Strangers on collaborative playlist

[aditiverma141]

1. My partner and I have a playlist that we collaborate to. It's just the two of us but for the last month we've noticed random people are appearing on the playlist and adding songs to it. Mostly by some artist called Pesukone. Spotify's report function isn't working for us but we are certain this is some sort of bot or spam because the names are generic and the songs are always by that artist. My partner, who is the playlist owner, has already changed his account details/password/signed out but the spam is still happening. How can we stop it?

[AdamDamon]

Hi @aditiverma141,

Thanks for posting in the Spotify Community!

Bear in mind that when a playlist is collaborative, anyone following it (or who has the link to it) will be able to add or remove songs—even if the collaborative playlist hasn’t been added to your or your partner's Spotify profile.

To prevent further unwanted song additions (or deletions) by other Spotify users, I recommend one of these two options:

1. Your partner can remove the playlist’s “collaborative” status, so that other users can’t add/remove tracks (he can temporarily set the playlist to “collaborative” each time you would like to add songs to the playlist, if you'd like to keep collaborating on it).
2. You or your partner can create a new playlist and copy/paste the songs from the original collaborative playlist to it, by following these steps on the desktop app:

• Select all of the original collaborative playlist's contents (by pressing “Ctrl + A” on a Windows computer or “Cmd + A” on a Mac computer); and copy them (“Ctrl + C” on Windows or “Cmd + C” on a Mac). Next, create a new playlist that hasn't been shared with anyone yet, and paste the tracks in the new playlist (by pressing “Ctrl + V” on Windows or “Cmd + V” on a Mac) 
• If you opt for the newly copied playlist to be collaborative, I recommend making sure not to add it to either of your Spotify profiles, as well as not to share the link to it with anyone else, in order to prevent unwanted Spotify users from finding and spamming the playlist.

Spotify is currently working on new changes to the way permissions and collaborators are managed for playlists, as is mentioned in the Status Update of this Live Idea regarding limiting editing access for collaborative playlists. If this is something you’re interested in, I would recommend Subscribing to the idea by clicking the three dots next to its title; that way, you can be sure to be informed of any relevant updates.

You can also feel free to add your +VOTE to the idea; the more votes an idea gets, the likelier it is that Spotify will implement it, and you can read more about how feedback on ideas reaches Spotify here.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and have a good day!

[Sister_Friede]

One of the changes you seem to have made is that the default is that you can only remove you added yourself. Now we can't delete song that have been added by bots or with malicious intend. There is no way to just copy the playlist to another one, or change permissions because we can't contact the playlist owner. There's completely unrelated songs sitting in the playlist with no way for us to remove them? This has to be a bug, because it affects everyone on every platform.

[AdamDamon]

Hi @Sister_Friede,

Thanks for posting in the Spotify Community, and welcome!

This change with collaborative playlists is very recent; and the way it works is that members in a collaborative playlist can only remove tracks that they've personally added. However, the owner of the playlist still has full control over its content and is able to remove tracks added by other members.

Since you mention that you cannot contact the playlist owner in this case, a workaround that you could use is to copy the contents of the playlist with Ctrl + A (Cmd + A on Mac); and then add the tracks to a new playlist (which you can then edit to remove any tracks). Bear in mind that this is only possible using the desktop app, though.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and have a good day!

[homeboymast]

The simple fix for this is adding ADMIN STATUS to playlists. Let everyone in the world see any playlist in the world, no matter it's collaborative status, but Admin/editing status should only be granted to those who the owner designates. Google drive does it with docs, and has been for years. 

[homeboymast]

Simple fix to this super annoying issue. Give the owner of the playlist ADMIN PERMISSIONS, so they can grant users of their choosing permissions to add or remove songs. The playlist can then be shared with every single person in the world, for the public to listen (only) and there will be no issue of strangers controlling your playlist. Google has implemented this with Docs for years now.