[Privacy] Private Session should stay active

[jakenfinn]

Let's face it. We've all used Spotify to listen to music that we would be embarassed to advertise publically.

Whether it's kittens meowing Christmas songs, that your friends would never let you live down, or a hardcore rap album, that you wouldn't want your 8 year old cousin to go and listen to because his cool aunt or uncle likes it.

When it comes to this social music app, privacy is not a convenient bonus feature, it's a critical necessity.

Currently, the only way to listen to songs privately on Spotify, is to go to the settings and activate a private session. This is not only annoying, since I constantly have to navigate through settings to activate privacy on my phone, it's stressful because you have to worry about whether or not certain people can see what you're listening too. My primary music app should not cause anxiety about what I share publically.

From a 2011 blog post "Spotify is all about sharing and discovering new music. It’s entirely up to you what you decide to share and what you keep private."

With the first part in mind, it makes sense that spotify would default to making all of the music you listen to public to your followers but the second part is not true. Anyone can follow me on Spotify and if I have to continuously activate a private session, there will inevitably be times when I forget. As a paying customer, I should have the ability to hide what I listen to if I please and activate privacy indefinitely.

[bftbomk]

The problem is actually starts to be annoying when using spotify on mobile phone(I am a premium user on adroid device). Because there's always been a toggle button on desktop version, which you can choose whether you want to publish your activity with your friends on spotify. This action permanently makes you private on desktop. And if you don't want this you can always switch to private mode with simple two clicks without going to settings.

But on an android device, you don't have any toggle for "publish my activity on Spotify" setting. Switching to private mode is also done annoyingly by going to settings.

About the synchronization of "publish my activity on Spotify" toggle between desktop and mobile: I experimented that by creating an additonal free account on spotify. I followed my real account with this free account, played some songs on my android device with my real account and observed what was going on the friends feed of the free account. I did that two times, one with toggling "publish my activity on Spotify" at my real account on and one with off. I saw that toggling this setting on desktop DOES synchronizes with mobile device, I didn't see any update at the friends feed when the setting was off.

So this could be a solution for the mobile devices. You ca just switch on "publish my activity on Spotify" on your desktop and there you are private permenantly on mobile. But still spotify should find a better solution about this, if they wanna keep this social music platform along with the private setting.

My suggestion is:

The private session button can be activated easily on every screen of the app so you don't always need to go to settings. With this button you can also see whether you are on private session or not so you don't have to check every time you open the app. Spotify can limit the private session to a shorter time. They can arrange it to be switched off when you close the app too. All these or other ideas about going private on mobile devices could be arranged easily just by changing the place of this button in my opinion.

[samuellindberg]

I hate this issue.. so i made a video.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LVsgg0YvW6E

[celinenadeau]

It indeed seems like Spotify doesn't care about respecting their users' privacy and wishes. I'm a long time prmium user but I guess I might start tweeting about the lack of privacy Spotify enforces. This is becoming a deal breaker for me. 

[ryy]

Question about private sessions. I have been trying to figure out what others see when I put on private session. It seems people are still see the green audio icon thing next to your name when you're on private session, but just the last song you played. I want to know if I go offline when I'm on private session. If not, lets make it "offline" rather than "private"... Otherwise it's not really private. 

[CharlesBukowski]

this is insane folks - "Private Session" is not the default!?

there must simply be too many ways to monetize this juicy sneaky/invasive data set to build the darn thing with a common sense default - or avoiding a full change in profile social settings.  We're approaching a point in the digital product life cycle where 'unintentionally' crappy design is probably crappy for a reason.

That reason is usually $$$$

not an oversight

but hey, it's a compliment to Spotify ---- it's not incompetence - it's just good business 

but I'm the fool here - after manually setting my sessions to "private" a couple hundred times I'm finally canceling Spotify.

poor design / bugs etc, all forgivable - but this type of insidious proto-sleazy privacy skimming ("...but hey, we gave you  a choice though right?") is no longer tolerable - but ya know, gotta stay competitive in this whimsical race to the bottom I spoze.

it's simple:

get'em hooked, then squeeze that data bro!

and squeeze hard, squeeze often. 

I'm a data scientist by trade - I understand, it's OK, we're all just trying to make a living (off of other folks personal data in some cases).

absurd / unfortunately no longer uncommon

in the end,  the robots won't complain like we do but they won't subscribe to your service either

[pabbbles]

If they won't change it, I can always go back to iTunes. I don't really want to, but as @celinenadeau says, this is becoming a deal breaker for me. 

[meahtenoha]

Updated: 2016-01-25

Hey @jakenfinn thanks for your idea. At the moment we don't have plans for a feature to turn on Private Session indefinitely this so we're marking this as 'Not Right Now'. Of course this idea is still open for kudos and we'll keep an eye on it if it continues to grow. Thanks everyone!

[raulfranca]

@meahtenoha, let me share you a tip on how a customer would like a paid premium account settings page to look like:

http://support.deezer.com/hc/en-gb/articles/201884711-How-do-I-make-my-Profile-private-

It's no charity to allow an option for permanent privacy. Because sometimes you simply don't want the social part of it, you just want to listen to some songs you are paying for.

Since such feature is no way a technical matter, but a business one, please tell us why "there are no plans" for it yet.

It's a dealbreaker, as fellows have said before.

Thanks,

[Sh79]

If this option is not availsble in a near future I will stop paying for the premium and I will move to Deezer.

[user-removed]

I was going to upgrade to premium after the trial, but this anoying thing is the reason why I finally didn't go. I mean both the service and apps are kind of perfect ; but still it's not worth having anybody able to access what I'm listening to. The point of this service is music and then share with friends, not share with the world and then music.

Spotify : this is just a tiny improvement to make really, and only those who cares will set their app indefinitely private anyway...