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[Ads] Playlist Engagement: Why Do Tracks That Aren't on My Playlist Show Up?

This explains why the Playlist Engagement breakdown can include tracks that aren't actually on your playlist — Spotify recommendations, autoplay, and radio plays that happen during the same listening session.

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Written by Charles Jordan Condez

If you open your campaign's Playlist Engagement breakdown and see track entries that aren't actually on your playlist or more entries than your playlist has tracks, this is expected, not a bug or a data error. Here's why it happens.


Why external tracks show up

Playlist Engagement reflects real listening activity from the fans your campaign brings in, not just plays of the exact tracks on your playlist. Once a fan starts listening from your playlist, Spotify's own recommendation engine often keeps the session going with related tracks: Spotify recommendations, autoplay, and radio.

Those plays happen as a direct continuation of the listening session your campaign generated, so they're counted here too, even though the track itself isn't one you added to the playlist.

In other words: this table measures what fans actually listened to as a result of your campaign, not a static list of your playlist's tracklist.


Telling playlist tracks and external tracks apart

To check whether a specific track is an external play, compare the track list in the breakdown against your playlist's tracklist in Spotify. Anything not on your list came in via recommendations, autoplay, or radio.


Still looks wrong?

  • Keep in mind that data can take at least 24 hours to update on your Soundlink dashboard.

  • If a track is showing an unusually high number of streams or listeners compared with what you'd expect from external or recommended plays, or the numbers still don’t add up after reviewing the information above, contact us using the chat bubble and include your campaign share link. We’ll take a closer look.

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