How do I change the Daily Drive playlist? The news changes, but the songs haven't changed.

[stevearrants]

Premium, USA. Pixel 3XL, Oreo, Android Auto. 

The Daily Drive news changes, but the songs don't. Day in, day out, the SAME music. I'm getting tired of it. How do I refresh or change it?

[Mihail]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for searching for the answer you need here.

We've summed up all troubleshooting steps gathered so far bellow. If your Daily Drive Playlist is still not updating, it's a good idea to give them all a go:

1. Perform a clean reinstall of the app. This removes any corrupted files that might be causing this behavior.
2. Log out and back in two times in a row.
3. Make sure that Private listening is deactivated.
4. Actively listen to music outside the Made For You section. 
5. Like and add to your personal playlists new content.

If you have more than one device, we recommend that you test the steps above on all of them and give the playlist 3-4 days time to update.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted how you get on.

[Tim_U]

@Mihail If we need to go out and listen to a bunch of other music sources just to make it change it’s music selection, then the playlist has clearly failed to deliver on its primary goal to be a “daily” playlist which customers can listen to each day. 

Please stop regurgitating the same failed workarounds and promote this issue as the bug that it is. 

[JKMarks]

Sigh. Why are the moderators saying the same fixes over and over and not hearing us? We have reinstalled, logged out & logged back in. I’ve done the hokey pokey and lit a candle to pray to the tech gods. Why should must we “Actively like new music” on a daily basis to get alternate music on the daily drive? It’s a computer... we the listeners... we the paying client are asking you to create a algorithm that works by choosing new music for you... based on the high amounts of data Spotify has ALREADY collected on our likes, listens & playlists. Why is this soooo hard?????? Its so hard to get through to someone that is willing to admit there’s a problem and that there’s a better way, I feel spent like bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

[Tim_U]

I've decided "if you can't beat them, join them".  So now at the end of each day when I'm not going to be listening, I'm launching Spotify to play my Liked Songs playlist on random play with the volume turned off.  Hopefully this injects enough variety in my playback history to have an effect on the Your Daily Drive, but if it doesn't at least my favorite artists will get a few more pennies in royalties.  Perhaps Spotify will start to care when it costs them more not to fix bugs.

[JKMarks]

Good thoughts Tim. Maybe only let it run for a few hours... I think it starts to spin into other music territory if you run out of a playlist, and leave it on play.

[dan_kwc2000]

I've just started using Daily Drive and noticed the songs are the same every day.

[Xenia]

Hey all,

Thanks a lot for your feedback – we appreciate it! 

We always aim to improve, so we’ll make sure that we cover your concerns as we speak about these changes internally.

Our developers are already looking into ways to mix up the music within the Daily Drive playlist so it'll update with more variety, but just as a heads up, we're not able to provide an exact timeline for this. If we have any further info, we'll let you know.

Going forward, we'd like to refer you to the Idea Exchange in the Community for any further feedback you might have and suggest you add your +VOTE to this idea. 

The Idea Exchange is a great way for us to see what our users are interested in and how many people like a certain idea. You can read more about it here.

We hope you'll find this information useful and we’ll be here for you if there's anything else you'd like to ask.

[BlondeKDC]

I've tried this solution much longer than 3-4 days to no avail.

I almost never listen to "Made for you" playlists other than Daily Drive and I have been a user for a long time with extensive personal playlists and more than 225 liked songs. I am a premium subscriber with a 6 account family plan.  I use it on my android phone and windows desktop.

My Daily Drive plays the same songs every day. The podcasts update. I have not played any "Made for You" playlists in at least two weeks other than Daily Drive, I have played my own playlists outside of that and it still plays the same songs. I've never used a private session to my knowledge, it isn't enabled, and I use online mode almost all the time.

I have cleared my cache in Spotify, cleared the cache on my phone, uninstalled Spotify from my desktop and my phone and reinstalled it. No suggestions have made any change. 

[Alex]

Hi there everybody,

Thanks for your detailed replies.

We know it might be frustrating to keep hearing the same songs over and over again. We want to let you know that this issue has been reported to the right team and they are looking into it. We cannot say exactly when or if there will be a resolution. 

In the meantime another thing you can try is to search for 'Your Daily Drive' in the Search bar. After that unfollow the playlist, and then search for and follow it again.

Hope you find this info helpful.

[JKMarks]

@Alex, Appreciate your efforts to reply & find a solution.

The note to unfollow the Daily Drive makes no sense for me. I’ve never followed it. It’s simply something that appears in my “Library” sidebar ‘Made for You.’ And it’s specifically only mine, attributed to my name, so it’s not as if I was following an app-wide Spotify playlist to begin with. I don’t even have it “liked” or the heart icon clicked.

##- Please type your reply above this line -#

[Mihail]

Hey @JKMarks,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

Could you upload a screenshot of how the Daily Drive appears in the app at your end in the playlist view? You can use the Insert Photo option in the post editor, just make sure to hide any private/ sensitive info.

Keep us posted, well be on the lookout for your reply.

[Tim_U]

@Alex - thank you for finally reporting this issue to the development team so that it can be addressed. It has been extremely frustrating trying to get this past the moderator gatekeepers and reported as an issue. The community system and Idea Exchange seem to work fine for requesting enhancements, but when a bug is encountered such as this (where the product does not work as intended / is not fit for purpose, and a coding change is required to fix it) the system impedes the flow of information. There really needs to be a bug reporting system whereby the community can report bugs to the product development teams without having to spend months convincing moderators that there really is a problem and that their workaround suggestions are not a real solution.

[Tim_U]

@Xenia -

Thank you for finally reporting this issue to the development team so that it can be addressed. It has been extremely frustrating trying to get this past the moderator gatekeepers and reported as an issue.

When the same set of songs is used day after day after day, this makes the playlist unbearable and unfit for purpose. Therefore the request to change the algorithm to insert some variety into the songs is not an enhancement request but a bug report.

The community system and Idea Exchange seem to work fine for requesting enhancements, but when a bug is encountered such as this, the community system impedes the flow of information. There really needs to be a bug reporting system whereby members of the community can report bugs to the product development teams without having to spend months convincing moderators such as yourself that there really is a problem and that their workaround suggestions are not a real solution.

The idea that you referenced above for making the playlist more customizable is related, but should not be conflated with this bug report. That is a true enhancement request which is asking for customization features that go well beyond the initial intent of the feature. This bug report is more limited in scope in that it is asking that the broken algorithm be fixed so that the feature functions as intended to meet its original purpose.

Going forward, it would help if you and other moderators would act as a communication conduit to the development team rather than acting as gatekeepers who block communications, parrot the same failed workarounds, and bury legitimate concerns under a stack of existing enhancement ideas from which they might never emerge. Give us a path to get legitimate bugs fixed.

[Tim_U]

Apparently this bug has finally gotten reported to the development team and is hopefully getting addressed. See: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Daily-Drive-not-updating-at-all/m-p/5073344/highlight/...

[SetarconeX]

It's been about a week, can we get an update on this?  I know nobody committed to a timeline (or fixing it at all), but can we at least get a 'I checked, someone's working on this, it's not just sitting in a mailbox"?

This really used to be my favorite feature, and it's frustrating having a broken button on the homescreen, looking at me every morning and reminding me how good things used to be.

[Binkfloyd]

I agree! It used to be my favorite feature, too. And now it is just stale and unusable. I have tried everything, deleted cache, logged out, (also never followed the playlist) and it is the same songs. It is super frustrating, and I just don't listen to it anymore. 

[JKMarks]

Yes, they’ve replied that their developers are working on it. But IT engineers will never supply a timeline, bc they don’t know when the solution will appear. It’s just testing and retesting until... Eureka! Also, they may have more important money-driven tasks dictated by supervisors, but at least they’ve acknowledged it should & could work differently.

[MARS21]

I wish we had the ability to hear more of our favorite music. 

[MARS21]

Same here. Have you been able to hear more of your playlist?

[geoffmackey2]

As a workaround on my laptop I've been listening to the 'Your Daily Drive' radio station instead. Doesn't have the news and other stories, but it does have fresh music!