heavy noisy Shoegaze bands, but the quickly derails in to Adele, Beyonce and Justin Bieber. 
Not only does it **bleep** with the flow and mood (ironic i know), it's not even artists i ever listened to in my 10years using the service. 

I have no option to dislike them or remove them or even remove the playlist. Report is greyed out. Why tf is this here? If i hide songs, they come back whenever i launch the app. Both Desktop and Android on MacOS and Win10.
It is fundamentally **bleep**ed and i feel like being a premium customer should at the very least give you basic functionality that used to be available. 

What happened to playlists based on what you listen to. This feels like forced paid promotions to artificially inflate listens. 

[NordicHector]

Agreed with all of the above, with some additional issues:

- Release Radar especially gets populated to **bleep** by [genre] songs because I popped a lofi playlist on while I worked, but there's no option to say "hey, I don't actually want to be updated about every lofi release forever, I only listened to this artist as part of a shuffled playlist I didn't make"

- It might be a bit to ask, but the RR also tends to prioritise 'new' songs that are just instrumental/live/demo etc. versions of old songs and this is annoying as **bleep** when a band with a big back catalogue like Metallica or The Rolling Stones release yet another collection of their old material. A metadata tag for artists that allows them to flag something as "not really new" would be useful in avoiding this, and then the onus is on artists to make use of it.
- a total lack of unique Artist ID means I get things in my RR that are not the artist that they're linked to. I've included screenshots below of the most recent example: my RR has decided I like the band 'Behemoth', a Polish black/death metal band. It has put a song by 'Behemoth', who appear to be some kind of game music composer based on the distinctly different vibe. Artists change direction, sure, but the writing credit is somebody unrelated to the metal band and the label is one never linked to them either. This is a different artist creating under the same moniker, so it's pretty appalling that they aren't just considered the same entity, clicking this artist takes you to metalband-Behemoth's page (screenshots below). How does this impact the artists getting paid, I wonder?

As stated, premium users should have a better experience (especially given the constant price increases) and instead each update seems to remove features that were good and ignores the bugs.