[Partnership] Add Sign-in with Google for Existing Spotify Users

[mmichonski]

Thanks, Spotify, for adding a Sign-in with Google button option. However, only new Spotify users creating a new account can currently use this feature. There is no current way to port over an existing Spotify account with all its great listening history and fine tuned song preferences into a new Spotify account. This leaves existing Spotify users with the only way to use this feature being to create a brand new Spotify account. Could you extend the Sign-in with Google feature to prior existing Spotify accounts, so that every Spotify user who wishes to can use it?

[erin_johnstone]

I was able to get this resolved via support chat. They were able to unlink my Facebook from my account so I could use email and password for log-in. I needed a screenshot of my latest payment with Merchant Reference or Order Number and I was able to use password reset to generate that password. From start to finish it took a bit more than half an hour on the chat. 

[BrianH]

We aren't talking about Facebook. There is no way to tie an existing account to a google account.

[JosanRovira]

I can't believe this feature still unavailable, i hope spotify enable this feature soon

[trahojen]

So in light of the message from @erin_johnstone a couple of weeks back, I thought I'd give support a go.

I had a very pleasant conversation with three different people.

They were not able to resolve my problem to my satisfaction, but believe me when I say they jumped through hoops to explore my options.

I don't want to bore you with too much irrelevant information, but I want to add my two cents on this issue to perhaps add som persepective and hope.

I'm a software engineer and a security specialist, and from the information I gathered in my conversation with support, I could tell it might not be an easy fix. We kept throwing potential solutions at each other, but at the end of every corner we faced either security policies or other (sound) security measures, or what I perceived as an inflexible billing system.

On top of this, of course, there is the development side of it, which for all we know could already be in place, but limited by the beforementioned policies and perhaps a management that hasn't fully grasped the concept.

Support thought it was a great idea though and encouraged me to post it on in the community forum. I told them then "there's a post on it since January 2021, and we haven't heard an official statement from Spotify for 18 months. I saw a guy getting help with their Facebook federated logon, so I thought I'd give it a whack."

Again, support is doing a great job, friendliest bunch I've encountered this year. But they can't fix this.

However, when we were out of options, I asked kindly to relay a message to management.

I asked management to please direct their attention to this rather infected thread and at least give an updated statement. My main concern is not convenience, it's security.

And seeing that Spotify seems to have a high security awareness in other aspects, I find it unbecoming to put this issue on the backburner indefinitely and hope it'll blow over. That's certainly not in their best interest.

I officially appeal management to please give this issue priority at the next possible slot.

Support can help you and will help you already today though, if you are okay with using a new or different Google account from now on. They can transfer your account to the new one, but they can currently only transfer once in the account's lifetime. We explored other options, but they all involve disrupted service for my family account and/or stuff that is not refundable. I'm not okay with that, so I wait.

Finally, since management might attend this thread soon, let's all please try and keep a civil approach and respect each other. 🙂

[Lucarioaura]

So @trahojen you're saying to me, that an already implemented solution, that is present in many sites, and does not provide any type of security issues at all, that one being the login via google credentials, is impossible to Spotify? So let's discuss more about it, because I was a developer(Java) not a long time ago and now I'm trying to become a QA, so it is nice to me to see what are those said security problems they have to make it impossible to implement.

[BrianH]

Agree /w Lucarioaura. I personally have implemented google oAuth on my own websites and apps for access, so I know EXACTLY how it works. This is not hard or difficult. The odds "management" attends this thread are about 0.

[trahojen]

My apologies and thanks, @Lucarioaura and @BrianH, I understand I've been unclear.

When I say "it might not be an easy fix", I mean for other reasons that technically. Like you, I am baffled how this is not implemented yet.

My conversation with support gave me the distinct impression however, that this is less of a development problem and has more to do with limitations in policies and guidelines. It would be surprising to me if you have not both both experienced being denied development ambitions because of company or security policies yourselves.

I'm saying that perhaps the current policies and guidelines don't permit a way for support, and perhaps also the devs, to transfer accounts in the way we want. Yet.

If I'm wrong, the worst that can happen is management still gets aware of the thread but does nothing.

If I'm right, my suggestion that we show patience and a civil tone is still reasonable.

[Lucarioaura]

I concur, this is not hard to implement, the worst scenario in my head is that they would've to manage the multiple oauth access in a database, but this is not a major problem, and thanks for you answer, it made to us that are more to it than we think, but regardless of that, YOU SPOTIFY DEVELOPERS GIVE US THIS FEATURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahaha

[MihailY]

Updated on 2023-07-12

Hey everyone,

Thanks for coming to the Idea Exchange and for bringing us your continual feedback. We also think this is a great idea and that there's an opportunity to make it happen, so we're looking into it further.

We'll post here when we have an update - Stay tuned!