You may not give it much thought while you’re listening to your favorite tunes, but just about every music streaming service out there comes with social features that help connect you and your musical tastes with other people.
It makes sense that you might want to share tracks and playlists with friends and family, but you likely don’t want to reveal all your musical tastes to the world at large. That’s why it’s worth running an audit of what you’re sharing and with whom in the music apps you’re using.
Here we’ll cover three of the most popular and well-known ones—but if your own streaming service of choice isn’t listed below, you may well 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? Though they’ll need to know your username, or have you in their phone contacts. From the Home tab in the mobile app, tap your avatar (top left), then View profile to take a look. Tap Edit, and you can change the name and picture used on your profile.
Besides your name and picture, all your public playlists are shown 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 tracklist—tap Make private or Make public.
Tap your avatar (top left), then Settings and privacy and Privacy and social (Android) or Privacy & Social (iOS), and you can control whether or not your followers, the people you’re following, and your recent listening history show up on your profile.
On the same screen, the Listening activity toggle switch controls whether or not people who are specifically following you can see what you’re listening to (independent of your public profile). There’s also a Private session toggle switch, which you can enable to temporarily hide your listening…
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