Song Radio Plays Exact Same Sequence of Songs

[pmosborne]

Hi, I'm having an issue when I start a Song Radio where it plays the exact same tracks in the same sequence every time I start it (with weeks in-between). E.g. Start Radio on song ORIGINAL. Radio = ORIGINAL, Song 1, Song 2, Song 3, Song 4. I do the same thing weeks later and get the exact same tracks in the same order (ORIGINAL, Song 1, Song 2, Song 3, Song 4). Is this supposed to be happening? This is not how all the other streaming services work. I don't recall running into this before with Spotify Radios. Thanks!

[Chokichi]

As far as I know, Spotify changed the way Radio stations work. Radios used to randomly select songs based on the original song/album/artist and then up or down votes for different songs that it fed you. Now it just creates a static playlist so it plays the same songs every time. In my opinion, this is a stupid change. For one, it makes a whole playlist based on a very narrow set of data. Second, it creates the problem that you're experiencing where you listen to the same songs in the same order (unless you shuffle). Their reasoning is that it lets you save the radio, but that's what regular playlists were for! Radios are awesome because they let you find new music and then add it to a playlist that you could save for offline listening. Spotify devs might argue that you get the same experience at the end of the playlist when it starts serving you more songs based on the playlist (I refuse to call it a radio station). However, why hide a real radio inside a fake one?

[Peter]

Hey @pmosborne.

Thanks for posting your question in the Community 🙂

We recently made some changes to the way Radio works, so that Radio stations are now finite, pre-determined playlists which you can save to Your Library. 

Hope that clears things up! If you or @Chokichi would like to leave your feedback about this, there's an existing idea in the Community where you can do that - just head here. Thanks - we appreciate it 🙂

Let us know if you have any other questions about Radio or anything else!

[Chokichi]

Hi Peter, thanks for the response. I'm well aware and unhappy with the change to the radio. I've upvoted and created my own post in the suggested feature forum. I don't understand why both features can't exist? Why not add an option to create an auto-generated playlist (since that's what radio has become. It's a playlist now and not a radio). Then we could keep the radio function that many Spotify users want. By changing the radio function, Spotify lost a feature that nearly all of its competitors have. 

[muller1234]

This change has completely ruined the radio function. It used to be an amazing way to discover new music based on tracks/albums you listen to a lot. Like an ever changing  artist-themed "Discover Weekly" after each listen.

Now it is just an unbearable rehashing of the same couple of artists/tracks, that I keep 'down-voting' with no effect and therefore end up hating. Please, please, please change it back.

[Chokichi]

I'm amazed that this post still gets comments. I'm also still unhappy with the status of the radio. Why can't we have both options? Static radio and flexible radio? 

[O_s_c_a_r]

This is such a useless change. Why did this even need to happen? At least let us choose in the settings between it being a static or dynamic playlist. Literally every other streaming service got this right.
Do radio stations play the same exact mix of songs everyday? No. It's called radio for a reason, bring it back to it being randomized everytime.

It's driving me crazy to have to pay for both Spotify and YouTube Music, because every feature that one service does wrong, the other one does it right.

[Guido]

Hello @Chokichi, @pmosborne, @O_s_c_a_r, @muller1234,

Check out Spotify Stations if you are Radio fans. This is another app from us that might be able to offer what you are looking for.

Let us know if you have further questions.

Have a nice day!

[O_s_c_a_r]

Hi,

Thank you for your answer but I'm not sure what app you're talking about...

[Guido]

Hey @O_s_c_a_r,

Stations hasn't launched in all markets yet. But you can find more info about this here.

We hope it will launch soon in your region in case it hasn't yet.

Let us know if you have further questions.

Have a nice day!

[typhin13]

What's more to the new radio is that from what I can tell, song radio and artist radio are not really any different. Take the song radio for cats eyes and rosebuds by So Much Light, that song sounds almost nothing like the rest of his music, but the song radio for that song is just more music that sounds like his other music, not that particular song.

We've got multiple changes to the radio system that make it significantly less appealing than it used to be. I used to use radio all the time to get new music to build playlists I already had, now I just end up listening to one playlist for a week then check to see if anything good popped up on my discover weekly.

[ral3nti]

Hi Guido,

I hope you realise how ridiculous and frustrating this answer is, in context of the whole thread. If not, here's a simplification:

Users: Great! Radios are awesome! I can find out about new artists according to my OWN taste! Ah the benefits of big data...

Spotify: NOPE! Here are some static playlists by some labels that probably pay us more than you.
Users: But dude... you only exist because of us.

Spotify: Well, suffer no more! Here's ANOTHER app to download.

Users: Where?

Spotify: Not available in every market.

[Hoppercoffee]

Totally agree. Radio stations have become unbearable. Where they used to be a great way to avoid listening to the same songs over and over. And things are even gotten worse because by now it let us even hear the same songs on different radio stations over and over again. I think we better look out for another streaming service.

[Hoppercoffee]

Spot on!!

[Xenia · Accepted solution]

Hi @Hoppercoffee and @ral3nti,

We're sorry to hear that you're not happy with the changes to the Radio playlists.

The best way to provide your feedback to us is through the Idea Exchange by adding your vote to this idea, previously mentioned by Peter. That way we can see what our users are interested in and how many people like a certain idea. You can read more about it here.

In the meantime, you could try out the following workarounds, which will still give you access to the infinite Radio playlists:

• In the desktop app you can drag any item (Artist, Song, Playlist, Radio, etc.) to the Radio symbol in the menu on the left to create an endless playlist. 
• You will also get an infinite playlist, by right-clicking on any playlist and selecting Start Radio. This also applies for the web player. Once the playlist is created, you can check which songs are Up Next in the Play Queue.

Hope this info is useful. Give us a shout, it there's anything else you need help with.

[pimz]

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@O_s_c_a_r wrote:

This is such a useless change. Why did this even need to happen?

---

Well, let me hazard a guess: it's to save bandwidth. Despite the fact that Spotify (true to its Napster-roots), serves as many songs as possible from 'peers' (other users, who have the songs in their cache), they probably pay a hefty sum of money because of their own bandwidth use. Truly random radio stations for everyone, pulling songs randomly from the massive Spotify library, would probably mean: a lot of extra traffic = more bandwidth fees = less profit. Purely speculating here though.

Putting on my tinfoil hat: there's another related issue that crosses my mind every now and then. If Spotify plays a song from your own cache or from a peer's cache, there's no "hit" on Spotify's servers. In this peer-to-peer traffic, it's really hard for artists to know how many times their song was played. They have to trust Spotify on the playcounts they provide, but I guess that's true even when they're pulled directly from their own servers. 

[lukehawthorne]

This is a horrid change—Spotify Radio was one of the great ways to explore new music and artists through the vibe and existing song. Please change it back or re-introduce the feature somewhere else!