16 ms·

Dear Spotify, please let me unlink my Facebook account

746 points by thewarpaint 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SnowingXIV 8y ago
Did this awhile ago, simply contact support or DM https://twitter.com/spotifycares?lang=en https://twitter.com/spotifycares?lang=en and they will easily migrate all your stuff.
- randomsearch 8y ago
  Yep also did this, took maybe 10 mins.
brettaaron 8y ago
I created my first Spotify account in 2011 I'm pretty sure the ONLY way to authenticate was Facebook. There's no way I would have used Facebook rather than email. Years later I realized how absurd this was, found out you can't unlink them, and just made a new account. Spent a couple of days transferring my playlists.
- gambiting 8y ago
  I've had a Spotify account for just as long and never had it linked with Facebook, purely because I didn't have Facebook at the time. I just log in with id and password.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    For about a year you were unable to create a new spotify account without a facebook account. Accounts created before that were unaffected.
- jocoda 8y ago
  FB login only started in sep 2011, and lasted for about a year before it was dropped.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
stephengillie 8y ago
An unexpected downside of oAuth rears its ugly head.
- mulmen 8y ago
  I mean the loss of trust in the provider is an obvious downside of centralized authentication right? The “unexpected” part is the loss of trust in Facebook as a provider. I would argue trusting Facebook with anything was obviously going to end in tears but I admit I’m not a normal user.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Agree, the problem in regards to spotify is that for a while spotify required facebook for new accounts. The disconnect that led to that decision is absolutely mind blowing. To make it even more surreal lots of people, even on HN, defended it.
    - mulmen 8y ago
      Yeah I just didn’t use Spotify until I could sign up with email. It kind of surprised me they were able to gain as much traction as they did with what I viewed as a user-hostile action right at signup.
      - carlivar 8y ago
        Spotify activity in the early days was super prominent in the Facebook activity feed and that weird mini feed they used to have. So I think they probably got more new customers from that angle as they might have lost from the login limitation.
- tabs_masterrace 8y ago
  You can always provide a way for the user to convert oAuth accounts into your own system. No idea why Spotify hasn't done already, this problem has existed on Spotify for many years now.
aldrinleal 8y ago
You can always ask Support and they'll happily migrate your data to a new account.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  Yup, they did this for me back in 2015, and it was a really good customer support experience. I'd actually created a second account & asked them to close my original Facebook-linked one, but they offered to move across all my playlist data etc over to the new account so I didn't have to start over. And they checked in with me to make sure the data all looked good before deleting the other account. I was really happy with how they handled it.
leongr 8y ago
While it isn't really straightforward, Spotify support will transfer all your songs, playlists, followers and if I recall correctly also your followed artists to a new account. Another possibility is for them to delete your old Facebook-linked account so you can create it again after which they'll also transfer all your old data. It isn't an ideal solution but at least you won't have to worry about losing your collection.
herbstein 8y ago
I created my Facebook account with my parent's email address back in the day (when I turned 13). Today it has been completely unlinked, but Spotify is still connected with that old email account. There's no way to actually change that.
jaimehrubiks 8y ago
I would like to know why some people stopped using Facebook claiming that the main reason is "the recent databreach". If you don't want to use Facebook for how they handle your data in the first place, it seems perfectly fine to me. But, the data breach exploiting 3 vulnerabilities seems to be bad luck, I don't really think they're not committed to security in that sense. I'd like to know opinions from others.
- oautholaf 8y ago
  I actually refused to use Spotify for years because they required Facebook login. I gave in eventually as Rdio lost to Spotify in the market. Like many, though, I am deeply concerned about Facebook's policy direction and leadership. I did disconnect my Spotify account from my Facebook account the hard way (with customer support) a few months ago. In general I am enthusiastic about federated signin, but I don't want to do business with Facebook.
  - mi_lk 8y ago
    What do you mean that Spotify requires Facebook login, I don't have a fb account and are using it just fine. E: Missed the past tense. I just checked, you can sign up with your email address.
    - RafiqM 8y ago
      It used to. In fact Spotify shared the same auth database with Facebook (not oAuth, the literal same password - change it in FB, it changed in Spotify and vice versa)
      - jocoda 8y ago
        Started doing FB only login in Sep 2011, but if you already had an email login you could keep it. Lasted for about a year then it was dropped.
  - jliptzin 8y ago
    Couldn't you just make a new, empty facebook account just for spotify login with no real personal info on it?
hs86 8y ago
I already unlinked my Spotfiy account from Facebook with this way: https://robblewis.me/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-login/index.html https://robblewis.me/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-login... No account migration of contacting support is needed. Just use your registered email account to reset (or in this case actually set) your account password and afterwards you can log in via your email+pw. Then in the Spotify preferences the button to disconnect Facebook becomes available.
- Improvotter 8y ago
  Wow, thank you! I'll give this a shot tonight. I've been wanting to disconnect it for a while now as well.
- ericwood 8y ago
  When it says "disconnect Spotify in Facebook" does that mean deleting the Spotify app? Doing so warns me that it could potentially delete my account, which worried me enough not to go through with it.
  - hnrodey 8y ago
    Yeah, that's what it means (to delete the app from your Facebook). I also got that warning but I ignored it and clicked through anyways. Confirmed that my Spotify account is still working via email/password login.
    - ericwood 8y ago
      Awesome, thanks for the confirmation! You're much braver than me :)
- hnrodey 8y ago
  Wow, just confirmed this works. I can now log in to Spotify via email/password. Thanks for this! The only caveat is you will need to re-sign in to every device where you are currently signed in via FB.
dmannorreys 8y ago
I had my Facebook account linked to my Spotify account. I didn't create an account using Facebook, but linked them later on. Even when I had a Facebook account linked, I could still login to Spotify using a username (a bunch of numbers) that I was able to dig out from the settings at some point. I recently deleted my Facebook account, and everything went quite well. The app said my playlists was created by user "null" (they fixed this after a while and now displays the numbers which makes my username), but other than that there's been no changes. So, just deleting your Facebook account and let Spotify deal with it seems to work, but it require you to know the username (and password. I don't know how I got that, maybe it was the same password as the one I used before linking my Facebook account).
jwally 8y ago
It’s literally the only reason I still have a Facebook account. Couple that with Alexa picking out the worst version possible of the song I requested (“Master of Puppets - live by not Metallica on Spotify”) but seems to get it right with prime music; I’m about to drop it.
vmsp 8y ago
I also created my Spotify account with Facebook. When I wanted to unlink them I just sent an email to support and they did it pretty quickly with no issues. I haven't used FB and Spotify for years now, so things might have changed, but OP should try and do the same.
jm547ster 8y ago
A quick email to support helped me do this a couple of years back. Don’t know if it should be any more trouble nowadays
ramoz 8y ago
Literally created another account last night and transferred all my playlists. Was actually straightforward on the desktop (drag and drop playlists from old to new account. Lost all of my history, but w/e. Removing/blocking followers would also be appreciated.
markatkinson 8y ago
I don't have Facebook, and I desperately want to get rid of the panel on the right telling me to login. So annoying. Apart from that really enjoy Spotify.
- dan1234 8y ago
  Assuming you’re referring to the ‘See what your friends are playing’ panel; on macOS it’s View Menu -> Uncheck ‘Friend Activity’. The right hand panel should then close.
  - markatkinson 8y ago
    On windows, but I will give it a try, thanks for the tip Edit: You are a champion, that worked!
druidcz 8y ago
I was able to unlink FB my account with help from customer support. I had to provide details about my payment. They then basically deleted my account and created a new one and copied the playlists. There were some issues with Discover Weekly and Daily Mix playlists, but they resolved after a couple of weeks. I guess the process could be smoother and more automated, but I am glad now don't use FB login anywhere.
sverige 8y ago
Spotify gave up on caring about their users a few years ago, I think. I uninstalled after the app forced the "DJ fade in / fade out" between every track -- including between movements of Beethoven's symphonies. (No, the toggle to turn that off never worked for me. No, they never replied to my attempts to let them know how awful it was.) (No, I'll never go back to their service.)
- rectang 8y ago
  Gapless playback without crossfades was a must-have feature for me and was one of the reasons I migrated to Spotify. It continues to work for me on both Mac OS and iOS.
  - sverige 8y ago
    Never could get it to work on Samsung, Apple 7, or Pixel.
dan_m2k 8y ago
Trying to click through to this piece from HN on Facebook tells me this link is malicious. Sour grapes on FB’s part?
- thewarpaint 8y ago
  Not at all. It's my personal blog, has very low traffic, it's only a basic HTML+CSS page, probably hits a few spam rules here and there.
Finnucane 8y ago
This is what fake FB accounts are for.
blatherard 8y ago
Also, it would be nice if Spotify could bring back the ability to follow friends without requiring Facebook.
- MetallicCloud 8y ago
  You can still do it. I follow 10 or so friends, and I've never linked facebook. The mechanism for adding friends is needlessly obtuse though. You need to add spotify:user:<username> in the search box to find them, then you can follow. My biggest gripe is they removed the ability to send songs to friends.
  - blatherard 8y ago
    Super, thanks!
whistlerbrk 8y ago
Yeah, nothing listed here has worked for me. The issue is I had two accounts with the same email address one with Facebook one w/o. Not sure how it happened but if I try to reset the password of my account with my email address I immediately receive a "welcome back to facebook" email. So, they are keeping the OID information somewhere. I've asked, begged, pleaded, and demanded for them to fix this and I've gotten absolutely nowhere. It is infuriating.
- efreak 8y ago
  Have you tried changing your facebook email address?
bluedino 8y ago
I’d like to be able to do this on Instagram with my inactive Facebook account
village-idiot 8y ago
I never use oauth unless I can avoid it. I’ve got LastPass and that makes creating a custom login per site trivial, so I have no need to hand more data to some oauth provider.
iamben 8y ago
The most frustrating Spotify problem for me is the link between mobile / desktop play queues. I've moaned about it many, many times on the forums and there's a giant thread of people moaning about the same thing, but it's been years without resolve. Basically, if I don't force-close the Spotify app on my Android before I get my laptop open on the same wifi, the phone will overwrite any play queue on my desktop. I exclusively use Spotify on my phone in the gym. I'll choose one album at a time and play it through while I work out. My laptop is for work - I'll maybe spend 15 minutes every few days queueing 10 or so new albums I want to try. Utterly maddening when you forget to close the app, go to Spotify and you're blasted with gym music and you've lost your carefully curated play queue.
- jetcata 8y ago
  Why not make a playlist? Seems more durable
- ravishi 8y ago
  I hate this too! For me, tho, the worst part is that they're not even consistent. I never know if the computer will pick up whatever I'm playing in the phone: sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I don't want to check if my phone is connected to the same wifi for it to work. Back when I used Rdio, the behavior was to keep all devices/tabs synced. It was consistent. It worked. When I wanted to keep diferent sessions I used playlists. I could work around it. But with Spotify it's a mess. It doesn't sync correctly when I want, but only when I don't want.
  - kingosticks 8y ago
    Could you disable Spotify Connect? I don't actually have this problem myself. The playlists always remain separate until I explicitly select the other device via Spotify Connect.
- fspacef 8y ago
  Just make a playlist. AFAIK desktop and mobile apps both have the ability to one-click add albums to saved songs or playlists. I love the combined cue, especially when hosting parties. Let guests cue songs from laptop and then adjust the order according to whom I like more (:
jeena 8y ago
Interesting that my blog post which is now 7 years still is not outdated: https://jeena.net/spotify-facebook https://jeena.net/spotify-facebook Back then I stopped using Spotify because they forced every new user to use Facebook to log in.
mrweasel 8y ago
A little off topic, but I believe that Facebook, and to some extend Google, have screwed over any future “free” services with their behaviour. Personally, I will be very unlikely to sign up for ANY service that doesn’t offer a paid tier, in the future. I believe that this will hold true for others who have previously been quick to adopt new services and products. This will hinder competitors from gaining traction.
- cheschire 8y ago
  And for good reason. If there were a way to make money off a free service that didn’t involve selling user data, it would already have been bought by google.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Mostly agree. Sadly as we've seen recently companies exist that are shady enough to both charge the user and collect data without asking at the same time. So I guess the rule of thumb is true and I'll still look for paid services, but even then I guess we should be careful.
- unimpressive 8y ago
  On the one hand yes, on the other hand there will always be a critical mass of people who will take 'free' if it's offered as a price point. It's just too compelling for that not to be true.
tzs 8y ago
Obviously if you are getting rid of Facebook you would need to stop using Facebook to login to other things, but for people who are not getting rid of Facebook itself what are the security and privacy risks of using it for login for other services such as Spotify? Does a Facebook breach let the attackers get into your Spotify account? Does it leak the existence of your Spotify account? Is there personal information from your Spotify account that can be gotten via a Facebook breach? Same question for using any other OAuth provider, such as Google.
- mattnewton 8y ago
  For me, I am in the processing of using Facebook less, trying to get rid of it. I still have some international friends where it is my ownly reliable way to contact them, so I have to keep the account. But I don’t want to use it for anything else in the event I can eventually sunset it entirely.
- CGamesPlay 8y ago
  > Does a Facebook breach let the attackers get into your Spotify account? It would be a security breach that resulted in that (access tokens compromised), rather than the oft-reported privacy breaches (profile data compromised), but yes. The recent security breach involving access tokens would not apply here, for example, because they were access tokens for Facebook, not for linked apps. > Does it leak the existence of your Spotify account? Yes, see https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications and search for Spotify. > Is there personal information from your Spotify account that can be gotten via a Facebook breach? If Facebook issued an invalid access token that authorized an attacker to use your Spotify account, they would be able to see anything you can see in your Spotify account. If your profile data was leaked, anything Spotify published to your Facebook profile might be accessible. "Spotify" is a stand-in for any SSO app, and "Facebook" is a stand-in for any SSO provider, of course. There's nothing special about Spotify and Facebook here, it might as easily be FarmVille and Google.
- drb91 8y ago
  > who are not getting rid of Facebook itself what are the security and privacy risks of using it for login for other services such as Spotify? Facebook could decide arbitrarily, or by bug or mistake, to deny you access. Why use them at all? Convenience. Everyone is free to do the convenient thing. Just don't complain when your convenience fucks your over.
AlphaWeaver 8y ago
Does anyone know how to do this with StackExchange?
edwnj99 8y ago
Got the same problem here. I deleted the facebook account. now i have to login with my user id and password. How can they miss something so simple.
mcemilg 8y ago
And also I cannot change my name if I will not add facebook account. It is very ridiclous. They are very huge startup but they did not much time for adding a simple form. :P
wepple 8y ago
I tried to cancel my paid account so I could create a new paid account without FB login. It was so frustrating that I’m now a happy Apple Music user. Protip to companies: if your product is excellent, make account cancellation frictionless and the respect you show your users will pay dividends.
- mattnewton 8y ago
  I had it migrated to a new paid account over chat with support in under 10 minutes - did you contact them? Arguably this should be a menu item somewhere, and maybe it is and I couldn’t find it, but my experience was very painless.
mithr 8y ago
Spotify has some really strange "won't fix" issues... I'm on a Spotify family plan. I recently bought a Spotify gift card on sale, because you can usually apply those for a credit on subscription services. Well, it turns out unlike the rest of their plans, Spotify Family doesn't support gift cards. I didn't even consider that it might not apply to all plans, and didn't check the fine print. Disappointed, I contacted support, who were happy to inform me there's a solution! I should cancel my plan (kicking all my dependents out), sign up for a _regular_ plan, apply my gift card to it, and _then_ sign up to the family plan again. This would, of course, mean that I'd have to reinvite my entire family to the plan. They didn't really seem to understand why I was less than enthusiastic about this "solution".
- sam1r 8y ago
  In general, I always try to put my PM shoes on and try to evaluate what benefit they could possibly be receiving to ignore such a prominent issue that you can pretty much guarantee they are well aware of the issue. That being said, I completely agree that this is pretty strange since I have not a single example that comes to mind in this case...
  - x0x0 8y ago
    They could just be shitty devs? There's a reasonable amount of evidence for that: their android client is extremely buggy, and one day they deleted all my partner's playlists. On mac, I regularly have to close the client to force it to sync playlist changes, and sometimes playlist changes just disappear when I quit the mac client. I recently found 3.5g of old spotify updates sitting in ~/Library/Cache on an older, ssd space constrained mac. I have multiple performances of the same songs from several of my favorite artists; their client occasionally confuses different performances with the same name. You have to delete and re-add to get them to match correctly. I can continue...
- fahrradflucht 8y ago
  Yeah, there is also the thing where they don't allow you to change your address when you are on family [0]. [0] https://support.spotify.com/us/account_payment_help/account_help/change-address/ https://support.spotify.com/us/account_payment_help/account_...
finchisko 8y ago
I made that "Login with Facebook" mistake too. Somehow I can login with some numeric username and password, but Spotify still downloads my recent facebook profile pic, what I don't like, because I want no connection to Facebook whatsoever.
Brian_K_White 8y ago
I turned off FB "platform intergration" entirely, years ago, and it took me like 1 minute to google this up, which worked then and still works now. What's the big mystery? https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Log-in-to-spotify-without-facebook/m-p/231300/highlight/true#M10977 https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Log-in-to-s... Ever since then I use that "device name" (really more like a Spotify account number that stands in for a username) for everything. Logging in to Spotify clients built in to TV and roku, Android & IOS apps, and managing the account on the web site. The account was created, Premium, with FB when that was the only option. Then I got that device name and disabled platform integration on FB so it's not possible for anything including Spotify to access my fb account, and it's been like that since 2012. Disable "platform integration": https://m.facebook.com/help/211829542181913 https://m.facebook.com/help/211829542181913
- samstave 8y ago
  This is awesome and should be widely known. I would really like a tool that will go through my accounts-list (maybe from Last Pass, for example) which would crawl / determine / detect who is linking to whom and how. Then offer ways to unlink. Finally, another thing I would like is an "identity creator" app - one that will shotgun out an entire set of accounts to be managed out as an identity. For example - a tool that will go out and createa login/ID at some range/list of sites, say, for a new-born child. It will go and setup and lock-down into as-private-as-possible an account across FB, HN, Reddit, DropBox, Google, etc. etc. etc. And then keep those accounts locked and with a password-manager. You can add/remove accounts across these systems as needed.
Exuma 8y ago
Hi, we don't care. Sincerely, Spotify
mattnewton 8y ago
Did the OP actually try the support option? It took me less than a painless 10 minutes over chat with support (and most of that was me asking if the discover weekly model they had created for me would be ported over too, which seemed to have been highly tuned lately. The support person could not say and probably didn’t know what I was asking about)
- thewarpaint 8y ago
  OP here, haven't tried yet but I think my point stands that this is something enough users want to make it a proper feature rather than a "workaround". Might be wrong, though.
  - mattnewton 8y ago
    IMO they did come up with a solution for it, via support. I think it is interesting that people (seemingly) won’t try the solution because it involves talking to support and that has such a connotation of being a costly time sink from people’s terrible experiences with support contacts in the past. Maybe that means Spotify needs to rethink their solution? Apparently they lost at least one subscriber to Apple Music in this thread because that person was adverse to contacting support and would rather switch services altogether. I wonder if that’s a real trend among people now.
    - thewarpaint 8y ago
      Definitely agree that they need to rethink it. Look at their community center, how many hours has Support spent on doing this process manually, over and over again, in the last year alone? https://community.spotify.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?q=unlink%20facebook&collapse_discussion=true https://community.spotify.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/messa...
- agentdrtran 8y ago
  I tried contacting spotify about this and they told me to wait several months until my subscription expired and then create a new account.
qwerty456127 8y ago
Every website should let you change the way you sign-in (e.g. from Facebook/Google/whatever to pure email/username and back and also change your e-mail address and username) at any time you want.
colemickens 8y ago
I had unlinked my account using the officially supported method. It appeared to work. Months later, I noticed they were still updating my profile picture. I contacted them via Twitter. Four repeated explanations and screenshots later, they confirmed the accounts were silently still linked (despite no actual app authorization existing for Spotify in my Facebook account.) Took them two weeks to manually unlink it (as in, they had to contact engineering and have them look at it). No explanation of how it happened. No explanation for how they were still accessing the data at all. I have no doubt others are affected. Spotify Connect is brilliant, every single other thing about the Spotify experience is shoddy. (Like that song that just finished playing? Too bad, you can't see the playlist history without manually skipping back many tracks, etc)
prdonahue 8y ago
Do what I did to unlink it: delete your Facebook account.
aerovistae 8y ago
I already did this with the help of their customer support two years ago.
thewarpaint 8y ago
OP here, instead of replying to individual comments I'll sum it up here. As the post states I am aware of the "contact support" workaround. I haven't tried it yet but I think my point stands that this is something enough users want to make it a proper feature. Even if right now it only takes a 10 minute call to Support. Might be wrong, though.
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bzickafoose 8y ago
Now, if we can just garner enough user support to get Spotify to remove the 10,000 song limit, that would be awesome. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Increase-maximum-Songs-allowed-in-Your-Music/idi-p/733759 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Incre...
- efreak 8y ago
  Google Play has a similar issue too, though it's quite a bit higher. I think it might be around 100k songs is the max you can add to your library (and of course, adding this many also seems to make it slow down a lot, making it difficult to remove them).
benatkin 8y ago
I like Spotify fine, and it's social feature doesn't bother me. I just use a private session if I want to hide what I'm currently listening to, but that's rare. If 99% of people are OK with how it works, Spotify isn't going to change if they don't want to. And this is small compared to Google storing browsing, map, and search history, using it for ads, and nagging you if you opt out of it, or Apple and Google blocking things from their mobile platforms without a fair and consistent appeals process.
p3nt3ll3r 8y ago
Also please let me opt out of social feed - not just for 6 hours on mobile, permanently. It is total BS that I as a paying customer am required to be "social" on your app.
sporiff 8y ago
Spotify is an interesting one. A long time ago I had an Outlook account which was linked to my Facebook which was linked to my Spotify. I later deleted my Facebook and my Outlook account as well, completely forgetting about my Spotify account. This year I re-registered for Outlook and was able to get exactly the same address (I guess it had just been long enough?) and was then able to reset my password for Spotify and log straight back in. Needless to say I no longer use Spotify at all.
- majewsky 8y ago
  > A long time ago I had an Outlook account which was linked to my Facebook which was linked to my Spotify. I suppose you mean it the other way around? The way you're describing it suggests that you could use Spotify to reset your Facebook password, which is either confusing or terrifying. :)

746 points by thewarpaint 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Did this awhile ago, simply contact support or DM https://twitter.com/spotifycares?lang=en https://twitter.com/spotifycares?lang=en and they will easily migrate all your stuff.

randomsearch 8y ago
Yep also did this, took maybe 10 mins.

brettaaron 8y ago

I created my first Spotify account in 2011 I'm pretty sure the ONLY way to authenticate was Facebook. There's no way I would have used Facebook rather than email. Years later I realized how absurd this was, found out you can't unlink them, and just made a new account. Spent a couple of days transferring my playlists.

gambiting 8y ago
I've had a Spotify account for just as long and never had it linked with Facebook, purely because I didn't have Facebook at the time. I just log in with id and password.
- tjoff 8y ago
  For about a year you were unable to create a new spotify account without a facebook account. Accounts created before that were unaffected.
jocoda 8y ago
FB login only started in sep 2011, and lasted for about a year before it was dropped.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

stephengillie 8y ago

An unexpected downside of oAuth rears its ugly head.

mulmen 8y ago
I mean the loss of trust in the provider is an obvious downside of centralized authentication right? The “unexpected” part is the loss of trust in Facebook as a provider. I would argue trusting Facebook with anything was obviously going to end in tears but I admit I’m not a normal user.
- tjoff 8y ago
  Agree, the problem in regards to spotify is that for a while spotify required facebook for new accounts. The disconnect that led to that decision is absolutely mind blowing. To make it even more surreal lots of people, even on HN, defended it.
  - mulmen 8y ago
    Yeah I just didn’t use Spotify until I could sign up with email. It kind of surprised me they were able to gain as much traction as they did with what I viewed as a user-hostile action right at signup.
    - carlivar 8y ago
      Spotify activity in the early days was super prominent in the Facebook activity feed and that weird mini feed they used to have. So I think they probably got more new customers from that angle as they might have lost from the login limitation.
tabs_masterrace 8y ago
You can always provide a way for the user to convert oAuth accounts into your own system. No idea why Spotify hasn't done already, this problem has existed on Spotify for many years now.

aldrinleal 8y ago

You can always ask Support and they'll happily migrate your data to a new account.

SyneRyder 8y ago
Yup, they did this for me back in 2015, and it was a really good customer support experience. I'd actually created a second account & asked them to close my original Facebook-linked one, but they offered to move across all my playlist data etc over to the new account so I didn't have to start over. And they checked in with me to make sure the data all looked good before deleting the other account. I was really happy with how they handled it.

leongr 8y ago

While it isn't really straightforward, Spotify support will transfer all your songs, playlists, followers and if I recall correctly also your followed artists to a new account. Another possibility is for them to delete your old Facebook-linked account so you can create it again after which they'll also transfer all your old data. It isn't an ideal solution but at least you won't have to worry about losing your collection.

herbstein 8y ago

I created my Facebook account with my parent's email address back in the day (when I turned 13). Today it has been completely unlinked, but Spotify is still connected with that old email account. There's no way to actually change that.

jaimehrubiks 8y ago

I would like to know why some people stopped using Facebook claiming that the main reason is "the recent databreach". If you don't want to use Facebook for how they handle your data in the first place, it seems perfectly fine to me. But, the data breach exploiting 3 vulnerabilities seems to be bad luck, I don't really think they're not committed to security in that sense. I'd like to know opinions from others.

oautholaf 8y ago
I actually refused to use Spotify for years because they required Facebook login. I gave in eventually as Rdio lost to Spotify in the market. Like many, though, I am deeply concerned about Facebook's policy direction and leadership. I did disconnect my Spotify account from my Facebook account the hard way (with customer support) a few months ago. In general I am enthusiastic about federated signin, but I don't want to do business with Facebook.
- mi_lk 8y ago
  What do you mean that Spotify requires Facebook login, I don't have a fb account and are using it just fine. E: Missed the past tense. I just checked, you can sign up with your email address.
  - RafiqM 8y ago
    It used to. In fact Spotify shared the same auth database with Facebook (not oAuth, the literal same password - change it in FB, it changed in Spotify and vice versa)
    - jocoda 8y ago
      Started doing FB only login in Sep 2011, but if you already had an email login you could keep it. Lasted for about a year then it was dropped.
- jliptzin 8y ago
  Couldn't you just make a new, empty facebook account just for spotify login with no real personal info on it?

hs86 8y ago

I already unlinked my Spotfiy account from Facebook with this way: https://robblewis.me/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-login/index.html https://robblewis.me/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-login... No account migration of contacting support is needed. Just use your registered email account to reset (or in this case actually set) your account password and afterwards you can log in via your email+pw. Then in the Spotify preferences the button to disconnect Facebook becomes available.

Improvotter 8y ago
Wow, thank you! I'll give this a shot tonight. I've been wanting to disconnect it for a while now as well.
ericwood 8y ago
When it says "disconnect Spotify in Facebook" does that mean deleting the Spotify app? Doing so warns me that it could potentially delete my account, which worried me enough not to go through with it.
- hnrodey 8y ago
  Yeah, that's what it means (to delete the app from your Facebook). I also got that warning but I ignored it and clicked through anyways. Confirmed that my Spotify account is still working via email/password login.
  - ericwood 8y ago
    Awesome, thanks for the confirmation! You're much braver than me :)
hnrodey 8y ago
Wow, just confirmed this works. I can now log in to Spotify via email/password. Thanks for this! The only caveat is you will need to re-sign in to every device where you are currently signed in via FB.

dmannorreys 8y ago

I had my Facebook account linked to my Spotify account. I didn't create an account using Facebook, but linked them later on. Even when I had a Facebook account linked, I could still login to Spotify using a username (a bunch of numbers) that I was able to dig out from the settings at some point. I recently deleted my Facebook account, and everything went quite well. The app said my playlists was created by user "null" (they fixed this after a while and now displays the numbers which makes my username), but other than that there's been no changes. So, just deleting your Facebook account and let Spotify deal with it seems to work, but it require you to know the username (and password. I don't know how I got that, maybe it was the same password as the one I used before linking my Facebook account).

jwally 8y ago

It’s literally the only reason I still have a Facebook account. Couple that with Alexa picking out the worst version possible of the song I requested (“Master of Puppets - live by not Metallica on Spotify”) but seems to get it right with prime music; I’m about to drop it.

vmsp 8y ago

I also created my Spotify account with Facebook. When I wanted to unlink them I just sent an email to support and they did it pretty quickly with no issues. I haven't used FB and Spotify for years now, so things might have changed, but OP should try and do the same.

jm547ster 8y ago

A quick email to support helped me do this a couple of years back. Don’t know if it should be any more trouble nowadays

ramoz 8y ago

Literally created another account last night and transferred all my playlists. Was actually straightforward on the desktop (drag and drop playlists from old to new account. Lost all of my history, but w/e. Removing/blocking followers would also be appreciated.

markatkinson 8y ago

I don't have Facebook, and I desperately want to get rid of the panel on the right telling me to login. So annoying. Apart from that really enjoy Spotify.

dan1234 8y ago
Assuming you’re referring to the ‘See what your friends are playing’ panel; on macOS it’s View Menu -> Uncheck ‘Friend Activity’. The right hand panel should then close.
- markatkinson 8y ago
  On windows, but I will give it a try, thanks for the tip Edit: You are a champion, that worked!

druidcz 8y ago

I was able to unlink FB my account with help from customer support. I had to provide details about my payment. They then basically deleted my account and created a new one and copied the playlists. There were some issues with Discover Weekly and Daily Mix playlists, but they resolved after a couple of weeks. I guess the process could be smoother and more automated, but I am glad now don't use FB login anywhere.

sverige 8y ago

Spotify gave up on caring about their users a few years ago, I think. I uninstalled after the app forced the "DJ fade in / fade out" between every track -- including between movements of Beethoven's symphonies. (No, the toggle to turn that off never worked for me. No, they never replied to my attempts to let them know how awful it was.) (No, I'll never go back to their service.)

rectang 8y ago
Gapless playback without crossfades was a must-have feature for me and was one of the reasons I migrated to Spotify. It continues to work for me on both Mac OS and iOS.
- sverige 8y ago
  Never could get it to work on Samsung, Apple 7, or Pixel.

dan_m2k 8y ago

Trying to click through to this piece from HN on Facebook tells me this link is malicious. Sour grapes on FB’s part?

thewarpaint 8y ago
Not at all. It's my personal blog, has very low traffic, it's only a basic HTML+CSS page, probably hits a few spam rules here and there.

Finnucane 8y ago

This is what fake FB accounts are for.

blatherard 8y ago

Also, it would be nice if Spotify could bring back the ability to follow friends without requiring Facebook.

MetallicCloud 8y ago
You can still do it. I follow 10 or so friends, and I've never linked facebook. The mechanism for adding friends is needlessly obtuse though. You need to add spotify:user:<username> in the search box to find them, then you can follow. My biggest gripe is they removed the ability to send songs to friends.
- blatherard 8y ago
  Super, thanks!

whistlerbrk 8y ago

Yeah, nothing listed here has worked for me. The issue is I had two accounts with the same email address one with Facebook one w/o. Not sure how it happened but if I try to reset the password of my account with my email address I immediately receive a "welcome back to facebook" email. So, they are keeping the OID information somewhere. I've asked, begged, pleaded, and demanded for them to fix this and I've gotten absolutely nowhere. It is infuriating.

efreak 8y ago
Have you tried changing your facebook email address?

bluedino 8y ago

I’d like to be able to do this on Instagram with my inactive Facebook account

village-idiot 8y ago

I never use oauth unless I can avoid it. I’ve got LastPass and that makes creating a custom login per site trivial, so I have no need to hand more data to some oauth provider.

iamben 8y ago

The most frustrating Spotify problem for me is the link between mobile / desktop play queues. I've moaned about it many, many times on the forums and there's a giant thread of people moaning about the same thing, but it's been years without resolve. Basically, if I don't force-close the Spotify app on my Android before I get my laptop open on the same wifi, the phone will overwrite any play queue on my desktop. I exclusively use Spotify on my phone in the gym. I'll choose one album at a time and play it through while I work out. My laptop is for work - I'll maybe spend 15 minutes every few days queueing 10 or so new albums I want to try. Utterly maddening when you forget to close the app, go to Spotify and you're blasted with gym music and you've lost your carefully curated play queue.

jetcata 8y ago
Why not make a playlist? Seems more durable
ravishi 8y ago
I hate this too! For me, tho, the worst part is that they're not even consistent. I never know if the computer will pick up whatever I'm playing in the phone: sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I don't want to check if my phone is connected to the same wifi for it to work. Back when I used Rdio, the behavior was to keep all devices/tabs synced. It was consistent. It worked. When I wanted to keep diferent sessions I used playlists. I could work around it. But with Spotify it's a mess. It doesn't sync correctly when I want, but only when I don't want.
- kingosticks 8y ago
  Could you disable Spotify Connect? I don't actually have this problem myself. The playlists always remain separate until I explicitly select the other device via Spotify Connect.
fspacef 8y ago
Just make a playlist. AFAIK desktop and mobile apps both have the ability to one-click add albums to saved songs or playlists. I love the combined cue, especially when hosting parties. Let guests cue songs from laptop and then adjust the order according to whom I like more (:

jeena 8y ago

Interesting that my blog post which is now 7 years still is not outdated: https://jeena.net/spotify-facebook https://jeena.net/spotify-facebook Back then I stopped using Spotify because they forced every new user to use Facebook to log in.

mrweasel 8y ago

A little off topic, but I believe that Facebook, and to some extend Google, have screwed over any future “free” services with their behaviour. Personally, I will be very unlikely to sign up for ANY service that doesn’t offer a paid tier, in the future. I believe that this will hold true for others who have previously been quick to adopt new services and products. This will hinder competitors from gaining traction.

cheschire 8y ago
And for good reason. If there were a way to make money off a free service that didn’t involve selling user data, it would already have been bought by google.
reitanqild 8y ago
Mostly agree. Sadly as we've seen recently companies exist that are shady enough to both charge the user and collect data without asking at the same time. So I guess the rule of thumb is true and I'll still look for paid services, but even then I guess we should be careful.
unimpressive 8y ago
On the one hand yes, on the other hand there will always be a critical mass of people who will take 'free' if it's offered as a price point. It's just too compelling for that not to be true.

tzs 8y ago

Obviously if you are getting rid of Facebook you would need to stop using Facebook to login to other things, but for people who are not getting rid of Facebook itself what are the security and privacy risks of using it for login for other services such as Spotify? Does a Facebook breach let the attackers get into your Spotify account? Does it leak the existence of your Spotify account? Is there personal information from your Spotify account that can be gotten via a Facebook breach? Same question for using any other OAuth provider, such as Google.

mattnewton 8y ago
For me, I am in the processing of using Facebook less, trying to get rid of it. I still have some international friends where it is my ownly reliable way to contact them, so I have to keep the account. But I don’t want to use it for anything else in the event I can eventually sunset it entirely.
CGamesPlay 8y ago
> Does a Facebook breach let the attackers get into your Spotify account? It would be a security breach that resulted in that (access tokens compromised), rather than the oft-reported privacy breaches (profile data compromised), but yes. The recent security breach involving access tokens would not apply here, for example, because they were access tokens for Facebook, not for linked apps. > Does it leak the existence of your Spotify account? Yes, see https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications and search for Spotify. > Is there personal information from your Spotify account that can be gotten via a Facebook breach? If Facebook issued an invalid access token that authorized an attacker to use your Spotify account, they would be able to see anything you can see in your Spotify account. If your profile data was leaked, anything Spotify published to your Facebook profile might be accessible. "Spotify" is a stand-in for any SSO app, and "Facebook" is a stand-in for any SSO provider, of course. There's nothing special about Spotify and Facebook here, it might as easily be FarmVille and Google.
drb91 8y ago
> who are not getting rid of Facebook itself what are the security and privacy risks of using it for login for other services such as Spotify? Facebook could decide arbitrarily, or by bug or mistake, to deny you access. Why use them at all? Convenience. Everyone is free to do the convenient thing. Just don't complain when your convenience fucks your over.

AlphaWeaver 8y ago

Does anyone know how to do this with StackExchange?

edwnj99 8y ago

Got the same problem here. I deleted the facebook account. now i have to login with my user id and password. How can they miss something so simple.

mcemilg 8y ago

And also I cannot change my name if I will not add facebook account. It is very ridiclous. They are very huge startup but they did not much time for adding a simple form. :P

wepple 8y ago

I tried to cancel my paid account so I could create a new paid account without FB login. It was so frustrating that I’m now a happy Apple Music user. Protip to companies: if your product is excellent, make account cancellation frictionless and the respect you show your users will pay dividends.

mattnewton 8y ago
I had it migrated to a new paid account over chat with support in under 10 minutes - did you contact them? Arguably this should be a menu item somewhere, and maybe it is and I couldn’t find it, but my experience was very painless.

mithr 8y ago

Spotify has some really strange "won't fix" issues... I'm on a Spotify family plan. I recently bought a Spotify gift card on sale, because you can usually apply those for a credit on subscription services. Well, it turns out unlike the rest of their plans, Spotify Family doesn't support gift cards. I didn't even consider that it might not apply to all plans, and didn't check the fine print. Disappointed, I contacted support, who were happy to inform me there's a solution! I should cancel my plan (kicking all my dependents out), sign up for a _regular_ plan, apply my gift card to it, and _then_ sign up to the family plan again. This would, of course, mean that I'd have to reinvite my entire family to the plan. They didn't really seem to understand why I was less than enthusiastic about this "solution".

sam1r 8y ago
In general, I always try to put my PM shoes on and try to evaluate what benefit they could possibly be receiving to ignore such a prominent issue that you can pretty much guarantee they are well aware of the issue. That being said, I completely agree that this is pretty strange since I have not a single example that comes to mind in this case...
- x0x0 8y ago
  They could just be shitty devs? There's a reasonable amount of evidence for that: their android client is extremely buggy, and one day they deleted all my partner's playlists. On mac, I regularly have to close the client to force it to sync playlist changes, and sometimes playlist changes just disappear when I quit the mac client. I recently found 3.5g of old spotify updates sitting in ~/Library/Cache on an older, ssd space constrained mac. I have multiple performances of the same songs from several of my favorite artists; their client occasionally confuses different performances with the same name. You have to delete and re-add to get them to match correctly. I can continue...
fahrradflucht 8y ago
Yeah, there is also the thing where they don't allow you to change your address when you are on family [0]. [0] https://support.spotify.com/us/account_payment_help/account_help/change-address/ https://support.spotify.com/us/account_payment_help/account_...

finchisko 8y ago

I made that "Login with Facebook" mistake too. Somehow I can login with some numeric username and password, but Spotify still downloads my recent facebook profile pic, what I don't like, because I want no connection to Facebook whatsoever.

Brian_K_White 8y ago

I turned off FB "platform intergration" entirely, years ago, and it took me like 1 minute to google this up, which worked then and still works now. What's the big mystery? https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Log-in-to-spotify-without-facebook/m-p/231300/highlight/true#M10977 https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Log-in-to-s... Ever since then I use that "device name" (really more like a Spotify account number that stands in for a username) for everything. Logging in to Spotify clients built in to TV and roku, Android & IOS apps, and managing the account on the web site. The account was created, Premium, with FB when that was the only option. Then I got that device name and disabled platform integration on FB so it's not possible for anything including Spotify to access my fb account, and it's been like that since 2012. Disable "platform integration": https://m.facebook.com/help/211829542181913 https://m.facebook.com/help/211829542181913

samstave 8y ago
This is awesome and should be widely known. I would really like a tool that will go through my accounts-list (maybe from Last Pass, for example) which would crawl / determine / detect who is linking to whom and how. Then offer ways to unlink. Finally, another thing I would like is an "identity creator" app - one that will shotgun out an entire set of accounts to be managed out as an identity. For example - a tool that will go out and createa login/ID at some range/list of sites, say, for a new-born child. It will go and setup and lock-down into as-private-as-possible an account across FB, HN, Reddit, DropBox, Google, etc. etc. etc. And then keep those accounts locked and with a password-manager. You can add/remove accounts across these systems as needed.

Exuma 8y ago

Hi, we don't care. Sincerely, Spotify

mattnewton 8y ago

Did the OP actually try the support option? It took me less than a painless 10 minutes over chat with support (and most of that was me asking if the discover weekly model they had created for me would be ported over too, which seemed to have been highly tuned lately. The support person could not say and probably didn’t know what I was asking about)

thewarpaint 8y ago
OP here, haven't tried yet but I think my point stands that this is something enough users want to make it a proper feature rather than a "workaround". Might be wrong, though.
- mattnewton 8y ago
  IMO they did come up with a solution for it, via support. I think it is interesting that people (seemingly) won’t try the solution because it involves talking to support and that has such a connotation of being a costly time sink from people’s terrible experiences with support contacts in the past. Maybe that means Spotify needs to rethink their solution? Apparently they lost at least one subscriber to Apple Music in this thread because that person was adverse to contacting support and would rather switch services altogether. I wonder if that’s a real trend among people now.
  - thewarpaint 8y ago
    Definitely agree that they need to rethink it. Look at their community center, how many hours has Support spent on doing this process manually, over and over again, in the last year alone? https://community.spotify.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?q=unlink%20facebook&collapse_discussion=true https://community.spotify.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/messa...
agentdrtran 8y ago
I tried contacting spotify about this and they told me to wait several months until my subscription expired and then create a new account.

qwerty456127 8y ago

Every website should let you change the way you sign-in (e.g. from Facebook/Google/whatever to pure email/username and back and also change your e-mail address and username) at any time you want.

colemickens 8y ago

I had unlinked my account using the officially supported method. It appeared to work. Months later, I noticed they were still updating my profile picture. I contacted them via Twitter. Four repeated explanations and screenshots later, they confirmed the accounts were silently still linked (despite no actual app authorization existing for Spotify in my Facebook account.) Took them two weeks to manually unlink it (as in, they had to contact engineering and have them look at it). No explanation of how it happened. No explanation for how they were still accessing the data at all. I have no doubt others are affected. Spotify Connect is brilliant, every single other thing about the Spotify experience is shoddy. (Like that song that just finished playing? Too bad, you can't see the playlist history without manually skipping back many tracks, etc)

prdonahue 8y ago

Do what I did to unlink it: delete your Facebook account.

aerovistae 8y ago

I already did this with the help of their customer support two years ago.

thewarpaint 8y ago

OP here, instead of replying to individual comments I'll sum it up here. As the post states I am aware of the "contact support" workaround. I haven't tried it yet but I think my point stands that this is something enough users want to make it a proper feature. Even if right now it only takes a 10 minute call to Support. Might be wrong, though.

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bzickafoose 8y ago

Now, if we can just garner enough user support to get Spotify to remove the 10,000 song limit, that would be awesome. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Increase-maximum-Songs-allowed-in-Your-Music/idi-p/733759 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Incre...

efreak 8y ago
Google Play has a similar issue too, though it's quite a bit higher. I think it might be around 100k songs is the max you can add to your library (and of course, adding this many also seems to make it slow down a lot, making it difficult to remove them).

benatkin 8y ago

I like Spotify fine, and it's social feature doesn't bother me. I just use a private session if I want to hide what I'm currently listening to, but that's rare. If 99% of people are OK with how it works, Spotify isn't going to change if they don't want to. And this is small compared to Google storing browsing, map, and search history, using it for ads, and nagging you if you opt out of it, or Apple and Google blocking things from their mobile platforms without a fair and consistent appeals process.

p3nt3ll3r 8y ago

Also please let me opt out of social feed - not just for 6 hours on mobile, permanently. It is total BS that I as a paying customer am required to be "social" on your app.

sporiff 8y ago

Spotify is an interesting one. A long time ago I had an Outlook account which was linked to my Facebook which was linked to my Spotify. I later deleted my Facebook and my Outlook account as well, completely forgetting about my Spotify account. This year I re-registered for Outlook and was able to get exactly the same address (I guess it had just been long enough?) and was then able to reset my password for Spotify and log straight back in. Needless to say I no longer use Spotify at all.

majewsky 8y ago
> A long time ago I had an Outlook account which was linked to my Facebook which was linked to my Spotify. I suppose you mean it the other way around? The way you're describing it suggests that you could use Spotify to reset your Facebook password, which is either confusing or terrifying. :)