Spotify will no longer play personal playlists when using smart assistant devices

[IdleMind0]

Plan

Free/Premium

Country

Device

( Samsung Galaxy 9)

Operating System

(Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

When I tell any of my smart devices to play my personal playlists that Ive been playing in the past Spotify will instead play a public playlist with a similar name.  I have 6 smart devices that I use regularly and they all started exhibiting the same behavior at the same time a few weeks ago.  If I tell it to play a specific album it wont.  Instead I get a song with the album title.

[Elena]

Hey @IdleMind0,

Thanks for reaching out to us in the Community.

Could you let us know the make and model of your smart devices so we can investigate further? It'd be also helpful if you share if this happens with certain playlists/playlist types as well and what troubleshooting steps you've already tried so we can avoid repeating them.

If you have trouble with the Daily mixes for example, we've been receiving reports about that here and the teams are aware and working on it.

Keep us posted on this.

Cheers!

[IdleMind0]

Hello.  I haven't tried this with the daily mix, only with my personal playlists just as I've always done.  I have six devices that I primarily use.  Also the devices are not all connected to the same network.  I'm using the JBL Link, and the Harman Kardon Citation One smart speakers.  They all started exhibiting the same behavior at the same time.  I've tried power cycling them, and I've tried logging off and back into my Google Home account. Neither had any effect.  I will specifically tell it to play my playlists as I have in the past and now instead of my playlist I will get either a public playlist, album, or song with a similar name.  That's not the only time I'm not able to hear what I'm expecting but that is the easiest example to explain.  To get what I want now I have to go to the app on my phone, look for what I want and tell it to play on the device I want to hear it on.

[MafeG]

Hi @IdleMind0,

Thank you for keeping in touch and sharing those insights. 

We understand where you're coming from and in this case many factors could be affecting the voice commands. However, please keep in mind that Spotify only receives the commands given by the assistant and plays what was requested by it. 

With this in mind, we also suggest you try out different voice commands, for example "Play [name of playlist] from my library".

And it's also a good idea contacting the folks from Google Support to get additional help with setting up voice commands.

Let us know how this goes.

[IdleMind0]

I've done that as well.  I tried play my playlist (playlist name) and play (playlist name) from my playlist.  I even tried saying play my playlist to see if it would just play any of my playlist randomly.  Like I said earlier, I use it as I always have for months and months, and months.  It's always worked in the past.  It just suddenly stopped working as expected.  I'll reach out to Google as well to see what I can find on that end.

[Kiril]

Hey @IdleMind0,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

Sorry to hear that those voice command configurations still do not produce the expected results. We hope that the folks at Google will be able to give you more information regarding this situation.

Also you can check out here Google's approved list of voice commands and see if you can improve the way the device behaves. 

Keep us posted, we'll be on the lookout for your reply.

[IdleMind0]

The problem has mysteriously gone away without any action from me.  All of my smart speakers now play my playlists again.  It started working as expected again about 2 weeks ago.  I simply said play (playlist name), and my personal playlist began to play.

[MafeG]

Hey @IdleMind0,

Thanks for letting us know that everything is working fine now.

Remember to always keep your app updated, so you don't miss any fixes or new features. Don't hesitate to give us a shout if you have more questions.

Have a great day!