Changes to Friend Activity

[Hubo]

With Friend Activity you can see what your friends are listening to. Personally, I love Friend Activity because I can really get to know my friends’ tastes in music and dive right into what they’re listening to.

As of recently, if you want to continue sharing what you're listening to, you will need to enable it for your followers in Settings. If you’ve never turned this setting on before, you’ll need to turn it on to share your activity with your followers. This way, you’re always in control of what you’re sharing.

Also, you may find that you don't see much activity from those you follow - that's because they might not have turned this setting on yet. Let them know you want to dig in on the cool stuff they're listening to! 

Check out this article for more information about Friend Activity. 

You can also block followers if you don’t want them to view your listening activity. Check out the steps under: ‘Block someone’ here for more information.

[dreαmlαnd]

i can’t believed how much noise there is being made because of this stupid update and losing friends activity yet spotify are not listening.

we are trying to make your app more beneficial and efficient. and given the fact that WE are paying 9.99 A MONTH and you can’t even do one thing for us. the one thing that made us subscribe to your **bleep** app. 

disgusted and disappointed. WE ARE PAYING CUSTOMERS. OUR THOUGHTS AND IDEAS SHOULD BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION AND CLEARLY WE WANT THE FRIENDS ACTIVITY TO BE REVISED AND REVERTED!!!!! 

i just don’t understand why not…… 

[firebuff101]

This is a silly change. Seeing what my friends listen to is literally the entire reason I followed anyone. I think most people would agree. I don't understand the reason for this change when anonymous listening/private sessions exist.

[gabibbo2008]

I think I solved part of the issue: I asked to my friends to open their Settings, to go to "Social" and to set the sliding switch "Share my listening activity on Spotify" to ON.

Doing this I finally had abck my friends on the "Friend Activity" tab.

However I still don't know how to add new friends if you have not Facebook.

[exploringwithab]

I can't believe how difficult was it to just send a push notification to every user irrespective of whether they use the app or the desktop version notifying of the change and asking for a simple Yes/No if they want to share their listening activity with others. I was wondering why suddenly I have stopped seeing activity of others until I came across this thread.  As someone already said, turning this activity 'off' by default makes no sense when there is already an option of private listening. Privacy and everything is ok although this is not personal data which needs to be turned off by default without notifying the customers.

If Spotify really cares, please do send push notification and inform the customers, majority of who I am pretty sure are unaware that music listening activity has been turned off by default for all users. The social features were the only reason I use Spotify and I am surprised the roll out of this feature was done so terribly.

[GeeBzz]

Lucky you if it worked. it didn't in most cases.

[LTG]

I appreciate that Spotify is defaulting to a setting that protects privacy, rather than defaulting to a setting that shares information.

Obviously, it's an odd situation, since there was previously a different setting that people had enabled to allow sharing, and it was turned off without notification or explanation. I'm in agreement with those in the thread who have suggested that Spotify do a better job of letting people know of the change so they can return to their previous state if they want to. Why Spotify doesn't include ANY release notes with each release is beyond me. As a software developer myself, it seems counter-intuitive to caring for the customer. 

I did want to make a suggestion about the "block" feature. It seems to be backwards. I'd much rather block everyone by default (ie. keep the "Share my listening activity on Spotify" slider OFF), but allow certain people to see. Learn from Telegram, where you can add specific users to see your status, phone number, etc., but everyone else gets blocked. Not everyone has to use it, but I suspect a lot of people would appreciate this more granular approach to "opt-in" privacy.

[dreαmlαnd]

did i really dream that this was all solved and everything was back to normal?? that they had switched the default back to normal for everyone (?)

please revert this and go back to normal. you have no idea how important this feature was. it’s actually messing with my mental health that you’ve taken this feature away. this key feature

[Leedjinn]

oh dear, 

overplayed your hand much, Spotify, my love? 

Your one competitive advantage over industry stalwarts like Apple Music was your social function, 

and you went and blitzkrieg'd that... blew it out the water like a plastic **bleep** shark. 

Shame. Love you, muchly, but I came from iTunes I can easily return. 

hmmm... you were dicking me around on the friend feed anyways, and you must hate that I listened to music far more than your model allocated for, which is another reason why listeners (read: non-listeners) as myself will sink your plastic lilo-self. 

NON-LISTENING IS EVERYTHING! NIGHTY-NIGHT

666

[santiguzman]

solve this issue!!! it sucks that we can't see our friends activity even if we turn the setting on. I don't care about the default setting just at least make it work if it is enabled, because at least for me, it is not working and I have already reinstalled spotify multiple times! what a shame spotify...

[yandhi]

The only advantage spotify had left over other streaming alternatives was its social feature.

You are grossly misunderstanding how valuable it was to many users  to be able to check out what their friends were listening to to discover new music and see if you have similar tastes. This decision doesn’t make sense, as playlists default to public regardless… Not to mention the private browsing option that has always been available. There are a multitude of solutions you could have chosen, including having to accept friend requests to view activity. 

Ive been a subscribed for years. With the permanence of this decision it is easier for me to transfer my playlists to another streaming service that listens to their customers. I will be moving my family subscription and many of my friends have already made the switch because of this terrible decision making.

[LanderLander]

Hi, 

the problem has supposedly been resolved, unfortunately I still can't see more than two of my friends' activity. Like I said before, they already have their share my listening activity toggled on. I am totally lost on this

[andredobleb]

esta bien eso que dices, pero ese no es el problema , el problema es que la aplicación de escritorio es la que está fallando y eso es lo que spotify debe arreglar. Está claro que cada uno decide con quien comparte lo que escucha, pero he probado con amigos compartir musica y aun asi como a varios les ha pasado, queda pegado en los settings. un pésimo servicio!

[Leedjinn]

Well, not much we can do about it, right, might as well learn to live with it? Wrong. There is an arrogance here that is almost appealing in its disdain for the ordinary customer. Let me tell you what actually happened, so we're all in the clear. Spotify finally discovered an exploit on the friend feed that allowed you to follow someone's music without being a follower. If you followed an account, logged out, logged back in, and then unfollowed them, they remained on your friend feed, and you didn't appear on their follow list, as long as you remained logged into that session and they didn't begin a new one. This exploit was/ is a privacy violation and needed/ needs to be addressed immediately. However, they have no idea how to fix it cos they all a bunch of dumbf*cks. Did I use the exploit? I did. But it was heartbreaking, so I stopped. Friend feed has become heartbreak central for me. Almost glad it's done. Not really. Still, there's a whole plugin of sweaty freaks geeking it out ineffectively trying to fix something intrinsically inept from the get-go. The feed has always been buggy, as with the app entire.   

[JJLjr]

Where are my friends activity and why does Spotify direct me to turn the "Share my activity feature" on when it is already on?  It's very frustrating and a really bad change. Please see the attachment. 

[JJLjr]

Why aren't you doing anything to fix this issue?  It asks me everytime I open the player to change my setting even though the setting is on.  Obviously there is an issue that you do not want to address.

[Ruoner]

I understand the reason you switched the default to private. I understand the logic of not being legal to send millions of mails to millions of people.

Ok.

But YOU COULD let people know through the official Spotify social media accounts, or better, YOU COULD PLACE a pop-up message in both desktop and mobile app informing about this specific change that drastically alters the user experience of millions of people, who, being aware of the change, would want to revert it back to normal beyond any doubt.

You people in the US are some of the best paid in the planet in Sillicon Valley and somehow you're unable to make things right. Please don't patronize us with your rethoric about caring for people's privacy. Cookies are ON by default.

[technomupet67]

2 Months this is not working anymore. Looks like the new way is the norm now. Does anybody know how this affects Spotify tracking my own listening? ie can I be assured that this new default means that everybody is in private mode by default and as such Spotify cannot track what I am listening to ?

[chiccahope92]

stesso anche per me da più di un mese

[glan4321]

There is somethig so sus about all this when you can spam my unbox with this but you couldnt email all your customers to inform them about privicy policy changes:

 

[dreαmlαnd]

any changes?