What is this new "Add to Profile" option, and how does it differ from a Public Playlist?

[Rawrcasm]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

(iPhone 6S Plus, Samsung Galaxy S10, PC)

Operating System(

(iOS 14, Android 11, Windows 10)

My Question or Issue

What is this new "Add to Profile" option, and how does it differ from a Public Playlist? If a playlist is Public but not Added to Profile, what does that mean? If I add it to profile but make it not public, what then?

[Billy-J · Accepted solution]

Hey @Rawrcasm, thanks for reaching out to the Community!

I just took a closer look for you and did some tests on my end.

When you tap "Add to Profile" under your Playlist options, it will now show up when you go to view your profile and when someone views your profile page on Spotify. It will be under the section "Public Playlists". And when you tap "Remove from Profile", it will simply not show under your profile. 

When you tap "Make Private", it means that everyone who has liked or engaged with the playlist will no longer be able to access it, only yourself. When you make it public, you still have access to it unless you share the playlist with someone else.

To answer your questions: 

- If a playlist is Public but not Added to Profile, what does that mean?

Other people will be able to see your playlist and the content on the playlist when you share it with others, but no one will see it under your Profile page (which you can access by going to the Settings (gear icon) in the Spotify app > Tap your profile. You can also go to Your Library > Tap the profile icon. 

- If I add it to profile but make it not public, what then?

Your playlist will remain hidden unless you make it public. 

I hope this answers your questions! Let me know if I can help with anything else.

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[Edwin71]

So you can do Add/Remove From Profile using both the mobile and desktop app.

BUT you can only Make Private/Public using the mobile app.

Why, Spotify ??? Please explain ...

[Billy-J]

Hey @Edwin71, 

Yes, that's correct. I'm sorry to hear that you feel that way, and I understand your concern about this. You can create a new Idea about this here, and I thank you for sharing your feedback about this.

I'll be here if you need anything else!

[Edwin71]

@Billy-J, why do we (users/customers) need to create "a new idea" for stuff like this (only to see it being rejected somewhat later due to "not enough votes")?

Are Spotify devs and product managers not smart enough to understand that this feature must behave the same on all platforms? They've had almost a year to fix that.

[Yordan]

Hey @Edwin71,

Thanks for your reply.

The ideas exchange board helps our developers understand what new features the users would like to see and how existing features can be improved. While having many votes generally shows that the idea is popular across users and is demanded, they aren't necessarily the driving factor of an idea's potential implementation. There are other factors that play a bigger role, like the level of difficulty of integrating the feature or the time the implementation of the feature will take, compared to other highly requested ones.

More info on how your feedback reaches Spotify via the Idea Exchange can be found here.

Take care.

[delilah21]

Does this mean that artists included in a Public playlist can see it, even if it was not on our profile?

[OscarDC]

Hey @delilah21,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and welcome. 

A public playlist can be seen by anyone who has the playlist link or has liked the playlist before. However, in your profile page only the public playlists that you add with the option "Add to profile" will be shown.

If you don't want other users to access your playlist, you can remove it from your profile and make it private by accessing the 3 dot menu on the playlist and hitting the button"Make private". That way, only you will have access to it.

Hope this helps. If anything else comes up, don't hesitate to ask.

[Edwin71]

---

@OscarDC wrote:

...
A public playlist can be seen by anyone who has the playlist link or has liked the playlist before. However, in your profile page only the public playlists that you add with the option "Add to profile" will be shown.
...

---

That is not quite correct: a playlist is automatically made public, you don't need to explicitly do "Add to profile". It's the other way around: if you don't want it to appear in your profile, you need to do "Remove from profile".

[Yordan]

Hi @delilah21,

Thanks for the reply.

Actually, you have to manually add the playlist to your profile for it to be shown there. When you create the playlist, it is made public, which means that anyone with the link can view it, however, the playlist will not be displayed on your profile unless you add it from the menu.

The Community is always here if there's anything else you need assistance with.
 

Cheers!

[delilah21]

appreciate this a lot. I am specifically asking about what artists can see for playlists you have added them too. For example, I know on their profile, it will have “discovered on” playlists. Can my playlists show up there if they are “public” but not “on my profile”?

[Alex]

Hey @delilah21,

Thanks for the reply.

The "Discovered On" section is populated mostly with Spotify created playlists, playlists by the artist and some user created playlists with thousands of Likes. Technically your playlist should be both Public and added to your Profile to appear in that section, but note that it needs to have a very large following.

Hope this answers your questions 🙂

[blairrrrwho]

So I've been wondering and trying to figure this out for a while because I'm super weird about my playlists.

The two previous replies -- you're both right and you're both wrong. ACTUALLY, there's a setting that Spotify needs to adjust; Spotify is wrong lol. 

I'm going to be extremely thorough and repeat myself just to ensure the logic. 

Here's what I've found (just re-tried it, adjusting the settings): 

- If you have the setting 'make my new playlists public' enabled, it automatically makes any new playlist you create public as well as added to your profile

- If you have the 'make my new playlists public' disabled, it does the same thing and makes the playlist public but it does NOT add it to your profile. 

Every new playlist is public. That's how Spotify has it set up.  They need to go change that setting to  'automatically add to PROFILE' instead saying public. Because that's wrong. You don't get to choose if it's public or private when you first create it - they all come out as a public playlist and you manually have to change that if you prefer private. 

So basically, it would be really nice if Spotify went and fixed this so the setting would read 'automatically add to profile': enable/disable; instead of what it currently says. THEN that setting would reflect the correct action the program is set to run. 

AND....

It would be super cool/convenient/efficient if they created an additional setting giving you the option to have your new playlists automatically public or private. 

Bam. 

I'm sure most people want a majority of their playlists to have the same settings to start off with anyway. So boom, confusion flatted out. Less uncertainty. 

And it also does kind of suck that all the platforms Spotify can be ran on all kind of look different. Android app differs from the iOS app. Mobile differs from desktop. Windows desktop differs from OS desktop. 

So glad I found this discussion and got this rant out. 

Thanks for listening lol 

[Edwin71]

This was helpful, thanks!
So many places in Spotify (can only speak for desktop, web and android) show bad, bad, bad UX and inconsistencies. And if you open an idea here to have something like this fixed (come on Spotify, this is mainly a matter a wording) they close it after a while saying "not enough votes" or "not right now". Why not simply fix annoying stuff like this? They shouldn't need customer feedback to spot these issues and fix them.