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.

[GeorgeHudson]

Hi, have a similar issue. Currently running Spotify on Windows 10 desktop, am also a premium user though I dont believe that's relevant.

I noticed that all the people I follow on Spotify hadn't listened to anything in more than 10 days, which I knew was incorrect as I have been speaking to these people.

I then proceeded to logout and reinstall the application, however when I logged back in on the fresh install it now only tells me how I can allow my followers to see my listening activity which has always been active. Additionally when I go to add friends it just tells me to connect Facebook. 

Hopefully these screenshots help 

[petedabeast]

Today I logged onto Spotify to find out I had to sign in to Facebook to view my friend's listening activity. Many people do not have a Facebook or do not want to connect their Facebook to Spotify. Having to sign into a 3rd party application to see a feature as simple as viewing your followed friend's activity is outrageous. I pay for premium and I think I will have to switch back to Apple music. I thought Spotify was better but it is clearly not. This is a total blunder in UI design and makes a favored Spotify feature obsolete. 

Do better. 

[carlesdeulofeu]

My friend activity it's completly gone, well done @spotify for your new rule...

[TygrysTerroru]

I have exactly the same problem. My friends can follow, what i'm listening, but i can't follow them. This problem has been going on since last 2 weeks. Please help us asap!

[lillimoore]

Hey all, if you could go vote on this post I'm sure it would be appreciated by the OP. Let's try and get some more attention on this thing, because it's seriously such a bummer having lost friend activity. So many people I know that used it knew how to go on private and did when they wanted to. Most Spotify users are familiar with this. If you're not going to change it back please send out a push notification so people can choose their preferences for this. I bet you'll find that most people turn their sharing back on.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Idea-Submissions/Desktop-Friend-Feed-Change-friend-activity-default...

[user-removed]

Aside from voting for this, we need to crash the chat support service 

[0mit_y-b2ofyn]

In that case, it would be a good idea to send out a notification letting users know that they have to explicitly share their listening activity (since this update in the privacy policy was not stated clearly)

[user-removed]

They do this sh*t all the time with buggy updates, then have the arrogance to not fix it. Might have to look at Apple. Don't know why they always think they're improving something with updates that break something good. This is a ridiculous solution for a problem that is no fault of our own.

[namealreadytake]

Same here, using premium. Checked 'share my listening activity on Spotify' is ON. Just like the message states.
btw, I wont/cant connect to facebook. i'm paying for spotify, not facebook. 

[namealreadytake]

Same here, using premium. Checked 'share my listening activity on Spotify' is ON. Just like the message states.

(btw, I wont/cant connect to facebook. i'm paying for spotify, not facebook. )

[funky3578]

HI Emi I have checked several times and the share my listening activity on spotify this circle is Green it is enabled all ready. Thanks for the solution Emi.

[_sigh_]

I'm having the same issue. Spotify says to "enable 'share my listening activity on Spotify.'" It has always been enabled. I have turned it off and on again and the app always gets closed and opened. The friend activity stopped working a few days ago

[Jeremy]

Hi there folks,

Thank you for your replies.

We're always testing things by adding or removing features to make Spotify better overall and we’re constantly aiming to improve our features. We’re sorry that this means you’re not able to use Spotify like you wish to do at the moment.

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

Take care!

[hannah902]

Hi, just like @tsamius I know my friends share their listening activity and can see mine. I did perform the clean reinstall but this did not solve the problem unfortunately...

Edit: what @Vikarei said is correct: Spotify changed their settings and reverted all accounts to 'do not share activity'. If your friends turn this feature back on, you will be able to see their listening activity again 🙂 

[tsamius]

I just performed a clean reinstall by following all the steps from the guide and now I can see my friends' activity, but only for those of them who have enabled the sharing option after the latest update. 

[santicoordoba]

Same here! I had about 15 friends who I always saw what they were listening to, and now I only see 3. It gives me that it is not a matter that they have changed it to private for all, some have not even found out and they continue to see the activity ... I think there is something behind that they do not want to tell us, but it is a shame that they have destroyed one of the most useful features of Spotify. It remains to insist, and see if they pay attention to us.

[user-removed]

from sharing people's addresses and other personal data to invading their listening privacy pretending to run their lives, i say we should make Daniel Ek step down!

[CarlosE]

Hey @tsamius,

Thanks for the screenshot.

Try logging out, restarting your device, and logging back in. It's also worth restarting your router to see if that helps.

@0mit_y-b2ofyn, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us, as it helps us keep improving the app and the overall experience.

We'll be on the lookout.

[zyrrduljfq84jacjrv5]

My friends have this setting turned on and they still don't show up in my feed? Please help.

[RS-2020]

@CarlosE Hey Guys, as others mention, please bring back the friend feed as a standard turned on feature.... makes no sense to go ask friends to turn it back on again!!! please guys, don't remove the last reason to keep spotify.

you already removed the option of playing spotify on third party apps ( djay) , also you pay way less than other platforms, no reason to stay at yours if your service gets worse with time... pls fix this