frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Show HN: Fix unplayable tracks in Spotify playlists

https://playlisthospital.com/
2•srvaroa•9mo ago
Scratching this itch: tracks suddenly become unplayable in my [carefully curated] Spotify playlists. Fixing them is cumbersome. Spotify usually has alternative recordings of the same song, but you have to find and replace them by hand. I figured I could automate the process, and made it into a website in case others find it useful.

Disclaimer: I'm a backend person with an LLM. Please forgive my UI/UX, and lack of proper mobile support.

Feedback welcome! (social things in profile)

--

For the curious, here is a brief explanation of this annoying phenomenon (I worked on the catalogue ingestion systems for Last.fm a few years ago, so I have a rusty and likely out of date but still above-average familiarity with this topic)

On the surface, a music catalogue is based on a naive data model made up of Tracks, Artists, and Albums. Identifiers are basically made up of names and titles, or some composite.

Reality is (a lot) more complex. A slightly less naive, but far from accurate, data model includes the concept of "recording". Take Lou Reed's "Coney Island Baby". It's one "track", but there are actually 9 recordings of it (see https://songstats.com/track/35oekh1n/coney-island-baby). These "recordings" have unique identifiers (International Standard Recording Code). How are they used? Well, take two of them: USRC10300143, GBLLT2105923. Same track, different country (US, GB). E.g. the track was published in two different issues of the same album in different countries. And the licensing for each of those may be completely different (e.g. rights in the US may belong to $companyA and rights in the GB for $companyB). Or $companyC might come and buy rights for distribution in the GB, and perhaps decide to take down the GB recording.

For the purposes of your playlist, you want to listen to Lou's song, and don't care if you're listening to USRC10300143 or GBLLT2105923. But labels do, and Spotify (or any streaming service) has to care and report listens / downloads / etc. on the recording, not the track.

But.. when you add a track to a playlist you're actually adding a _recording_. So there are a lot of not-immediately-evident reasons why you may end up losing access to $track because someone took down $recording with a foreign key to $track. And when you go and search for $track, you're annoyed to find exactly the same track playable.

Why doesn't Spotify doesn't keep your playlists healthy? The basic reason this may be simply that the volume of metadata changes into music catalogues is surprisingly large, so not a trivial problem at Spotify scale.

A further reason is that it's actually not trivial. What are acceptable alternatives? Well.. replacing Bobby Womack's "Across 110th street" with Bobby Womack's "Accross 110th street - Original" is probably fine, but using "Accross 110th street - Drum and Bass mix" as fallback may not make every listener happy.

List of Musical Genres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_genres_and_styles
1•omosubi•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sknet.ai – AI agents debate on a forum, no humans posting

https://sknet.ai/
1•BeinerChes•1m ago•0 comments

University of Waterloo Webring

https://cs.uwatering.com/
1•ark296•1m ago•0 comments

Large tech companies don't need heroes

https://www.seangoedecke.com/heroism/
1•medbar•3m ago•0 comments

Backing up all the little things with a Pi5

https://alexlance.blog/nas.html
1•alance•3m ago•1 comments

Game of Trees (Got)

https://www.gameoftrees.org/
1•akagusu•4m ago•1 comments

Human Systems Research Submolt

https://www.moltbook.com/m/humansystems
1•cl42•4m ago•0 comments

The Threads Algorithm Loves Rage Bait

https://blog.popey.com/2026/02/the-threads-algorithm-loves-rage-bait/
1•MBCook•6m ago•0 comments

Search NYC open data to find building health complaints and other issues

https://www.nycbuildingcheck.com/
1•aej11•10m ago•0 comments

Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/magazine/michael-pollan-interview.html
2•lxm•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Grovia – Long-Range Greenhouse Monitoring System

https://github.com/benb0jangles/Remote-greenhouse-monitor
1•benbojangles•16m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: The Coming Class War

1•fud101•16m ago•1 comments

Mind the GAAP Again

https://blog.dshr.org/2026/02/mind-gaap-again.html
1•gmays•17m ago•0 comments

The Yardbirds, Dazed and Confused (1968)

https://archive.org/details/the-yardbirds_dazed-and-confused_9-march-1968
1•petethomas•18m ago•0 comments

Agent News Chat – AI agents talk to each other about the news

https://www.agentnewschat.com/
2•kiddz•19m ago•0 comments

Do you have a mathematically attractive face?

https://www.doimog.com
3•a_n•23m ago•1 comments

Code only says what it does

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2020/06/23/code.html
2•logicprog•28m ago•0 comments

The success of 'natural language programming'

https://brooker.co.za/blog/2025/12/16/natural-language.html
1•logicprog•29m ago•0 comments

The Scriptovision Super Micro Script video titler is almost a home computer

http://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-scriptovision-super-micro-script.html
3•todsacerdoti•29m ago•0 comments

Discovering the "original" iPhone from 1995 [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cip9w-UxIc
1•fortran77•30m ago•0 comments

Psychometric Comparability of LLM-Based Digital Twins

https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14264
1•PaulHoule•32m ago•0 comments

SidePop – track revenue, costs, and overall business health in one place

https://www.sidepop.io
1•ecaglar•34m ago•1 comments

The Other Markov's Inequality

https://www.ethanepperly.com/index.php/2026/01/16/the-other-markovs-inequality/
2•tzury•36m ago•0 comments

The Cascading Effects of Repackaged APIs [pdf]

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6055034
1•Tejas_dmg•38m ago•0 comments

Lightweight and extensible compatibility layer between dataframe libraries

https://narwhals-dev.github.io/narwhals/
1•kermatt•41m ago•0 comments

Haskell for all: Beyond agentic coding

https://haskellforall.com/2026/02/beyond-agentic-coding
3•RebelPotato•44m ago•0 comments

Dorsey's Block cutting up to 10% of staff

https://www.reuters.com/business/dorseys-block-cutting-up-10-staff-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-02...
2•dev_tty01•47m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Freenet Lives – Real-Time Decentralized Apps at Scale [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SxNBz1VTE0
1•sanity•48m ago•1 comments

In the AI age, 'slow and steady' doesn't win

https://www.semafor.com/article/01/30/2026/in-the-ai-age-slow-and-steady-is-on-the-outs
1•mooreds•56m ago•1 comments

Administration won't let student deported to Honduras return

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-wont-let-student-deported-honduras-return-2...
1•petethomas•56m ago•0 comments