Release Radar is still broken, will it ever be fixed?

[jeremycorbett]

Following on from these threads, that have been unceremoniously locked without comment from the mods.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/Release-Radar-includes-wrong-artist-with-same-name-as-...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/FIX-RELEASE-RADAR-AND-DUPLICATE-ARTIST-NAMES-ALREADY/m...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Your-Library/My-release-radar-is-full-of-new-artist-tagging-famous-...

Summary: Release radar recommends artists that you don't follow because they have the same name as an artist you DO follow.

This seems particularly a problem with 'collaborative' artists on a track, not the main one.

On the last thread, it was claimed the uploaders were erroneously tagging the wrong artist on the track, but if this was the case, why are these tracks not appearing on the correct artist's page? It suggests there is some way spotify knows that these tracks are not associated with the followed artist, and so this should be fixable.

@mihael what's going on?

On the first thread linked in the above 3, moderator Mihael got us all filling in a form about errors we found, he came to some conclusions, now tells us to report tracks we find based on this guide:

https://support.spotify.com/fi/article/report-content/

There are a number of problems with this:

1. The guide is outdated and wrong. The instructions are impossible to follow - tells you to right click on the track, select share, copy spotify URI - this is not an option.

2. It's not actually addressing the main issue, maybe a track gets fixed later, but still these tracks will keep coming week after week.

3. There was no real conclusion to the issue before, the moderator was largely expecting the users to fix the issue, then they just stopped responding and eventually the thread was locked.

This has been going on for several years now. Are spotify actually going to make an effort and fix this? Or are they just going to give us lip service then brush us off again?

[Mihail]

Hi @jeremycorbett,

first up, we'd like to apologize that this thread was locked. This must've happened during some moderation maintenance and must've been an error. We've now reopened it.

That being said, there's not much else we can add than what I've already posted in the thread in question. Regarding what you list:
 

1. We'll report the guide to the right team so it can be updated. However, feel free to just copy the link instead of the URI. We've always accepted reports with the links in the past as well, so that is a non-issue and nothing to be concerned about. (Btw: you can still get the URI if you hold the Alt key down as explained in the FAQ here.
2. Please check the original thread for all of the information on this. Creating new threads and posts will not change the facts at hand and the possibilities to address this. As mentioned multiple times, we currently do not have any alternative technological solutions to prevent this from happening. We have the same issue right here on the Community actually - we need to close tens of duplicate posts and idea submissions each day, even though we have both guidelines and features in place to search for duplicates before posting. There's currently no panacea solution for anything that involves a human element, as much as we'd like to have one.
3. We stopped responding because there was nothing else from us to add to this conversation. Locking the thread was, ironically, most likely human error. As with the issue at hand, what we can do is remedy it once it's reported. We still welcome everyone to continue expressing themselves and contributing to a constructive conversation.

Lastly, if you'd allow a personal assessment as just a moderator - I understand the frustration, I do have a Release Radar myself, but it seems this is not really about "making an effort", as we honestly have and continue to try. We continuously remind the distributors about importance of metadata. We take measures to fix incorrect entries. We started an extensive data gathering campaign, that you yourself mentioned. We analyzed the reports and involved additional teams in that. We engaged in all of this conversation, provided a transparent response with more background and technical information. So it seems the expectation is rather not "make an effort to fix it", but just to "fix it", which as stated above, at this moment of time is not something that we can make happen. From our standpoint we have two options: A - Remove the Release Radar as this optional feature that we have that we do still think adds value for many users, because it's not 100% immaculate. B - Understand where our faults lie and what improvement opportunities we have and continue providing features that might not be 100% perfect, but still add some value and continue with our commitment to get as close to these 100% as possible, whenever we can. Even if it takes many years.

In the same vein, please don't look at this as a brush off, rather a sincere effort once again made by us to be honest about this and just say that we know about this, we agree and understand it's an issue, but don't have a solution right now and that we ourselves hope we will be able to find one in the future.

Hope this all makes sense to you. We'll leave both threads open for replies, but do understand that if there's nothing more to add, to improve information visibility and search, we won't be cluttering the boards with posts that themselves won't add any intrinsic value to the conversations.

Take care!