Spotify friends activity empty/not updating

[Tonasj]

Plan

Premium

Country

Finland

Device

Pc

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

For several months (pretty much years at this point), my Spotify friends feed has not been updating, it only shows 1 friend I have, while it should have a dozen others. This has been going on for far too long for it to be a problem on my end as I have changed my devices, settings, and other things to try and fix it. I have reinstalled Spotify and my OS but nothing helps. I also see no friends through my Facebook integration even after disconnecting and reconnecting my Facebook profile multiple times. All my settings are the same as my friends and he can see his friend activity but I can't. I already posted about this problem once, and was told it would fix itself but that was months ago. This is very infuriating as it has been going for so long.

[Tonasj]

We have seen the reports of people saying Friend Feed is not working for them, and we are happy to investigate specific cases, because as far as we are aware, there are no issues with Friend Feed working.

Firstly, it’s important to restate that ALL users had “Share my listening activity on Spotify” turned off as default - so users you followed and saw in your Friend Feed in the past, will no longer show in your Friend Feed, UNLESS they turned “Share my listening activity on Spotify” back on. 

Also worth noting that you don’t need Facebook set up for Friend Feed to work.

Having said that, all of the below must be true for users to show in your Friend Feed:

• You must be following the friend whose activity you want to see.
• The friend must have enabled the setting to publish their activity:
• Share my listening activity on Spotify - toggled on.
• The friend must have played more than 30 seconds of a track on iOS, Android or Desktop in the last 7 days.
• This can’t be in a Private Session.
• Also you should both have restarted the App at some point recently.

If all of this is true for you and your friend and they don’t show up in your Friend Feed, then:

• We need you, and the friend you are following, to post here saying you give us permission to check your accounts.
• We need explicit written permission from both of you.
• We can't test this with one person's username and permission.  
• It’s enough to post here, we can find your username based on your Community profile. 

Once we have this we can do some checking. Thanks all.

[Kevatronic]

Still this issue remains, tried all the tricks and nothing works, starting to get a little fed up with spotifiy for this. 

friends can see me, i can't see them.   surely this is an easy fix app development wise 

[dreαmlαnd]

sad to see spotify team are so quiet about this. so very disappointed in their lack of support in reverting this stupid update

 completely unsatisfied with the way it’s all been handled

[robstersgaming]

I don't even see the share activity with friends option in my settings

[Kevatronic]

This does not work at all. I tried everything, reinstall even with an older version. unfollow- refollow, checked we both had the settings on but still it wont work. 

There are thousands of people with this issue from what i have read online but seems spotify are not interested in this fix. shame really used to like spotify 

[Kevatronic]

This does not work at at all, tried everything, re-install even with an older version. unfollow- refollow, checked we both had the settings on but still it wont work. 

There are thousands of people with this issue from what i have read online but seems spotify are not intrested in this fix. shame really used to like spotify 

[Zero112]

absolutely nothing showing up. 

[dreαmlαnd]

i can’t believe i haven’t heard ANY NEW MUSIC since end of november because i’ve been so anxious about friends activity being gone

the people who always gave me new music listen to are no longer in my friends activity so i’m soooo unbelievably lost without it … i can’t believe at how much this default thing has affected me 

[yandhi]

This really sucks, and ruins the social aspect of spotify completely. Even people that know enough to turn it on don’t know that it’s been switched off by default

[yagmuronayy]

I agree with the comments here that Spotify needs to take responsibility and start listening to its users. I have been commenting under different threads about this issue for a month, where Spotify kept ignoring people's complaints and advised them to check their settings, although users said they already did.

It is frustrating how much perceived value of an app can decrease with terrible service. Please acknowledge your issues, Spotify. Friends activity is one of the key values od Spotify, in my opinion. As a computer scientist, I loved using the app and even thought about contributing, but inability to address an issue for a month disappointed me and many users.

[jrham]

Update 1/7/2022: I was able to see friend activity for about 3-5 friends for the last 3 weeks or so (its something, but still totally broken)...until this morning. Now I see zero friends...instead, I get instructions on how to share my activity and how to view the friend activity window, but after following the instructions, I get no result. This is totally broken now.

[Jeremy]

Hi there folks,

Thank you for your replies and feedback.

We've double checked this from our end and can confirm that we don't get the same behavior.

Can you perform a clean reinstall of the app? This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

Let us know how it goes.

Take care!

[anapnovaes]

Their proposed solution of turning the setting on then asking your friends to do the same is purely a lie. Both me and my husband have our settings as ON, and neither of us can see what the other is listening.

It's absurd how little care Spotify dedicates to their customers. This thing of "this is working as expected unless disproved that your settings are on" is tech language for "we don't know how to fix this so we're buying time with poor excuses".

You lazy Spotify techs might want to check the sign-on process with Facebook as it is not maintaining the connection to FB, therefore not displaying your FB friends songs playing. I just tried updating all the settings on my account, then went for connecting with Facebook again, it displays the friends I'm following but then it won't display the songs they are listening and it won't keep the connection after I close / reopen Spotify. Screenshots attached from connecting to FB, seeing friends I'm following then having to connect to FB again because it's not holding the connection.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @yagmuronayy,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community.

Can you confirm that you followed the steps that's provided in this article? There's some more steps to help thoroughly uninstall the app from your device, so if you haven't, we'd highly suggest it since the steps will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

If that doesn't do the trick, can you log in with your account on a different device to see if the issue persists?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!

[anapnovaes]

Their proposed solution of turning the setting on then asking your friends to do the same is purely a lie. Both me and my husband have our settings as ON, and neither of us can see what the other is listening.

It's absurd how little care Spotify dedicates to their customers. This thing of "this is working as expected unless disproved that your settings are on" is tech language for "we don't know how to fix this so we're buying time with poor excuses".

You lazy Spotify techs might want to check the sign-on process with Facebook as it is not maintaining the connection to FB, therefore not displaying your FB friends songs playing. I just tried updating all the settings on my account, then went for connecting with Facebook again, it displays the friends I'm following but then it won't display the songs they are listening and it won't keep the connection after I close / reopen Spotify. Screenshots attached from connecting to FB, seeing friends I'm following then having to connect to FB again because it's not holding the connection.

[at47]

This feature is definitely bugged right now. I created a second account and toggled share my listening activity on both just to check. On both accounts the listening activity did not update or show either account activity. The tab was stuck on the instructions as others have posted. 

[hariskar]

Exactly the same for me. Also the back button does not work in 2nd picture.

Update today but without fix...

[alien236]

This has been ticking me off for a while now, but as of today only nine people show up in my friend feed - not even filling my relatively large laptop screen from top to bottom - and that's the final straw. Also, it shows that I have 47 Facebook friends I can follow follow, but when I click Follow and then click away and then look again, I'm not following them. I've tried this several times. Please fix this stupidity.

[KeepItScruffy]

This is absolutely ridiculous. We pay every month for this service, and the moderators are not only not answering questions anymore, they are actively avoiding understanding the issue customers are having in multiple threads. This makes me want to switch to Apple Music. 

[jeffremobley1998]

I thought I did something wrong and thought I was the only one experiencing this issue. This has been going on long enough. Please fix this issue. I can't see my friend's activity.

[lufrosero4]

Plan

Premium

Country: Colombia

Device

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Four Thunderbolt 3 ports)

Operating System

macOS Big Sur 11.2.3

I used to be able to see all of my friend's activity but from one day to another only two friends are showing up. I have tried everything, a clean reinstall, reinstall, quitting the app, shutting down my computer and telling my friends to check if they are sharing their activity but nothing works. 

How can I fix this? I want to be able to see what they're listening to.