Recently Played Artists not updating!

[EdwardJames]

Alright, so there is already a thread about this, but Spotify hasn't addressed it yet, so I figure I'd start a second one.

It's been about 3-4 weeks since my "Recently Played Artists" or my friends "Recently Played Artists" have updated. This is very frustating to me and others I've heard from. I'd like to see my own because there are days where I'll go through 2-3 artists' entire collection of work, then the next day do some other artists, but sometimes I like to look back and see what I had listened to (which would be in Recently Played Artists) without having to add a bunch of songs to my or a playlist. Not that that matters - for the last several weeks whenever I've followed a new playlist, it won't show up on my account page. Luckily it still shows up in the left hand bar, but I use my phone a lot and it's not as easy as it is on the computer. I also like to see what my friends are/have been listening to as well, but since I haven't seen a change in any of theirs for 3-4 weeks, unless I'm on and looking at what they are currently playing, I don't know. This brings up another issue I've been having where sometimes it will say the last person listening to music was, say, 4 hours ago... but if I close Spotify and restart it (which takes 10 seconds), then 4 people are listening to music live and I'll see in my feed that others had been listening in the time between 4 hours. My computer is always connected to wifi, and I had never had this problem before. The amalgamation of these little (but irritating) problems has really defeated the feeling of connectedness I've had since getting Spotify several months ago. Additionally, seeing what you and your friends' Recently Played/Top Played artists is what, to me, makes Spotify more enjoyable than just listening to music in my iTunes library. 

If you are having this problem, please click the "ME TOO" button, as this will highlight this post for Spotify to see.

[user-removed]

I am having the same problem. One of my favorite things about Spotify is seeing what my friends are listening to, but the recently played artists has not updated for days. What can be done about this?

I am new to the discussion boards. Can anyone tell me how to contact Spotify customer service? Thanks!

[EdwardJames]

Hey Rustie, I'm relatively new to the forums as well. 

I haven't been able to find a way to talk to someone directly from Spotify, the best they offer is under "Help" where you first select the type of problem, then specify what the specific problem you're having within that field (example: You select "Payment problem", then the next set of options to choose from would be something like "my card isnt working", "I'm getting charged more than $9.99", etc etc).

There is no options that allow you to express the problem a lot of us are having with our profiles not updating consistently however.

If anyone knows how to get ahold of someone on the Spotify team via email or phone number, please comment on this thread as it would be much appreciated!

[user-removed]

Thanks for the reply!  It seems as though I am not the only one having trouble figuring out how to contact Spotify customer service.  That is a shame for an operation of this size.  I love what Spotify has to offer and the potential I see for it to be even better.  I hope that one of the future improvements will be a dedicated customer service staff to answer the questions of its many fans.

[user-removed]

EdwardJames,

I have been baffled by how difficult it is to get in touch with anyone from Spotify customer support.  I have seen a lot of links on these discussions boards that have taken me to a customer support form in Swedish, which was frustrating.  But I finally found the customer support form in English, so I submitted an inquiry this morning asking about the top tracks and recently played artists not updating.  When I submitted the form, I received an automatically generated email with a case number and to my delight, I got an emailed response to my question this afternoon. Unfortunately, I don't think the person who answered totally understood my question, so her response did not exactly help, but she kindly invited me to ask any more questions if I had them, so I just responded to her email this evening.

If I get any helpful information or answers about top tracks and recent artists not updating, I will certainly let you know.

If you wish to have the link to the customer service form in English, I think this will work: https://www.spotify.com/us/about-us/contact/contact-spotify-support/?

I selected "Give Spotify feedback about something" and then "other" and then a box came up where I could type my question.

Good luck!

[EdwardJames]

Wow, thanks Rustie! I'm surprised you were able to find it, I've spent several hours trying to figure out how to directly contact them. Thanks again, very helpful!

[EdwardJames]

Hey Rustie, thought I'd give you an update - I've been emailing some of the people from Spotify for the last day or so and they've given me a test account to try out. I'll be using it for a day, listening to whatever I want, so they can see if the Recently Played Artists changes on that account. I just started today so if it does change, it will take a day or so. But they are activly trying to get to the bottom of this, and I'll keep you posted on what we figure out! 

[user-removed]

Edward, that is good to hear!  I would definitely like to hear what comes of that test account.  The answers I have gotten from Spotify customer service have not been nearly so helpful.  They basically said that they would take my concerns into consideration and let me know if they decide to make any changes.  I wonder if I would have better success initiating a new inquiry.

Thank you for keeping me updated here.  This gives me hope that someone is taking our concerns seriously! 🙂

[thisisme1492]

I am really frustrated that this isn't working.  I hope they take our comments into consideration before we all jump ship to another streaming service that listens to their customers better (insert comment about Apple's upcoming streaming service).  🙂

[trll1]

I have noticed the same thing, really frustrating since I love watching what my friends listen to. It has been updating on a daily basis until  recently hen it completely stopped working, frustrating... Hopefully spotify fixes this soon... 

[user-removed]

Edward James, any progress working through this with Spotify?  There was an update to the Spotify app on my iPhone yesterday, so I was hoping that maybe part of it was to fix this feature, but no such luck so far.  I'm hoping that they are getting to the bottom of this with your feedback. 🙂

[EdwardJames]

Hey Rustie! So yesterday morning I sent them a breakdown of things I found/noticed. I was on a Free test account and noticed some problems with specific ads that would just completely pause the music once they were done. But I was mainly trying out the Recently Played Artists obviously, and keeping an eye on the activity feed too since I was having trouble with that.

Everytime there is an an-app update, say someone adds a song to a playlist you follow, the activity feed stops refreshing until you close and restart the app. I noticed this on my account and didn't know what was causing it, but on the test account is where I pinned down in-app updates as being the source of the issue.

For Recently Played Artists - no luck. I played Of Monsters and Men for two days straight (let it play while I slept too) so that there would be no question it would make it to the Recently Played. The list didn't update in the 3 days I had the account however. 

When I sent them the email yesterday, I was sort of disappointed. I told them exactly who I had listened to and what I had noticed with the app, and up until this email they'd been very eager to hear from me, but when I told them nothing had happened I just got a generic email about how cases like mine are being collected and that Spotify is looking at it... Well I know they're looking at it as I've been emailing them about it for the last week haha, I guess I shouldn't be expecting a full report on what they've found or what they're doing about it other than "looking" but I would've like to know if it's a bug or a programming error or something rather than just being told again that the issue is being addressed. 

I'm not mad at that though, I understand technical difficulties can be tough, and there are a lot of people complaining so I'm sure they really ARE working on it, but what annoyed me is that this is clearly a problem, and so they put out an update that changes the shade of green for the app icon...? Maybe I'm seeing things but it looks like the update changed the color of my mobile app icon, which is completely pointless to me and any amount of time that went towards changing the color very slightly should've have gone towards dealing with actual issues in my opinion. But I may just being seeing things.

Anyway, they certainly are trying to figure this issue out so that's good to hear.

[user-removed]

EdwardJames, I appreciate your diligence in trying to work through these issues with Spotify customer service. I only wish that they were as interested as their customers in solving these problems! It is frustrating that you took the time to work with the new account and then they seemed oblivious to the whole thing. I hope their generic response doesn't mean they aren't still looking into the problem.

As for the Spotify logo changing color, you are right! I thought I noticed that too after I did the update. Then I googled it and found that I was not alone. Apparently, Twitter is not too happy about it because it is too close to their green. I wish they would've just left that alone and like you said, invested their time and energy on something that people actually care about, like recent tracks in recent artists updating.

Thanks for taking the time to update me! Hopefully we will see some real action taken soon.

[user-removed]

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/06/15/its-just-a-color/

[thisisme1492]

So I got what I believe is a half way decent response from Spotify concerning this issue:

Hey,

Sorry for the delay.
We are currently aware of this and our tech team is in the process of collecting cases just like yours and hope to have this updating again soon. Stay tuned and we'll get this sorted for you.

If you have any further questions in the meantime, just let me know and I'll do my best to help.

Have a great week!

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[EdwardJames]

Yep, that seems to be the common response they have right now. Nothing else they can really say, obviously they are aware of the issue it's just that they aren't fixing it in a fairly timely manner. I'm assuming it's a bigger issue that what it may seem as it's been over a month of the issue taking place.

[EdwardJames]

Hi guys, trying going on your desktop app and seeing if your lists have refreshed. I just went on and it was refreshed!!! So I checked my friends profile and hers weren't, then I went back to my profile........ and the same "recent" list that's been there for the last month was there and I couldn't get it to refresh again. But obviously the funtion IS working as I could tell when looking the refreshed list that it was accurate, it's just not consistent yet...

[user-removed]

Hi friends. This is encouraging! It is great to hear Spotify say that they will get this fixed and updating again soon and then to see evidence that they are working on it. Thanks for the news. I'll let you know what I see when I can check Spotify on my laptop.

[Michele13]

Well, for the past two days I've noticed that my recently played artists shows the updates... for about 3 seconds!  Then it reverts to the musicians I've supposedly listened to nonstop for the past month and a half.  

[user-removed]

Michele, several of us have been seeing the same thing happen. Are you checking Spotify on a computer or on a mobile device? Results seem to vary at times depending on where you are logging in from, but a friend and I noticed yesterday that if we logged out of Spotify and logged back in AND restarted our devices (in my case, my iPhone), then Spotify would continue to show the accurate updated information without reverting back to the old lists it's been stuck on, like you are describing. You may want to try that.

At any rate, it is good to see some positive developments regarding recently played artists and tracks updating. All the bugs clearly haven't been worked out yet, but it seems they are actually working on it. Thanks for your input & good luck!