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.

[Billy-J]

Hey @zachsk88, thanks for reaching out to the Community!

Can you try a clean reinstall of the app following these steps? That usually refreshes the app. 

Additionally, with a recent update - every user who currently uses the Friend Activity Feed to broadcast their listening activity, and has not explicitly opted-in to do so, will have their broadcasting reverted to ‘off’. They would need to opt-in again for you to experience the Friend Activity Feed. It may be a good idea to tell your friends that previously used the Friend Activity Feed to opt-in again if they would like to use the feature.

Let me know how this goes!

[zachsk88]

I have tried this and it did not solve the issue. I will try to contact a friend and see if the sharing settings are off, but I suspect with the amount of people that I follow, at least 1  has it turned on

[dreαmlαnd]

this sucks. can we just go back to normal now and have the friends activity switched back on to normal …. 

they’ve just created a massive problem for nothing… it makes no sense !!!!

you had a perfectly running smooth operation and you “take away” one feature (the best feature. the worthwhile feature. the useful feature. the feature that wasn’t hurting anybody, really) and ruined the whole thing 

[Billy-J]

OK sounds good. Please keep me posted on the settings that your friend has for Friend Activity, and we will go from there. 

Thanks!

[Lianna84]

Guys!!! Is this the solution? I just chat with Spotify support, they say that for this to “escalate” to the developers, more people with the same problem need to contact them… so… here is the link i used 

https://support.spotify.com    Look there for “message” they will ask you to login to start the chat, first answer a bot, then a support agent, they say it all first “uninstall, install, delet cache etc etc” … i said i have tried it all, the problem is with the app … so, contact them, maybe we can revert the thing

[Mlg2016]

I don't trust that more than I did their "uninstall and reinstall and it'll fix it", but hey if some of you try and receive an actual relevant answer (as in not along the lines of "uninstall and reinstall), please let me know and I'll try.

[RQD2]

This is what Spotify Support just told me. 

re-start the app...  try a clean re-install...  make sure you're following users in the app, not just artists -- the users you follow must have listened to a track for least 30 secs within the last week: On either Desktop, iOS or Android - With "Share my listening activity on Spotify" enabled - While not in incognito mode...  make sure your friends have enabled permissions to share their listening activity under settings...   disable Private Session

"We've investigated this and we can confirm that everything is working correctly. If your friend still isn't showing up in your Friend Feed, please suggest them to check these steps or ask them to reach out to us for further help, so we can double check this issue with them"

[RQD2]

"You can also tell your friends to try refreshing the setting Share my listening activity on Spotify by togging it off and on again."

[Mlg2016]

LOL!

[Lianna84]

oh the say the same to everybody, but at the end you need to tell them that lots of people already did that, and that the problem is not our profile, or the hundreds friends we follow(who have the same problem) we all already check all that ... the problem is the app

[LyxThePanda]

Hey,
I still have the same problem , "Share my listening activity on Spotify" is On , I'm connected to facebook, my friends see my activity but I can't see theirs even though we all have the same settings.

[Yordan]

Hi @Lianna84,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community!

Could you try the following:

1. Go to a friend's profile you follow and unfollow them, then restart the Spotify app.
2. Open the Spotify app again, follow them back and restart Spotify.

Make sure that they've also toggled on "Share my listening activity on Spotify".

Let us know how it goes.

Cheers!

[catowaeterloos]

Hi Yordan, I've been having this issue since November. Stopped seeing my most active friends on Friend Activity even though they have all confirmed that their sharing is toggled on. I have tried all the solutions suggested in every one of these threads. None works. I can confirm that unfollow-restart-follow-restart also does not work in bringing specific users back into my friend activity. Please fix this issue.

[JJLI27]

The proposed solution DOES NOT WORK. It seems that if you have your Facebook account connected to Spotify, it only shows a maximum of 3 Facebook friends, and NONE of the other profiles you follow. I used to see both Facebook friends and profiles of non-Facebook friends. This is not about sharing settings! If I look at individual profiles, I can see their Recently Played Artists, but those profiles never show in my Friend Activity. This has caused me to miss out on so much, because although I can see the artists they're listening, I can't see the Playlist itself. This was a great benefit from Instagram, people I followed there would link to music on Spotify and it made it so easy to discover their public playlists. I feel like this is a Facebook/Social issue and Spotify is not hearing what we are actually experiencing. Bring back the ability for us to see profiles we follow across all social media platforms PLEASE!!! We know these profiles are sharing and their playlists are public!

[hvahanen]

This sucks!
I don't understand your decision about this....

[mrlaperche]

Hey,

I am also facing this issue for maybe 3 months.
I've tried everything, turning the app off and on. Uninstall/reinstall. Install from the website, install from the windows store. Unactivating all the "sharing" options, restarting in admin mode, turning them on, shutting spotify down, restarting again as an administrator. I've tried with another account : same. I've tried with another Windows computer : same. 
I see a lot of other using facing this issue. Will you technically do something about it or keep telling us to "install/reinstall" ? 
I don't want to be rude, I just want to know if you are actually working on it or if I can have the hope that you will fix it (or try to fix it) or if you are just giving up on this feature.

 

[dreαmlαnd]

it hurts. it physically hurts that this update isn’t being reverted back to normal. normal that was there for a decade… truly disappointing 

[davedeecoder]

This has been happening to me for months and is incredibly annoying. I've asked a few friends to turn the setting on and they still don't appear. It used to be one of my favorite parts of the Mac OS app. Please prioritize and fix.

[suquetpaul]

Same issue I've read people having. 

Obviously, I've been through the settings and made sure TWO setting are enabled:
- Share my listening activity on Spotify
- Show what your friends are playing
They've been enabled all along. I've also gone through the trouble of DISABLING both, closing the app, restarting my computer, opening the app back up, enabling the setting again, shut the app down, reboot again, open the app; only to find the issue is STILL not corrected. 

I've uninstalled and reinstalled. Nothing changed.

It'd also be helpful if there's somebody FROM spotify answering, that they ACTUALLY read what the issue is. We've been through the settings. Duh. We've restarted the app. Some of us have uninstalled and reinstalled already. 

It's really frustrating to have "support" give generic responses like "you have to go to settings and enable this".... Yeah, we know. It does nothing to fix the problem and it helps absolutely NO ONE. 

[Mcdanielws]

This is about the most idiotic change I've ever seen.  Something that was defaulted to being opted in changed because someone thought it was a good idea?  NOT A GOOD IDEA.   Nobody is going to randomly go to settings and just turn that on, because most people use the phone app. 

I can't even see what my kids are playing now, I have a family plan for a reason.  Yes I can get them to change the setting... but It's MY plan, MY family! And personally, I think everyone should see what their own family is listening to - regardless of the setting.