Some genres not recognized by Spotify Search API

[DanielSmith1239]

Issue found on February 19th 2015.

Endpoint(s):

• GET /v1/users/{user_id}

Scope(s):

• Bearer

Steps to reproduce:

1. Use the search api to request artists of the acoustic genre (https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/console/get-search-item?q=genre%3Aacoustic&type=artist)

Expected behaviour:

For a list of artists to be returned

Actual behaviour:

Nothing is returned (same thing happens with some other genres too)

[hughrawlinson]

Hi @DanielSmith1239 - that's correct, 'acoustic' is not a genre in our model for search. It would be good for us to provide an API that returns all genres in our model though, so that you could verify genres in advance (or let your users choose from a list if that fits your usecase), so we'll take this as a feature request :) Thanks!

[DanielSmith1239]

But why are there some genres that aren't supported? For example, "alternative" is a very popular genre and should be supported. I am working on an app where a user selects their favorite genre, and I need to include "alternative" on the list due to its undeniable popularity. How am I supposed to load a list of "alternative" artists if you don't support that tag?

[hughrawlinson]

@DanielSmith1239 could you give me a list of the genres you expect to find, but haven't?

[DanielSmith1239]

I actually ran a test on all of the genres on you're supported genres list. "good" means it works, "bad" means it doesn't: acoustic: bad afrobeat: good alt-rock: bad alternative: bad ambient: good anime: good black-metal: good bluegrass: good blues: good bossanova: good brazil: bad breakbeat: good british: bad cantopop: good chicago-house: good children: bad chill: bad classical: good club: bad comedy: good country: good dance: bad dancehall: good death-metal: good deep-house: good detroit-techno: good disco: good disney: bad drum-and-bass: good dub: good dubstep: good edm: good electro: good electronic: good emo: good folk: good forro: good french: bad funk: good garage: bad german: bad gospel: good goth: bad grindcore: good groove: bad grunge: good guitar: bad happy: bad hard-rock: good hardcore: good hardstyle: good heavy-metal: bad hip-hop: good holidays: bad honky-tonk: bad house: good idm: bad indian: bad indie-pop: good indie: bad industrial: good iranian: bad j-dance: good j-idol: good j-pop: good j-rock: good jazz: good k-pop: good kids: bad latin: good latino: bad malay: bad mandopop: good metal-misc: bad metal: good metalcore: good minimal-techno: good movies: bad mpb: good new-age: good new-release: bad opera: good pagode: good party: bad philippines-opm: bad piano: bad pop-film: bad pop: good post-dubstep: bad power-pop: good progressive-house: good psych-rock: bad punk-rock: bad punk: good r-n-b: bad rainy-day: bad reggae: good reggaeton: good road-trip: bad rock-n-roll: bad rock: good rockabilly: good romance: bad sad: bad salsa: good samba: good sertanejo: good show-tunes: good singer-songwriter: good ska: good sleep: good songwriter: bad soul: good soundtracks: bad spanish: bad study: bad summer: bad swedish: bad synth-pop: good tango: good techno: good trance: good trip-hop: good turkish: bad work-out: good world-music: bad

[hughrawlinson]

Thanks! Could you link me to where you got your list of genres?

[DanielSmith1239]

I got the genres that I ran the tests on from here: https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/get-recommendations/#available-genre-seeds

[hughrawlinson]

I see - for historical reasons, the recommendation API uses a different set of genres to search. Recommendation came from the Echo Nest functionality, which is backed by a different model for genres than our original Spotify model. We realise this isn't ideal, and we'd like to release an endpoint to list the genres available in search. I'll update you if we release such an endpoint. I've passed your list of genres to the team responsible for that dataset, who were very impressed and say they find it very useful :) Thanks!

[DanielSmith1239]

Great, thanks. Are the genres that I found working the only genres that work? Are there any that aren't on this list?

[hughrawlinson]

There are more genres that work, I'll work on making a list available.

[DanielSmith1239]

Awesome, thanks for the help.

[Hguimaraes]

@hughrawlinson I'm sorry to bring this back, but you have any news about this feature?

And even if you can't make an end-point of the genres list, could you provide here the genre list? (I could use hard-coded in my application for now). Thanks

[hughrawlinson]

@Hguimaraes nothing yet, sorry. Still working on it!

[Hguimaraes]

@hughrawlinson I'm quite new using the Spotify API, but if I could help you with something, just let me know! Thank you for your time to solve this (-:

[sameerjj]

@hughrawlinson any updates on this? would be immensely helpful for my application as well. even just a text list will do if an API is tough to squeeze out at this time. Thanks!

[nickjhonatam]

I have a similar situation, but I just wanted to leave it available in the search for a specific genre.

the part that I have to change is this:

interface SearchInterface {

 / **
  * Search database using given params.
  *
  * @param string $ q
  * @param int $ limit
  * @param string $ type
  *
  * @return array
  * /
 public function search ($ q, $ limit = 10);

}

Can someone help me with this? @Hguimaraes @hughrawlinson

[heitorpaceli]

Hi Guys, any update about this issue?

[hmaclean82]

i would appreciate this too. You should at least explain that the only list you reference in your api/documention - the recommendation genres enum, is in fact a bit useless. I wasted my time setting this up locally only to realise there are loads of mismatches when compared to the track.artist.genres

[omadume]

Hi. I'm wondering if a genre list has been made for search yet?

In the meantime, some people may find this useful - http://everynoise.com/everynoise1d.cgi?scope=all

The comments in this stackoverflow discussion suggest that the genres mentioned in the above link have all been tried on the search method and are successful (although I have not tested them myself): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41837004/some-genres-not-recognized-by-spotify-search-api

[ClaudioAmato]

@omadume yes it works if you search for an item (here: https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/search/search/) with a genere that is not listed (here: https://developer.spotify.com/console/get-available-genre-seeds/), but ...

this not works (here: https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/browse/get-recommendations/). For example if I want to get a recomendation for a RAP song it gives me a void track list.

This is so sad because now I have to find another way to get recommendation using the above recommendation searching and also because I expected to have a list of generes seeds complete or bigger (or at least with the most famous generes).

[pppdns]

[Jan 31, 2017] we'd like to release an endpoint to list the genres available in search. I'll update you if we release such an endpoint

Is there any update on this?