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.

[Troy_F]

UPDATE: Potential Fix to Start Seeing Friends Listenting Activity

Hello everyone! I couldn't agree more with all the comments made. Really disappointed in Spotify's approach to this update. In playing around with my setting, I found that in order for a friends listening activity to show up, they must have "Share my listening activity on Spotify" on ALL devices that they have Spotify logged into. I found on of my friends had the setting turn on one device but not the other. So the device that had the setting off was overriding all other settings and in turn does not display what they are listening to for their friends. Unfortunately, Spotify does not have the functionality set up to sink all settings across devices so that when this setting is turned on for one device that it will automatically set for another device. I understand why Spotify made this change for security/privacy purposes, but it is very sad to see that they rolled out this update without any instruction or job aid to users to let them know how to adjust their settings on ALL devices so that this feature would still work for them and their friends. 

Overall, if you want to see what your friends are listening to, you need to have them make sure that the "Share my listening activity on Spotify" is set to ON for ALL of their devices they have logged into Spotify (i.e. phone, computer, etc.). It is not the most ideal solution but I hope this is helpful to you all as it has been helpful to me as I am now starting to see my friends activity again!!

Lastly, I really do hope that @Spotify creates a way to sync settings across all devices (click HERE to see my posted idea on community for this change). Please vote on it if you would like to see an update in syncing settings and to help improve our friend feeds! 🙂

[nnekau]

Hi!
I asked my friends to check and the option is enabled but I still can't see their activity

[RQD2]

Sharing this reply from @jrham because I think it is the most logical solution. "Spotify, since this idea has gained over 100 votes and includes nearly 100 passionate and thoughtful responses, please add it to the list of “trending ideas”. I think the consensus is that we understand the privacy concern but the way it was implemented was sudden and jarring. It would be best to send a pop up notification to users telling them that their sharing is now off but they can turn it on with a simple switch that is displayed readily on the main Spotify page where the friend activity list is located. This is a feature that sets Spotify apart from its competitors; please make this change more transparent and easier to adjust. Thank you."

[MafeG]

Hi @nnekau,

Thank you for keeping in touch. 

Since you've already checked with your friends if they have the setting on, then we suggest you ask your friends to contact the folks from Customer Support who can take a deeper look into their account. Here is the link.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[dreαmlαnd]

hi

still don’t bleeding work

[FredMan1412]

still not fixed **bleep**

[FredMan1412]

also if anybody noticed, seems like new accounts sometimes mostly works fine, if you create new one right now, that feature will be there, you can even see the new shiny buttons they made that say your friends are listening some songs, but after an update, it will gone forever. I'm starting to think the devs gone goofed up after September-October update, because its probably not even desktop problems but deep API problems with the app and the accounts

[kgebreki]

!!! POTENTIAL SOLUTION !!!

Hey everyone, have you tried upgrading the operating system on your local machine? I used to have the same problem of not being able to see my Friend Activity–even though I enabled "Share my listening activity on Spotify" and made sure my friends did so as well–until I recently upgraded my OS from macOS Catalina to macOS Monterey. I'm not sure if this only a mac problem, but it's definitely worth trying. 

Hope this helped 🙂

[panozinho]

Hi! How's going?

So, since last mounth i started to realize that my friend list activite wasn't refresh and some friends was disappering. I did everthing that was in the Forum (checked if the app is updated, checked if my sistem is updated too also i did the login in other computers, restarted the app, did the logout - login and reinstalled the app). But the problem continues. Took a print for show my settings. IT'S ALL ACTIVATE. 

Please, somebody help me!!! what can i do???

[kgebreki]

Have you checked if your computer is due for an operating system update/upgrade? I had a major upgrade on my mac from Catalina to Monterey, which solved this issue.

[Nonomi]

Same here, I though I was the only one to have this bug.
Was on Windows 11 for the past few month, had this bug, switch back to Windows 10, still here.

I'm paying a subscription and it makes me sad that Spotify is, a bit, broken.

[Maxim]

Hey @panozinho ,

Thanks for coming to the Spotify Community.

You can share your listening activity with your friends when you:

 
Click on Settings > Turn on Share my listening activity on Spotify

By default, these settings are now set to off, so your friends will need to enable them manually (if not done so in the past) as well if they want to share their listening activity.

This could mean that you might not see some of your friends in the feed until they do so.

Hope this clears things up!

[bhavyarai]

L

[Douxie]

Do they really believe that they did everyone a favour with this update? I'd love to know who it was that argued it was a privacy issue to share music and insisted on updating the program so that you have to manually share listening activity. I wouldn't find it quite as ridiculous if that option hadn't been there in the first place and if we were sharing something more personal, but it's music and private sessions have always been readily available. What was the thought process here?

[user-removed]

Doubt we'll ever know. They don't care enough about their customers to address the issue, and apparently not care enough to even look in on this forum. Guess it's time for another streaming provider as the lack of response and customer appreciation is utterly staggering.

[Douxie]

I understand that an individual's music preferences could be considered "revealing" (at most embarrassing); however, this was never a real issue, because everyone could stream their music privately and turn off sharing their recently played artists. No one ever had to know who you were listening to if it worried you that much that your crush would see you listening to some band deemed uncool or you didn't want anyone to know you're awake at three in the morning. I appreciate that Spotify is trying to improve itself, but this update was so unnecessary. 

[luwaha]

can you please turn it back for everyone? Or post an announcement for people to turn it on, because I don't think anyone knows.

[bequeM]

Plan: Premium

Country: Turkey

Device: Toshiba Laptop

Operating System: Windows 8

Spotify Version: 1.1.80.699.gc3dac750

My Question or Issue: Nearly 3 months ago, I wanted to see my friend's feed from Facebook so I did everything that I have to do. Than, a couple weeks ago I wanted to see my sister's feed and I followed her. However, I couldn't her in my friends feed. Today, I tried a lot of things to fix it but I couldn't fix. I tried everything I've seen. At the end, anything worked. I still have a problem with "Friends Feed". I can see my friends' feed who is my friend from Facebook but I can't see people's feed I followed in Spotify.

In addition: Almost everywhere, I saw people who has an authority said "You should open your options or your friends should open his/her options." Please don't say that. I did, also most of the people who has a same issue with me did.

[andreborda]

Yet another topic that is completely ignored by spotify... I remember when they removed lyrics way back when, and said they were " working on a fix". Clearly a lie and they kept ignoring the subject or saying the same thing. Now they finally brought lyrics back like they came up with sliced bread, when old users know they just took YEARS to handle it. And not 2-3 years, I'm talking 5+. I reckon this will get the same priority, if it ever gets "fixed". Spotify, for all the great stuff it has, is the worst company in terms of listening to their users that I've ever seen. These community posts are all but pointless because no-one that can do something about issues is reading them.

[zachsk88]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

My Friend activity is not working. I'm connected to Facebook, the setting is turned on like it asks me to, but I won't show me anything. I have the most recent version of Spotify (as of 3/6/22 because I just reinstalled it from a fresh installer)