Has Deezer changed how artist “Top Tracks” work? Hurts now only shows featured tracks

Hi everyone,

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed a similar problem with artist pages recently.

I regularly listen to Hurts. Until a few months ago, I could search for Hurts, open the artist page and press Play. Deezer would play a selection of their songs, mixed from different albums.

Sometime around April/May, and definitely by June, this changed.

The Hurts artist page now shows only three tracks in “Top Tracks”, and all three are songs where Hurts is featured by another artist. Their own songs are no longer shown there.

The strange thing is that their own music is still available on Deezer — the albums and individual tracks haven't disappeared.

This is also a much bigger problem when using Android Automotive / Google Assistant in my car. If I say:

“Hey Google, play Hurts”

Deezer now finds those three featured tracks instead of playing a selection of Hurts songs. Previously, the same command worked perfectly and gave me many of their own songs.

I've already contacted Deezer Support about this. The support conversation has been going on for quite some time now. So far I've had several rounds of questions and explanations that “Top Tracks” are based on listening activity — which I understand, but it doesn't really explain why an artist's own songs have suddenly been replaced by songs where the artist is only featured.

I've now provided Deezer with the requested device, OS and app version information, so hopefully the next step will actually be investigating the issue. 😉

Has anyone else noticed this?

Especially if you use voice control / Android Automotive, I'd be interested to know whether you're seeing the same behaviour with Hurts or other artists.

And if this is an intentional change rather than a bug: why was the ability to simply play a mix of an artist's own songs removed?