Wrong Daily Drive playlist triggered by Google Assistant

[thegdthadman]

Premium Account.

I have a daily routine set up in Google Assistant that launches on a Google Home device. Each morning, the last action in the routine tells Assistant to play "my daily drive playlist."

Until this week, the Daily Drive curated playlist would begin, with the daily intro, some songs, and the NPR and What A Day podcasts mixed in. This week, that has all changed. What ends up playing is a Spotify-created playlist called Daily Drive that contains multiples of a week's worth of Daily Drive intros. A repetition of "It's Monday," "It's Tuesday," "It's Wednesday," you get the picture.

This is greatly annoying. What is frustrating is that the name of both playlists is exactly the same, Daily Drive, so there appears to be no way to structure the GA command to play the one with content that I want to listen to.

[Mihail]

Hey @thegdthadman,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community.

Just to make sure we're on the same page - you still have access to the Daily Drive playlist in the app itself, right? Could you let us know if the issue persists if you set up the routine anew? 

If that doesn't fix things, it's a good idea to log out everywhere and run a clean reinstall of both the Spotify and Google Home apps. You can find detailed steps on how to do this for Spotify here. On the next start up this will prompt a resynch with our servers.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get on.

[thegdthadman]

Thanks for your response, @Mihail,

The issue isn't one of cached content, but complicated by a change in Spotify content. Before the routine was "broken" for me, there did not exist an album of Daily Drive intro tracks on the service. I can only assume they were hidden and only appeared in the refreshed Daily Drive playlist each day. Before this, when I'd say "play my daily drive playlist" to Google Home, it would respond "playing your playlist Daily Drive." Then my actual Daily Drive playlist would begin playing.

Now, when I say "play my daily drive playlist," Google Home responds "playing the album Daily Drive."

Apparently, the fix is, once again, to use a different vocal command for Google Home. If I say "playlist Daily Drive," the correct playlist will begin playing. The problem appears to be 75% Google, 25% Spotify; whereas the newly-appeared Daily Drive album confused Google Assistant, that was supposed to find the playlist.

[Novy]

Hi @thegdthadman, 

Thanks for getting back to us. 

Would you mind letting us know if you notice any difference after changing the command in the routine to ask for the specific playlist? 

We'll keep an eye out for your reply. 

[thegdthadman]

Hi Novy, thanks! I changed the command in the routine to "playlist daily drive," but to no avail. This morning when it launched, the Daily Drive album played instead.

I am trying one more thing.

In the routine, the last entry is the Play music command, and I have entered "playlist daily drive" as its value. I'm removing that, and simply adding a Custom command that will be "playlist daily drive." My assumption is that the Play music command is passing the wrong information to Spotify.

[Novy]

Hi again @thegdthadman, 

Thanks for your reply. 

Could you let us know if you got the right playlist after the adding the custom command? 

Keep us posted on how it goes. 

[thegdthadman]

I did not. Out of ideas at this point to remedy the situation.

[Novy]

Hey @thegdthadman, 

Thanks for getting back to us with this info and for trying everything we've suggested. We'll do our best to help you sort this out.

In order to continue investigating this behavior, we'd like to try a few more things. Would you mind testing out what happens when issuing the following commands to the Assistant, outside of a routine:

• Play my Daily Drive
• Play your Daily Drive
• Play my Daily Drive playlist
• Play your Daily drive playlist
• Play Daily Drive
• Play Daily Commute
• Play my Daily Commute
• Play my Daily Commute playlist

We know that all these commands only vary slightly, but it would be really helpful to get to the bottom of this issue. 

We'll be on the lookout for your reply!

[thegdthadman]

Thank you for your response! Surprisingly, the correct playlist (Daily
Drive automated playlist) has now been firing correctly in the morning as
part of the routine. This does seem to have happened without any additional
action on my end, so I can only assume that something was fixed/changed
either on the Spotify side or Google Assistant. Pleased to be waking up to
the correct Daily Drive now!

[Jeremy]

Hey there @thegdthadman,

Thank you for your reply and confirmation.

We're really glad to hear that everything works as it should for you again.

If anything comes up we're always one reply away.

Have a great Friday and a wonderful start of your weekend 🙂

Cheers!

[ajcyr44]

I am still having this issue - I tried all the recommended commands to no avail.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @ajcyr44,

Thank you for your reply.

Can you perform a clean reinstall of the app? This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

Keep us posted 🙂

Take care!

[ajcyr44]

Yes, I did that but it didn't fix the issue. Cleared storage and cache, logged back in, same result. 

[CarlosE]

Hey @ajcyr44,

Thanks for keeping us posted.

Can you confirm if you tried those commands outside or within the routine, or both? Was there any difference?

Also, try unlinking your Spotify account from Google Assistant, then log out everywhere, and link your account again following these steps.

Let us know how it goes.

[ajcyr44]

I've only tried those commands using Google voice commands outside of routines.

I did as you suggested, unlinking Spotify logging out, and then relinking and logging back in. Logged out everywhere. Same result.

• The first two command suggestions take me to Google podcast to some podcast called daily drive about truckers. If I add "on Spotify", I get a podcast called Daily Drive
• The next set of commands are interesting, because they don't take me anywhere and elicit an error response
• All the commands referring to commute take me to a Spotify playlist called morning commute or daily commute, neither of which are my personal "daily drive"
• I've also been taken to a Spotify artist called daily driver

[CarlosE]

Hi again @ajcyr44,

Thanks for keeping in touch and for the extra info.

Could you let us know in which device this is happening and if it happens in any other devices?

Additionally, can you try logging in to a different account, like a friend's or relative's, to see if this behavior persists with another account? This would help us narrow down the possible cause of the issue.

Keep us in the loop.

[ajcyr44]

I'm doing this on my phone. It doesn't seem to work on my Google home device either. What's confusing in some ways is I don't see the playlist listed in my home screen,but at one point I had "subscribed" so I see it in my downloads.

I tried this on my wife's phone, and it doesn't seem to work either, nor do I see it in her home screen on Spotify either. 

[CarlosE]

Hey @ajcyr44,

Thanks for your reply.

Could you try using a different connection to see if there's any difference? If you're on WiFi, try using mobile data or a different WiFi network.

We'll be looking out for your reply.

[ajcyr44]

Spoiler

Spoiler

I tried both 5G on Verizon and my Wi-Fi, same result. When I say play my daily drive or just play daily drive there is some other podcast called daily drive that I get taken to.

[ajcyr44]

Sorry the spoiler alert was an accident