You might not think much while listening to your favorite tunes, but almost every music streaming service comes with social features that help connect you and your musical tastes with other people.
It makes sense that you might want to share songs and playlists with friends and family, but you probably don’t want to reveal all of your musical tastes to the world at large. That’s why it’s worth checking what you’re sharing and with whom in the music apps you use.
We’ll look at three of the most popular and well-known ones here – but if your streaming service of choice isn’t listed below, you may find similar options by digging into the various settings and social screens.
Spotify
Did you know you have a Spotify profile that other people can see? Although they will need to know your username or have you in their phone contacts. From At home in the mobile app, tap your avatar (top left), then View profile to look at. Touch editingand you can change the name and photo used in your profile.
In addition to your name and photo, all of your public playlists are displayed on your profile. You can set whether a playlist is public or private by opening it and tapping the three dots at the top of the track list – tap Make it personal or Make public.
Then tap on your avatar (top left). Settings and privacy and Privacy and Social (Android) or Privacy and Social (iOS) and you can control whether your followers, the people you follow, and your recent listening history appear on your profile.
On the same screen, Listening activity the toggle controls whether or not people who follow you can see what you’re listening to (regardless of your public profile). There is also a Private session a switch you can activate to temporarily hide your listening from your followers.
Apple Music
Load up At home in Apple Music on your phone and tap your avatar (top right). On Android, your Apple Music profile appears immediately, but on iOS you have to tap your name to see it — assuming it’s set up (it doesn’t have to). Touch editing to change what’s shown here, from your profile picture to any shared playlists you want to include (press and hold a playlist in the app and select Share a playlist to send it to your profile).
Profiles allow Apple Music users to follow each other. On the same editing screen that you will also be able to resolve Everyone to follow you without approval or only People you approve of using the appropriate checkboxes. When people follow you, they see more details about what you’re listening to in addition to your shared playlists.
To stop this detailed song-by-song sharing on your profile, turn off I’m listening switch on editing page. Right at the bottom of the screen, you can also tap Delete profile button to clear all your public activity and just let Apple Music listen to you.
There are a few options you can set to make it easier or harder for other people to find your Apple Music profile, but they’re only visible on iOS (not Android). First, from At home tap your avatar (top right), then Allow discovery by Apple ID. Second, from iOS settings, tap Music then Discoverable by nearby contacts.
Amazon Music
If you’re in the Amazon Music app, you can open At home tap the gear icon (top right), then select My Account to check what other people can see about you – even though they need to know your username to find you. Tap the pen icon to make changes: You can choose a name, handle and picture that is visible to other users.
Choose Profile Privacy to choose whether other users can follow your profile. Amazon isn’t particularly clear about what this entails, but we’re guessing that if someone follows you, it means they can see more details about what you’re listening to — or maybe get updates from you in the app. You might want to try it out with a friend to see what the difference really is.
Public playlists you’ve created in Amazon Music will appear on your profile for everyone, whether they’re actively following you or not. You can switch between public and private states by opening one of your playlists and tapping the three dots to find the option. This works separately for sharing playlists with specific people, which is in the same menu.
Compared to Spotify and Apple Music, the features for managing user profiles and following other users seem a bit undercooked. If this is a music streaming app you use often, it might be worth keeping an eye on the profile and sharing options to see if more configuration settings are added over time.
