[Discover][Bug] Songs consistently re-appear in discover weekly with a 6 month interval

[Digamma]

Plan

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My Question or Issue

This post is meant to emphasis the bug aspect of the problems presented in this post:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Implemented-Ideas/Discover-Weekly-Prevent-Duplicates-in-Discover-We...

After using last.fm to catalogue my listening history for over two years, I have discovered the underlying cause for repeats in the discover weekly playlists. It seems the system used by spotify only traces back 6 months of listening history after which it decides on what music to give you in the discover weekly, meaning that it will consistently choose songs from previous discover queues because it doesn't take into consideration more of your listening history.  How do I know this?

I've saved all of my discover weekly playlists, and have discovered that whenever I get a repeated song - it was last given to me in a discover weekly about 6 months ago. The reason I post this today is because only 2 out of 30 songs in my queue were new to me, and the rest were repeats.

More importantly, if I check my scrobbles, it seems that ALL of the repeated songs were from the same few discover weekly playlists generated 6 months ago, in my september 2020 discover weekly lists - some of them even in my March 2020 lists also. If a song was repeated in march 2020, it was also found in september 2020. This means that spotify discover weekly is consistently re-generating the same discover queues with a timed interval. 

Here are some examples from last week's discover playlist.

And it only got worse this week, with the same pattern repeated yet again. Over half my songs are repeats, and out of those songs, every single one of them is a repeat is from 6 months ago, or 6 and 12 months ago.

I don't know how many times we need to post about this before spotify realises that this is an actual reproducible bug. The thread  linked at the top also has several examples of people coming back, even years after the claimed fix was rolled out, to say that it still isn't broken. Well, here's your proof that it's a systematic error. 

So you tell me - is this not damning evidence that there is a reproducible bug? Come on, I literally had two consecutive discover weekly's in which 95% of all the songs were repeats, and all those repeats were in the same playlists either 6 months ago, or both 6 months AND 12 months ago.  

After increasing the price for your service, fixing one of the core features of your program should be a priority, instead of just pretending like you fixed it.

[Peter]

Hey @Digamma,

We really appreciate you taking the time to post this detailed information.

We've passed it on to the right team who are going to take a closer look.

We're currently not aware of a wider issue with the DW playlist. Users have indeed reported issues with seeing the same songs in their Discover Weekly in the past, but this could be for a number of different reasons, and we haven't been able to narrow the issue down sufficiently.

The example you've provided us with does, however, give us enough to go on in order to pass it on to the relevant team to look into - we'll let you know as soon as we hear back from them.

Thanks again! Do let us know if you spot anything else in the meantime 🙂

[cjstiles23]

Spotify, here's an idea. If you're going to create a personalized Discover playlist, maybe it could include songs I haven't listened to before and might actually want to discover. Almost every week I get songs I've already listened to! I know that you know this because you're tracking all my data so perhaps you could use that to create a better experience rather than a frustrating one. This week the first 6 songs were one's I already have listened to. I've been a member since 2012. Do better Spotify. I know you can. 

[Digamma]

Hi @Peter,

I would like to report that, after a period of 4 weeks, this problem has gotten nothing but worse.

My discover weekly is still filled with repeats from my discover weekly's of 6 and 12 months ago.

Does this feedback actually reach the developers? Is there a fix in the works? Can we get any amount of confirmation that something is being done about this issue? Because that discover feature used to be the highlight of my spotify week, and now it's more of a detriment where I don't even want to use it anymore.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @Digamma,

Thank you for your reply.

We can assure you that the feedback reach the developers and that they're looking into this.

Let us know if we can help you with anything else in the meantime 🙂

Take care!

[Jonathan7867876]

I have now multiple times encountered the same songs in different discover weekly playlists. Could this please stop? Most of the times I don't like a song from the discover weekly it means that I'm not interested in the song...

[Digamma]

Hi [insert allocated mod name[,

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, albeit not nearly as broken as Spotify's algorithm, but I'd like to report that this is still a prevalent issue that is preventing me from enjoying the use of your discover weekly playlists. How hard is it to generate a list, then check each element of that said list against the user listening history list to make sure that the element doesn't exist in both lists, and then replace any that match? In python, that can be done in a single line of code - and so I believe that it should be possible for Spotify too.

The reason I return, is that I have more proof that spotify's algorithm disregards user listening history after 6 months. This week, I got a song in my discover weekly that I had already received twice (in 6 month intervals) and had also previously selected "do not play this to me" on, yet still it appeared in my playlist. What a great feature huh? Select "I don't like this", and yet it still appears in a playlist where it will only be skipped.

On top of that, using your "Blend" feature to create an overlapping playlist with another user, we found several songs that we both know and like, yet only music listened to in the last 6 months were listed as "shared". Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

Is this actively being worked on? 

[Jeremy]

Hi there @Digamma,

Thank you for your reply.

The team is aware of this behavior and we understand your frustration around this.

We're not able to provide you with a timeframe for a fix, but we can recommend keeping the app updated.

We also recommend using Private session less if you're using it at all and adding more of the song you enjoys to your library. 

Let us know if we can help you with anything else.

Take care!

[hollowdrutt]

I can just add that I have the same problem and checked my latest Discover Weekly playlist against my last.fm account and out of 30 tracks there were only 12 that I had not played before. Out of the rest I had played them from 1 to 10 times before.

[Digamma]

Hello again [mods], it's been a while
Four months later and this is still a major problem. Now I've found examples of songs that have appeared in discover weekly lists at four separate occasions in a 2 year period, would you look at that consistency.

I take it that this bug isn't very high priority, considering that it's existed for over five years now, even going as far as being incorrectly labelled as "implemented". What gives?
Here's the thing, can you - or can you not - tell me if this is actually intentional, and that spotify actually has no intentions to fix this problem? Looking at statements made by spotify here: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-11-02/amplifying-artist-input-in-your-personalized-recommendations... it seems there are plans to allow artist a say in "what is placed into our personalised discovery lists". Woe if such a thing meant that the same songs could be placed time and time again after artist payment (I presume this is what "artist suggestion" actually means). If that is the case, I should sure hope there's an opt-out, because I don't want money to influence the music I am given. I want, as someone who pays for this service, to be given music previously unknown to me that best fits my music tastes, and easier access to tools that allows me to explore NEW music. Right now spotify doesn't offer this, and makes it incredibly difficult without the use of third party tools.
Spotify has my music listening data stored in a dictionary file somewhere, and as a result should easily be able to notice when repeats of music is found when a discover weekly playlist is compared to that list. Better control over the music discovery should be given to the user, it shouldn't be up to artist payment, or the whims of the severe short term memory loss that the algorithm **provably** has. This task shouldn't be left to third party scrapers like last.fm.

I'll keep updating this thread until this issue is solved, and I'll be making sure everyone that uses this service is made aware of its shortcomings.

[Digamma]

Hello mods, this is still an issue. 

[pimrosten]

yes this is still a problem