Spotify and privacy, so no one can see what you’re listening to

Spotify is the most popular streaming service, but it is also a social app at the same time. That means you can add friends via Facebook and even if you don’t, you still share your listening activity. Fortunately, if you don’t like that thought, you can do something about it.

Spotify and privacy

If you’ve never looked at the privacy and social aspects of Spotify, you might be completely blown away now. It is possible to look up Spotify profiles, and then you can see which playlists that person has created or follows, and which artists have recently been listened to. That’s the default setting and it doesn’t just happen to users connecting Spotify to Facebook. With these tips you can take your privacy into your own hands.

Listening activity

The easiest way to make sure no one can see which artists you’re listening to is to hide your ‘Listening Activity’ on your profile. You can do that in the settings of the app. We explain how it works.

1. Open Spotify on your phone and press the at the top right Institutions
2. below Social put you Listening activity from

Private sessions

This method is ideal for those who have Spotify connected to their Facebook account. In that case, your friends will see everything about your listening behavior, except when you start a private session, because that way you can see all your guilty pleasure-play music without anyone noticing, for 6 hours. After that, such a session ends automatically. We explain how to start a private session.

1. Open Spotify on your phone and press the at the top right Institutions
2. below Social put you Private session at

Make playlists private

If you don’t want people snooping through your playlists, you can make them private. That way they are only visible to you. Follow the steps below in the app.

1. Open Spotify on your phone and choose Library
2. Tap the playlist you want to make private
3. Under the playlist title, press the menu with the three dots
4. Tap on make private and then again Make private

Even more privacy settings

If you link your Facebook account with Spotify, you automatically share data from Facebook with your music service. If you would like to stop doing that, but if you want to continue to use Facebook to log in, you can do that from the Spotify account settings on your PC. Please note, because this prohibits Spotify from processing data from Facebook, and that does not work in the opposite direction. We show how it adapts.

1. Go to Spotify.com on your PC
2. Press profile and then Account
3. Choose Privacy settings
4. Sets Facebook data from

On the same page you can also ban Spotify from Customized ads or in other words: advertisements that Spotify puts together based on your activity in the app. If you want, you can also see what data Spotify collects about you via Download your data.

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