Google home not playing my custom Spotify playlist

[Sanussain]

I have more reached the end of my wits with this and am considering switching over to Alexa. It’s been 2 years and Google has not fixed this bug. I have a custom playlist that I like to automatically play in the morning as a routine. And sometimes, without me doing anything, home will randomly either play a different album or say that it’s not available. I change up the command and try several ones until one make its work again. Then it will work for a few months, and again the same issue happens. Now it won’t change it at all, no matter what command I put down. I am so tired of this and it’s incredible to me that Google has been hearing about this for years and has done nothing to fix it. 

before you tell me to unplug, delete, re-download, restart and change commands. I have done all that. You need to figure out why the action randomly changes when the command is the same. Can you please fix this bug?

[Sanussain]

Looks like it works now after I changed my playlist name to ‘Google I will throw you off a cliff’. Which is sad because I really wanted to keep my original playlist name and not have such a negative playlist name. 

[Suc_dpe · Accepted solution]

Hello,
You're right to be frustrated - this shouldn't still be happening after 2 years.

The issue is likely the Assistant losing context about which specific playlist you mean, or intermittent communication problems with your music service.

Try being more specific: "Play my [exact playlist name] on [device name]" instead of just "play my morning playlist."

Also set up a routine that explicitly calls your playlist - routines tend to be more reliable than voice commands for recurring actions.

The engineering team needs more consistent reports with exact timestamps and commands to track down these intermittent bugs, so keep submitting feedback through the Google Home app when it happens.

[Sanussain]

I have done about everything you can think of. This is my routine that I set up. My playlist is also a very specific title and even when I rename my playlist to add my own name In it, it still does not work. Sadly your suggestion is not a fix for this issue. 

[Chace]

To say the issue is intermittent is not at all true. I've been having it for 2 years now myself. I've tried so many different things multiple times. Chasing my playlist names. Changing the way I write the command in the app. Etc........

I can't believe that there is still no clear feedback as to what the issue is and when it'll be fixed. I too am considering a change of service to Alexa or something else. VERY FRUSTRATING.

[MrShmiggle]

From what I can tell, the issue is the age of the playlist. I ran a test switching the name of an older playlist with my new one that I wanted Google to play. When I asked Google to play my new playlist using the name of the old one, Google still played songs from the old playlist despite being a different name. Even when I tried to unlink and relink Spotify in hopes of resetting those names in Google’s “brain”, it didn’t work. So my advice is to find an old playlist you don’t use, transfer all of the songs you want played into that playlist, and just use that playlist and name for the time being. I just figured this out so I don’t know how long it will take for Google to “register” my new playlist that I wanted played, but after who knows how long, I’d think Google would be  able to register your new playlist as an “actual” playlist.

[SmartHomeH-TAGS]

Automations on Google Nest Hubs work every time whereas it never works on Nest Minis.

While Alexa does recognise the Spotify playlist you're asking for it won't restrict itself to only the songs on your playlist. 

I think it's a Spotify playback issue where it will play the Recommended songs as well.