Spotify - anyone heard of it?

that's what mine used to look like...

https://i.imgur.com/oZ4LmFK.jpg

same

Hey glenn - I've noticed the Spotify support on my Alexa devices has gotten worse and worse:

1. Trying to play a song by a band is near-impossible. Best case, I get one of those "This is xxxx" playlists started.
2. When I tried to play a specific song by the Beatles the other day, Spotify (or maybe this is on the Alexa end?) just wouldn't let me do it - kept playing covers or other SEO SPAM.
3. When I do Spotify Connect on my Alexa devices, I lose the ability to skip tracks.

#3 is probably on the Amazon side (and I'll pursue it on my end), but the other two items seem like a mixture of NLU issues and SEO mitigation. Any ideas?

spotify on google home loves to play weird versions of songs (demos, live versions, alternate takes) instead of the actual song. it happened two days ago, i asked for "near wild heaven" by REM and it played a demo version from the bonus tracks.

I've never grasped how this happens. I sometimes get weird amateur Led Zep covers instead of the originals.

I assume each track has a unique DB entry. Maybe if that entry gets replaced it attempts to make a best guess at the correct new entry?

Yeah, Alexa's preference for spammy cover bands over the real thing is a real problem but I'm not sure if the problem lies at Spotify's or Amazon's end. Playing the Beatles is pretty much impossible.

I don't see how Alexa would change what spotify plays

Getting a This Is playlist for an artist is, I think, the intended behavior. Part of the reason we HAVE those playlists is to have a thing to play when we're asked for just an artist.

Not actually sure whether the Beatles issue is an Alexa issue or a Spotify one. It's often maddeningly complicated what happens when you ask Alexa for something. The query we end up getting on the Spotify end isn't always the same as what you say. But I'll pass along your report to the voice team, at least...

I've gotten the This Is playlists a lot when asking for specific songs by an artist.

I'm not sure what the division of processing is on the voice input between Amazon and Spotify, but something seems broken lately.

Oh, DJI: do you remember exactly what your Beatles request was? Or what song? And what country are you in?

"alexa play you've got to hide your love away" and "alexa play you've got to hide your love away by the Beatles" is what the Echo heard. Both times I got (different!) spammy cover band versions. I'm in the US.

thx

as always, thank YOU!

Me: Alexa*, play And Your Bird Can Sing by the Beatles

Echo: Playing And Your Bird Can Sing by the Beatles Tribute Band

* actually 'Computer' as my wife prefers that wake word to having a compliant (actually not so compliant) woman in the house

I'm also in the US. I'm pretty sure this happens with every Beatles track - I just chose that one at random.

And yes, when I go into the Alexa app, it says she heard exactly the right thing. Just DISOBEYED me.

I read someone online suggesting that Spotify does this because it pays less royalties to the Beatles Tribute Band but I would like to believe this to be a terrible conspiracy theory.

I mean, as conspiracy theories go, that one at least has a rational justification. But no, we're not doing this intentionally.

Seems like it used to tell me when I created a playlist but now I can’t find it.

My son asked Google home to "play some music on Spotify" and it decided to play a Dexy's Midnight Runners compilation which no-one on the family account follows. Not complaining tbh, just seemed an oddly specific choice for such a non-specific request.

be grateful you didn't get journey

boy would I love to see the complete code chain of the decision tree that came up with that

that's what sexist robot construction worker said

lol

Finally made a dent in my Epic Playlist this evening.

Epic Collection, I mean.

Basically most songs don't need to be me in the Liked Songs playlist. You just like the album and follow the artist and you can find them that way.

So listening to some Pearl Jam today and some of the songs have wee animations that go along with them: Lukin, for example. But my brother doesn’t get them! Anyone else?

Could be that Canvas is turned off in his settings

Do they still have that? Glad I switched that shit off.

Anyone else still having problems with Spotify Connect today? After it stopped working last night I briefly got it to work again but now it's crocked again and there's a Daily Star article about it so it must be serious.

I had issues as well

Actually not just Spotify Connect. Also the Spotify Alexa skill blithely says it's playing the song you ask for and then there's just silence.

Is yours working again, Sufjan?

Still down for me. Sonos says it can't connect to spotify.

I'm paying for premium but still getting ads recently. Has something changed.
Be in the middle of a podcast and get something advertised that I am not interested in.

maybe try logging out and logging back in?

xp I can't play anything in the web client right now, but the iPhone app is running normally

Stevo, are you sure the ads aren't part of the podcast? Premium prevents you from hearing spotify inserted ads, but I don't think they can do anything about ads within submitted content.

which is like... every podcast

Got mine working again, after first casting from my iPhone to my Firestick rather than Sonos or Echo, and then switching afterwards, but that could well just be a coincidence!

yeah, I switched accounts on the sonos app, and it works now. it was all a trick to get us listening to sonos radio.

How you liking that Sonos radio?

I'm brand new to Sonos so it seems great to me but just the consolidated list of stations would be great even without Sonos Radio tbh. I found an article from last month that said David Byrne had 'curated' one of the stations, shows, playlists, which I quite fancied checking out but when I looked I could only find Thom Yorke's bah.

I signed up for that Label Love thing a while ago, and it's cool, but clunky. The guys is working on a discovery app for Spotify that looks pretty cool:

https://tracknack.com/

xp yeah, that curated stations seem good. I only seem to use it when spotify connect doesn't work, or I am playing music for a few people, as I hate picking music for a crowd.

You should always start off with Captain Beefheart, you'll learn who's who in that crowd right quick.

Reporting back on a little experiment. For the past three years I've used ifttt to append my Discover Weeklys into a long playlist called DW Archive. In the past week, I've gone through half of it, weeding out artists I don't like and any tracks I already knew before DW suggested them to me.

I was curious whether a track being in a playlist has an effect on future DWs even if you don't listen to it, and if so whether removing tracks you already know (and like) would just make them reappear in DW.

Results: it's comical how many of the artists (and often specific tracks) I removed from the archive playlist in the past week have appeared in this morning's new DW. That pot is not going anywhere! So, I'm not going to remove any more of the tracks I like but already know all about.

I have a 331 hour playlist of Discover Weekly stuff I haven't checked out yet. Seemed like a good idea to set up at the time :) It's using Smarter Playlists... i think using that you can also de-dupe any playlist.

Your plays from the playlist you made will count - there's nothing to distinguish it from any other playlist you've made. Back when DW was new I did hear that playing from the DW playlist didn't affect future recommendations.

> I was curious whether a track being in a playlist has an effect

Sorry, I answered talking about plays from certain playlists. Making/adding to playlists has no effect on any recommendations - only actually playing things. Unless that's recently changed.

But maybe that's the case for what kind of things it will suggest to you, yet still a part of the algorithm deprecates putting a track in someone's DW if it's already in one of their playlists. Because otherwise it seems a massive coincidence that so many of the tracks I deleted from this megaplaylist in the past week have turned up on this week's DW.