When listeners stream on Spotify via shuffle mode (this is the default and only option for the Spotify free tier on mobile), your song will play alongside a mix of other songs Spotify has deemed similar to your song and/or discography.
However, Spotify can sometimes suggest music that has no relation to your genre or style. This happens because of one of the following reasons:
1) You are a brand new artist with no accumulated data via Spotify
2) You currently have a small listening audience with not enough data aggregated by Spotify to know similarities between your listener base’s tastes
3) You have promoted previously with extremely broad targeting instead of specific targeting, which confuses the algorithm and results in seemingly random algorithmic suggestions
4) You are pivoting from one genre to another with your discography, and Spotify is shuffling your music with the genre or style you are known for but doesn’t represent your current releases.
The best solution for this is to quickly promote via specific targeting, which is exactly what we do! Most artists with this problem see this solution completely resolved within 2-8 weeks of their song promotion, as long as they aren’t doing any broad promotion strategies elsewhere.