Random song plays after a podcast episode ends

[elotrotomas]

I typically prefer podcasts over music, and on Spotify, I usually listen to the most recent episodes in order without any issues, aside from a few commercials in between, which don’t bother me. However, over the past few days, something has changed. Now, when an episode ends, it plays a random song that isn’t even in my playlists. I attempted to find a solution online, such as turning off autoplay, but that didn’t work. I understand that Spotify may be trying to annoy free users to encourage them to upgrade to a premium plan, but this is quite excessive. Do you know of any way to resolve this, or should I start looking for another app?    Thank you for your help! 
Plan Free/ Country Australia Device (iPhone 11 and MacBook Pro 2020)

[Joan]

Hi there @elotrotomas,

Thanks for reaching out. We'll be happy to help you enjoy your podcasts.

Firstly, let's clarify the following - how exactly are you playing these podcasts? You mentioned playlists, but does that mean you put your podcast episodes into playlists or do you play the episodes from the podcast pages themselves and then music is included in between? And this happens on both your iPhone and MacBook, correct? 

Let us know so we can look into this further.

[elotrotomas]

Hi Joan, thanks for your reply.

I usually go to the "New Episodes" tab and play the podcasts as they come. Sometimes, I choose a specific podcast and listen to all its episodes. However, now it's playing a random song instead of returning to the podcast. When this song plays, and I press "next," it just plays another song rather than returning to the podcast.

I'm not sure if this is clear, but it doesn't follow the sequence of: podcast episode -> random song appears -> return to the podcast.

Instead is: podcast episode -> random song appears -> another song and another and another and so on (and of course, an advertisement that I can’t skip, appears)

My user experience has worsened with this change.

[MihailY]

Hey @elotrotomas,

Thanks for your reply.

This issue has been investigated in this thread and was confirmed as fixed a few weeks ago. Can you try a clean reinstall of the app to make sure you're running the latest version of Spotify? 

If the issue persists, please post in the linked thread and let us know the models, OS versions and Spotify versions of the affected devices so we can re-open our investigation.

Cheers,