Creating a radio from a song isn't working well

[badigel]

Plan-Premium/Country-Israel/Device-iphone se, ipad pro/Operating System-iOS 14

Hello,

In the last few weeks I noticed that the radio feature, my favorite Spotify feature and the one I use to convert people to Spotify, isn't working as it should.

When I create a radio, in the first ~10 songs, 4-6 songs are songs that I have on my playlists, but those songs have nothing to do with the song I created the radio from. And usually there's a song that will always be there, and almost always it will be the second song.

(and in some cases, when the song is from a genre I have a lot of songs in this genre on my playlists, about 40% of the songs are already on my playlists, but maybe in this case it normal?)

This is very annoying as it creates a playlist which isn't consistent.

Can I do something about it?

Thanks

[Eni]

Hi there @badigel, 

Welcome to the Community and thanks for getting in touch about this. 

The Radio feature creates a collection of songs based on any artist, album, playlist, or song of your choice, however these collections can contain songs that you've already saved. 

Could you let us know if this is happening with all Radio playlists you create?

Additionally, would you mind letting us know if this started happening after a specific event such as an update?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply 🙂

[badigel]

Hello Eni,

This is happening with all playlists I create.

I can't tell if this happened after an update since at first I thought it normal, like you said "collections can contain songs that you've already saved", but only after a few weeks I noticed a pattern and when I showed this to a friend 3 days ago and he said those songs have nothing to do with the song the Radio was created from, I decided to write here.

[Mihail]

Hey @badigel,

Thanks for getting back to us.

Keep in mind that the algorithm takes into account multitude of factors when compiling a radio. One of those is your personal music collection. We recommend that you expand your library by liking new songs and following additional artist. This should give the algorithm a boost and you will start seeing an improvement in the radios you generate after a while. This should word particularly well if you focus on the genres you frequently generate a radio from. 

Hope this info is useful. Let us know if there's anything else we can help with.

[badigel]

Hello Mihail,

I've been using Spotify for a year now, so I think I can spot when there's a problem with my algorithm. My behavior hasn't changed much, I still have about the same number of liked songs.

For example, I've created Radios from 6 different songs with different styles and in all 6 Radios, he still gives me the same song, and always in the first 5 positions.

This has become such a nuisance that I'm not using the Radio feature anymore. He mostly gives me songs from my playlists and pretty much the same songs all the time.

[Alex]

Hey @badigel,

Thanks for the reply.

Can you let us know if this is happening across all your devices, including the Web player?

And also, when did you first notice this behaviour.

Cheers.

[badigel]

Hi Alex,

I noticed it in the last month or so. Hard to tell since I guess at first I didn't think there's a problem.
Just tested and this happens on my ipad, iphone and on the we player.

Is it normal that on a Radio created from a song about 35% of the songs are from my playlists?

[Alex]

Hey there @badigel,

Thanks for the info.

Radio might include some songs which you've heard before or have added to playlists, but in general it would recommend similar artists or other songs from the artist of the original track. If you listen to a very specific genre of music this might cause repetition in the recommendations you get.

Since you're seeing the exact same song recommended even when starting radio from different genres, the algorithm might be including it because you listen to it very often. 

All in all, what @Mihail has mentioned above is all the official info we have on the matter of how Radio playlists are generated. Try listening to music from the Browse/ Search menu and make sure Private listening is disabled from the app Settings. This will increase the pool of recommendations you get.

We've passed your info and feedback on to the right team at Spotify, but we don't know if this is going to be fixed in the recent updates.

Hope this helps.

[badigel]

Thanks for the reply Alex.

Where's the feature Private listening on the app what does it do?

I'll just add two more comments, the song that is being almost always recommended is a song I have on a playlist but one that I almost never listen too.

Also I think that if something's making the algorithm weird is not that my music isn't diverse, it's the opposite and maybe that's why the algorithm is having a hard time. I have a lot of music in 3 different languages and also in those the genres are diverse.

[Jeremy]

Hey there @badigel,

Thank you for your reply.

We recommend that you head over here for more information about private listening.

Let us know how everything works so that we can continue to assist you if you need us to.

Take care!

[BEASTnFEAST]

I am having the same problem where all the radios that I create are saying they are made for "me" and in that playlist half the songs are from my liked songs. I don't want a radio made for "me". I want a radio of that song only. 

[Ludlow]

Real problems are reduced to some conventions, like if the genre is the same, then tracks can repeat.
Earlier, each track had different radio, but at some point, something went wrong.
And do you know how things are with classical music? If you switch to the radio for some part of a symphony lasting about 10 minutes, there, for the most part, there will be preludes of one or two minutes, or what you were listening to before))
Isn't this absurd?