Release Radar getting it completely wrong

[neoclassique]

What's the problem with Spotify's algoritms? In the last Release Radar there were 4 songs i liked (melodic hard rock, classical), a couple that were ok (classic rock), and 23 that I really dislike (hiphop, punk/new rock, current "music"). There seems to be very low correlation with what I've liked previously. In some cases it's obvious that Spotify relies on text-based recommendations. Because I like Toto (the actual band that wrote songs like Africa, Hold the line, etc) then I'm getting recommendations from (Russian?) artists doing some rap/beat-based "music". In most cases this last release, there's nothing I can even guess as to why I'm getting some 20 songs recommended. Spotify, can you please put some effort into targetting song recommendations, Upgrade your algoritms, AI support or whatever?!

[Eni · Accepted solution]

Hey @neoclassique, 

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community.

We're sorry to hear that you've been receiving recommendations you didn't enjoy in the Release Radar playlist. We can confirm the Hide this song feature blocks a certain track from the specific playlist on the current device. The way that Release Radar is set up is that it gets renewed every Friday and counts as a new playlist. Because of this, the songs that you had hidden in the last week might still appear in the new one.

On another note, you can mute an artist so it won't be played again. From the mobile app, head to the artist's page, tap on the 3 dot menu and select "Don't play this". This will affect all your devices. 

We also suggest taking a look at this article for tips on how to improve your Made for You playlists.

Take into account that the Don't play this feature only prevents the songs by the blocked artist from being played. They might still show up on playlists and even in your recommendations, but the songs should be skipped. Currently, there's no way to visually "hide" the songs by the artist.

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and will make sure to pass it onto the right team, as we always strive to improve your experience.

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

[1170648547]

Release radar and Discover weekly keep making wrong recommendations since their introduction, based on band name. This is a consistent technical issue that impedes the customer experience.

Issue by example: My current release radar suggested a song by several hip hop artists, including one called "HIM". The song is wrongly related to another rock band called "HIM" that I follow. Spotify adds several useless song recommendations every week to my generated playlists based on the coincidence of band name. The issue appears not to be with the recommendation system but the content that consistently makes wrong band associations, purely based on name.

This issue may exist under content or other category. Please link to that one if exists.

Account: Premium

Device: any 

[leifjp]

I also not satisfied with the release radar anymore. I currently get only audio books as recommendation. Also I hear some in the past, the title in the list has nothing to do with my favorite author or book categories and there in lot of cases these books comes every week, also when I click the hide button. One very nice feature is became a can of trash. BTW, also my Mix of the week becomes useless, there are mostly titles I didn't like. Looks like these list are meant fro somebody else and not for me.

[AleaGamer]

Plan

Free but I don't think its with the plan

Country

I don't think its a country problem 

Operating System 

Android and Windows 11

My Question or Issue

So, i don't usually listen to my release radar but i always check if there's an interesting new song. But today i checked it and i saw artists i didn't listen to it or some random time last year according to statsfm and lastfm. Here's my release radar and names of the artists i don't know.

And i know its probably recommending me new releases of genres i listen to but i don't listen to genres similar to anitta nor veigh.

[AleaGamer]

Also ignore that the pictures are dark, i don't want to turn up the brightness

[KnavesQuill]

Plan

Premium

Country

U.S.

Device

Samsung s10, gaming PC

Operating System

Android 9.0, Windows 10

My Question or Issue

This latest Release Radar contains 9 picks that match my profile tastes, but after song 9 the other 21 are from wildly incorrect genres and artists.  I have not listened to anything that would prompt their inclusion here, and I am the only one that accesses my account.  My partner, who has Premium with me (Duo) does not use my account.

Even stranger, when I put the playlist URL into everynoise.com's Playlist Profile, it shows entirely different songs than the mismatched 21.  That was yesterday.  Today, when I opened Spotify, 4 songs from the incorrect 21 were swapped out for 4 more that also did not fit the playlist URL  I've never seen a procured playlist like this change mid-week.

This is very confusing and disappointing, as Release Radar is one of the main features of Spotify for me.

[Doomgriever]

Plan

Premium

Country

Sweden

Device

PC

Operating System

(Windows 10)

My Question or Issue

One third of all songs in my Release Radar are AI generated trash.

The Release Radar is supposed to give me new songs from artists that I listen to.

Why do you add AI generated trash into my Release radar? I listen to thousands of real artists, there are enough new songs to fill that short list of 30 songs. You should not even allow AI generated songs on your platform, it's tacky and ultimately theft from real artists, but why flood my Release Radar?

I have NOT listend to a single song of any of these artists, I checked with my Last.fm library.

As you can see all artists follow the same pattern "Generic Name + Random Number + genAi image"

Surely this should not be promoted by Spotify.

 

[KnavesQuill]

Every time a new day starts there are a few (3-5) songs that are subbed out it looks like in random #11-#30 spots on Release Radar, still the same sort of genres/artists I do not follow/listen to/engage with.  It's almost like someone else's profile got spliced with mine, since this split of songs seems to feature around indie pop and pop punk. 

The fact that daily the release radar is changing, but still stating the songs were pulled "X days ago" (4 at this point) gives me hope this was a one-time screw up somewhere, and this coming Friday by releases will be normal.  Again, very weird viewing the playlist URL via everynoise's Playlist Profile showed correct (for me) songs that have yet to appear in the Spotify app. 

I'd like to stress that this is not a matter of hiding artists and how to manage the output based on my tastes; I've been very precise and good at doing that since I signed up for Premium.  This is bizarre behavior from the app.

[Deicord]

What in the world happened to the release radar? It's much longer yes, but literally 95% of it is pure garbage that i have never listened to nor never will. Mumble rap, shitty billie eilish clone pop garbage, some ug italian rock, sure thing boss!

2 new albums that i have listened singles from or just any genre that i usually listen to? No no no, spotify algorythm can't in any way handle that.

Why does anything you change turn to garbage? What the **bleep** do you do with all the money you get ripping off artists?

Plan

Premium

Country

Finland

Device

Google pixel 6 pro

Operating System

Android

[Carnevore]

Here I was going through my playlists to see which I could click "Exclude From Your Taste Profile", to see how I can prevent Spotify from sending this dreck my way. Only to see you have some of the exact same songs in yours. So this means a slew of people are getting the exact same songs, right? 
How can I opt out?

[Deicord]

If you have the same exact songs, it seems to me that this could be a bug. My friends have normal release radar playlists but maybe there is a bug that some people get those extra songs?

[#13]

Over the App on my iPhone Spotify keeps showing “new releases for you” and highlights a single artist, which I don’t follow or have listened to in forever. It’s really annoying especially because it rarely shows artists I’m following & I (nearly) always have to look the artists up myself to find their latest music. This is honestly so annoying!
And now i can’t even X it away, so it sowas those artists all the time

[Darth_GTB]

Release Radar has just recommended a band I had blocked before. It even showed up greyed out so it knew it was blocked:

[Darth_GTB]

BTW, before I ditched the mobile app and started using the mobile web app, this would also happen to smart shuffle. Your recommendation system is broken, recommending bands that were blocked literally the next day they were blocked. In case for smart shuffle specifically, every single band being recommended were bands that I would 100% block, and they kept appearing.

[Darth_GTB]

To whoever migrated my post here, it's not the same problem. The artist being recommended was blocked days, maybe weeks before it being recommended. I understand release radar recommending when one of the artists is one that you follow, as long as the ones you blocked never show up even when together with an artist you follow. OP's problem is different from mine