How to stop Spotify from sharing your personal data

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

When you consider companies that harvest user data for profit, free-to-use services like Google and Facebook may come to mind. But even paid services, like Spotify Premium, collect and sell your data.

Collecting user data can be highly profitable, and some pay-to-use services can’t resist the urge to share our personal information with advertisers and other interested parties.

Spotify seems happy to capture whatever user data it can to conduct research, improve products, and target ads ostensibly. While these reasons are fair, they connect to a larger goal: to make money.

Seeking profit doesn’t make a company evil. But sharing user data to make more money from a paid subscription service is a little sketchy.

READ MORE: What is Spotify Live and how does it work?

Let’s discuss the type of data Spotify collects, what it does with that information, and how to adjust your privacy settings to reduce oversharing.

How to stop Spotify from sharing user data

Here’s how to adjust privacy settings to prevent Spotify from processing some user data:

You may also want to switch off Process my Facebook data to prevent the platform from collecting information from your social media account.

But, ultimately, it is a drop in the bucket of data Facebook collects.

What user data does Spotify collect?

When it comes to user data, Spotify collects pretty much everything you could imagine, including:

Granted, much of the information Spotify collects is necessary for improving products and running a streaming service.

However, the company’s privacy policy leaves a lot of room for interpretation on the topic of sharing data with other parties.

Who does Spotify share user data with?

READ MORE: Spotify wants to share your listening habits in real-time

While improving its own products is one reason Spotify states for harvesting user data, it also shares information with third-party recipients, including:

To advertisers, marketers, and researchers, your user data is digital gold worth a lot to whoever holds it. And, sadly, you don’t have a ton of control over it when using online services.

Unfortunately, even paying for the service won’t prevent Spotify from collecting and sharing your personal information. You can, however, take steps to limit the amount it shares.

How to avoid Spotify sharing any user data

Evidently, Spotify’s privacy settings are weak and offer little control over how the company uses your data. Unfortunately, effective solutions are limited. But the steps above do help a bit.

If you’re concerned about oversharing, the only realistic options are to either boycott the platform or campaign for more user control.

But your data is worth a lot to certain people. And tech companies are unlikely to give up their golden goose without a fight.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• How to make collaborative playlists on Spotify
• How to create and share a Spotify playlist
• Here’s how to transfer music playlists between streaming services
• How to cancel Spotify Premium