What is the biggest frustration users have with Spotify?

People love Spotify —many of them have been Premium users for over 10 years now, it's their primary way of listening to music, and they use it almost every day. But there's a little annoying thing about the way Spotify handles music that drives people crazy, and a lot of people do.

Spotify's library management is a mess

Many people are very particular about their music albums, so they save them to their library and often choose an album to listen to, rather than opening a playlist. They also use the Liked Songs feature frequently; shuffling their Liked Songs while driving or when they just want to play a song they like without thinking.

These two behaviors conflict with a problem on Spotify: Identical copies of songs aren't considered identical when saved to your library. Content added to your library is often edited in a way that confuses and wastes your time.

The most common cause of this is an album re-upload, which happens more often than you might think. Sometimes the copyright owner of a track changes, while other times the re-upload seems to be limited to cutting out a few seconds of silence on certain tracks or adjusting the lighting on the album cover.

Example of an album being replaced on Spotify

Here's a recent example (one of dozens of times this has happened). One of my favorite albums is What You Don't See by The Story So Far ; I listen to it all the time and love every song. But a while ago, I went back to the album and found that I didn't seem to "like" any of the songs.

This is because Epitaph Records has repurchased the rights to the album from its original owner, Pure Noise Records (as noted in the fine print at the bottom of the album page). When this happens, Spotify treats the re-upload as a 'new' album, making the 'old' copy you saved into a separate item.

When you search your Saved Albums for this record, it opens a copy that looks identical, except for two details: It shows up as Saved in the library, and the commas in the small text are replaced with parentheses. Spotify also doesn't show that you've "liked" any of the songs in this old virtual copy.

However, the behavior of the 'old' content is inconsistent. Previously liked songs remain in the Liked Songs list, but if you click on an album name to view its items, the 'old' copy loads and shows that you haven't liked any of the songs. This causes your music collection to go into a strange state of flux, making the service act as if you both liked and disliked a song.

Solution to this problem

You might think the solution is to 'like' all the songs again on a new copy, but that's not the way to go about it. If you do that, Spotify will save a duplicate copy of them to Liked Songs (without the usual warnings when you try to add the same song to a playlist twice). The same goes for saving a 'new' copy of an album.

The worst part is that if you notice duplicates and delete one of them, both will be removed from your Liked Songs list. You can't undo this with Ctrl + Z in the Spotify desktop app either.

For one of those favorite albums where you like all the songs, it's not hard to delete them all from the Liked Songs folder and then save them all to a "new" copy. But for unfamiliar songs, the strategy in this case should be:

1. Search your liked songs for the affected album
2. Take a screenshot of all the songs you like from that album
3. Highlight all, then right click and select Remove from your Liked Songs
4. Go to the "new" album and like the related songs again

This works, but it happens so often that you'll sigh every time you open a favorite album and find it looks like you've never heard it before. It also erases the original "liked" date on songs, a Spotify Wrapped-style fact that's sometimes fun to revisit.

Spotify should be smart enough to match songs you already like with the "new" version when you re-upload, without you having to fumble around.

Other song linking issues exist

The core issue of Spotify not properly linking songs across different releases doesn't just occur when an album is re-uploaded. It's also an issue for singles included on albums, deluxe album versions, greatest hits compilations, and similar situations where a song is available on multiple releases.

For example, if you add a single to Liked Songs before the album is released, it won't show up as Liked when you open the album on release day. Again, the solution is to open the Liked Songs playlist, search for the artist, then compare your recent Liked songs to the songs on the new album. You can then unlike the single copy before finally marking the album copy as Liked. Why is this necessary when they're the same track?

The deluxe versions of albums are pretty similar. For example, the author added all the songs from Motion City Soundtrack's Commit This to Memory to his Liked Songs section. There is a deluxe version of the same album, with the only differences being a different color cover and an extra song.

No liked songs are moved to this section, so if a Spotify DJ plays a song from the Deluxe Edition that isn't marked as Liked, you might think you forgot to add it to your library. And just like re-uploaded albums, duplicate copies of Deluxe Edition recordings can be added to your library without warning.

It may sound nitpicky, but if you care about albums, you'll understand. In the Spotify app for Apple CarPlay, tapping an album name brings up a track list, which isn't very helpful for a single. The same goes for holding down on mobile and selecting View album . People want an accurate representation of the music they've saved; an exact copy of the album it's in doesn't matter.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 17 August 2025