Hidden songs still play from playlist

[01weezy10]

Plan

Premium family 

Country

US

Device

iPhone 11 Pro

Operating System

iOS 14.2 

My Question or Issue

Hidden songs in my playlist are still playing on shuffle and regular play. The songs grey out as if hidden but doesn’t change anything. Same issue on my wife’s iPhone X.

[Mihail]

Hey @01weezy10,

Thanks for searching for the answer you need here and welcome to the Community.

Keep in mind that the Hide this song feature is playlist and device specific. This means that it affects only that specific playlist on the device you activate it on. It will still come up on other devices and playlists, such as Daily Mixes and Radios, as these constantly get new iterations that count as separate playlists. 

If you would like the option to synch between playlists and accounts, you can up-vote this idea. We'll inform on any developments there, as soon  as there are any. So make sure to subscribe, if you haven't already. 

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[01weezy10]

Hi @Mihail,

Thanks for your response. I’m not sure if you were suggesting this might be the issue I’m seeing but we have hidden the song on our own playlists on each of our devices separately and the song still plays in that specific playlist (not daily mixes or others). As you can see from the screenshot Spotify is playing a currently hidden song (those which are slightly grayed out). I mentioned my wife was having the issue to illustrate it may not be an isolated issue. Thanks!

[Eni · Accepted solution]

Hey @01weezy10, 

Thanks for getting back in touch. 

Currently, when you hide a song on a specific device (in this case on your phone) it won't sync on another devices (speakers, PC, etc.).

On the screenshot you sent we can see that the songs are hidden on your phone's playlist, but you're streaming on a external device that's why they still play there. 

If you would like to have the feature @Mihail mentioned, you can vote on the idea he sent before. 

If you have any questions, just let us know 🙂

[01weezy10]

Hi Eni,

Thanks for the clarification, I didn’t realize that playing it on my speakers from my phone was considered syncing. Would this also happen with Airplay or a Bluetooth speaker?

[Eni]

Hey again @01weezy10, 

Thanks for your quick reply. 

This happens whenever you use Spotify Connect to play on a different device, so if you're playing Spotify from your phone to your speaker through Connect, the hidden songs on your phone will be played.

However, this shouldn't happen when using AirPlay or Bluetooth, as the content is being played directly from your phone.

We hope this clears things up. If you have further questions, give us a shout.

[rvotto]

A user hides a song from his/her playlist because don’t want to listen to the song, but when the user streams their playlist to another device still plays the hidden song?!
It is just me or this seams to be a useless function?

The advantage of Spotify has always been the idea of having the same setting on multiple devices - why the change now? Furthermore, in my case, 95% of the time I am steaming to other devices. 
Anyone else have any comments?

[Ivan]

Hey @rvotto, 

Thanks for posting on the Community about this.

At this point we can confirm that the app behavior you describe is expected. The Connect feature doesn't basically involve any actual audio data transfer, it just tells a device it should play a song or playlist from the Spotify database.

Different devices support different Spotify features and most Connect-enabled devices don't support the hidden tracks, which is a Spotify app-only feature. So a speaker for example only knows it needs to play this particular playlist, but isn't programmed to be able to see if there're any hidden tracks on that playlist, as this is currently only stored as data on the phone itself - something that the speaker doesn't access besides to update playback status.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions. 

[Meilcowski]

So if that is true, then why is the daily mix playlists generated with hidden songs in it, day after day. If the daily playlists didn’t have those songs at all, then I wouldn’t have to know the diff between Spotify connect and airplay. 

[Demetriusd]

when you hide a song on a specific device in this case on your phone it won't sync on another devices speakers, PC, etc. On the screenshot you sent we can see that the songs are hidden on your phone's playlist, but you're streaming on a external device that's why they still play there.

[Boldlion]

“However, this shouldn't happen when using AirPlay or Bluetooth, as the content is being played directly from your phone.”

This is 100% still happening on Airplay as of 8/27/22.

Time to fix this Spotify. Stop playing hidden songs for the love of God.

[Leah_Th]

Hi Eni!

I have songs hidden on my phone, have airpod pros connected through bluetooth, and the songs still play. I attached a screenshot to show that it's bluetooth headphones and that the songs are still playing!

I am on an iphone11 with airpod pros

[Alex]

Hi there @Leah_Th,

Thanks for the post. 

We tried to reproduce this on our end, but hidden songs just get skipped when using an iPhone and Airpods. 

Can you let us know if the songs get skipped if you don't have your headphones connected? On another note, do hidden songs still play in any playlist, or just this album?

Cheers.

[Dirtybluejeans]

This seems like a pretty useless feature. I use my phone 100% of the time to control Spotify on my Connected speaker, and every single time I have to manually skip the hidden tracks. Why have this feature at all, if it’s only going to skip tracks on the phone where I *never* play music.

[Leah_Th]

Here are two screenshots: one showing that the whole album is hidden but its playing while on headphones. Then next, I continued to shuffle through Lady Gaga's discography on speaker after I got the first song and got the second while one speaker.

This is when I do any playlist. Like said above, I was playing through Lady Gaga's artist playlist from her page.

[RoelJanssens]

You tell us to upvote this excellent idea but it is closed, why?

If I don't like a song and won't listen to it, on any device.

[queennofthewild]

Yeah why is it that when I hide songs and then add it to my queue the hidden songs both are still added to my queue and play???? That shouldn't happen.

[Jesbes]

This is still a problem when using Bluetooth. How has this not been fixed and yet is marked solved? 

[ExpGeo]

HIDDEN SONGS STILL PLAY ON HEADPHONES.
Spotify also still plays hidden songs when just playing to my bluetooth headphones. Its infuriating because when I have a playlist I like, Spotify recommends more songs at the bottom. A great idea**bleep** when those recommended songs do not refresh (you hit refresh and a new 5 songs come up sure, but its the same every time - next workout, same recommended songs, for pages on end. Nothing new. So you hide them. Now hidden, they still appear and still play. I don't want to listen to those songs end of story. 
With no new songs coming my way, and all the songs I dont like playing over and over, I'm currently looking for other music streaming services. 

[-_btwlvu5mtwg]

2023 update: Spotify is still playing hidden tracks, it doesn't matter how many times I hid them. 🤨