All my playlists have been made public?

[Schteeben]

I use Spotify for my work as a music curator. I've always worked with the "Make my new lists public" option off and check to make sure they are not listed as public. I have revisited some lists made a month or so ago and they are all public now. Looking at more and they are now public as well!

Why has this happened? is there a way to make bulk lists private? I don't want to spend days of my life changing them one by one, there are over 1400 lists and I cant invoice for that time so it will take away from may wages.

Please help. This is bad.

[Kiril]

Hey there @Schteeben,

Thanks for posting in the Community! We've moved your post to a relevant Help Board where it fits better.

We understand that you are concerned about the privacy of your playlists, which are being shown on your profile. We'd like you to know that Spotify doesn't make such bulk changes and will not mess around with the settings of your collection/personal account unless you have requested this explicitly and after you've been properly verified as the account owner by the relevant support team.  

In case you're worried how your profile and it's playlists are being displayed publicly right now, you can share your profile page with us here and we can all take a look and confirm for you how many playlists are visible. We can also suggest you to take a look at the article here, where you will fined more info on how the privacy settings work. 

Hope you find this useful. If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you.

[omhalck]

The same has happened to me: when selecting a playlist in the Windows desktop client, it says "PUBLIC PLAYLIST" above the title of every one, even if they have undoubtedly been created with the "Make my new playlists public" option OFF. Just to double-check, I right now ensured the option was off, created a new playlist, and sure enough, "PUBLIC PLAYLIST" above the title.

If it is indeed the case that you don't change this kind of settings on users' playlists, as you claim, then at least you have the problem that your client shows the "PUBLIC PLAYLIST" caption on private playlists.

[omhalck]

So I've got a reasonable-seeming explanation elsewhere, claiming that

– The actual settings of our playlists haven't changed.

– What was formerly known as "private" and "public" playlists are now all called "public", since they weren't actually private previously, as they could be shared through a link.

– A new level of truly private playlists has been introduced, which cannot be accessed by others even with a link. An existing playlist can be given this level of privacy, but at this moment it cannot be set as a default option for new playlists.

– The former "public" level is now known as "on profile", meaning it is visible when viewing you as a user. Only these playlists may be found via search or in the "Discovered on" section on artist pages.

If all this is correct, it seems like a good development to me, although I do think the naming of the levels could have been better, e.g. "private" / "shareable" / "public".

[Alex]

Hey @omhalck,

Thanks for the reply and the info you've submitted.

I'll do my best to clarify what's happening. When a new playlist is created on Spotify it's always set to Public by default. This means that if you link to the playlist, anyone can access it and listen to it. This doesn't mean that the playlist will be on your Profile when someone else searches for you in the app. This is why when you right-click you see the two options "Add to Profile" and "Make Private". So the setting "Make my new playlists public" basically means that new playlists will be added to your profile if switched on.

"Add to Profile" means that other users will be able to see the playlist when they open your profile. The playlist needs to be Public for this to be possible.

"Make Private" means that the playlist won't be shown on your profile and won't be accessible by anyone. If you send a link to the playlist to one of your friends, they'll be able to open the playlist and you'll see their profile accessing the playlist. You can remove any unwanted listeners. Note that the link to a Private playlist expires it will become unplayable after some time.

We've received reports from other users that this wording is confusing and we get where you're coming from. We've passed this feedback on to the development team and hopefully it will be made more clear in the future 🙂

Hope this clears things up. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[lucasportosilva]

Did an update or bug happen that affected the playlists that were private by changing them to public?
All my playlists were changed to be private, but suddenly they became public without my permission. I noticed this today, but I have already changed it to private again. I'm pretty sure I didn't change it to public.

[Alex]

Hey @lucasportosilva,

Thanks for the post.

As I tried to explain in my previous post, there have been changes to how Playlist privacy works on Spotify in attempt to make playlists more secure, even though the current wording of things might come off a bit confusing. Please read my post for more detailed info on this.

We're here is you have more questions.

[lucasportosilva]

Hello Alex.

I read your previous message and understood.
My question is: my playlists that were private became public. I had to put them in private again.
I would like to know why this happened without my permission.

[Alex]

Hey @lucasportosilva,

Thanks for the clarification.

I'll do my best to explain what has happened. 

Recently Spotify has made some changes to playlist Privacy adding and extra level of privacy control. So all playlists that were previously Private are now Not added to profile, as the wording goes. This is why you see the option to Make Private on every playlist. Which means that your playlists were not made Public, they just appear to be categorized differently, so those playlists are still not visible for anyone who views your profile on any platform.

Previously when a playlist was marked as Private, you could still send a link to it, share it, other users could access and follow it with the link, even add songs to it if it was set to Collaborative. It just didn't show up on your public Profile. 

At the moment, when you click on Make Private the list is removed from your profile (if it previously was), and when you share it it can only be accessed by your friend who has the link for up to 24 hours. Which means that you have another level of control over who sees, and follows your Private playlists.

More info can be found here.

Hope this makes sense. I'm here if you have more questions.

[bluetabasco]

"So all playlists that were previously Private are now Not added to profile, as the wording goes. This is why you see the option to Make Private on every playlist. Which means that your playlists were not made Public,..."

That makes absolutely no sense to me.

Still seems to me like there is some kind of bug - or there are some confusing usability issues that need addressing.

In my settings the option Make my new playlist public is disabled. So I expect every new playlist I create to be private.

I create a new playlist, e.g. My Playlist #123

When I right click on the playlist name the contextual menu shows the option Make private. When I see this it makes me think that the new list is public (why else would the menu display Make private). This to me seems incorrect, because of the settings I mentioned above - I would expect this new list to be private and see Make public as an option in the contextual menu.

When I open the new playlist it says PUBLIC PLAYLIST (all caps) at the top. Seems to me this should be a PRIVATE PLAYLIST - because of my setting.

And yet... When I go to my profile to the section PUBLIC PLAYLISTS the new playlist is not visible... so,... it is private? 

Seems like there is something not correct and if this is the way it was intended then I have to give an F for usability.

I too had the impression that suddenly all my private lists were suddenly no longer private.

Spotify for macOS (Intel)
1.1.81.604.gccacfc8c

[Yordan]

Hey @bluetabasco!

You're actually right about this. Since the recent changes to playlist privacy were implemented, the Make my new playlists public feature actually has to do with the playlists showing up on your profile, depending on whether you've turned it on or off. If it's on, then all new playlists will be added to your profile page, so whenever someone opens your profile, they'd show up. If turned off - they won't. Regardless, all new playlists are made public by default, which means they can be accessed by the people whom you've shared them with. You'll have to manually set them to private.

Our internal teams are aware that the wording Make my new playlists public creates a confusion and are working on a fix. In the meantime, make sure to keep the app up to date.

Hope this clears things up. The Community is always here if there's anything else you need assistance with.
 

Take care!

[testuser9]

So when is a playlist searchable by other users? If I do not want strangers to stumble upon my playlist if they search for its name, what should my privacy settings for the playlist be? Is this even possible anymore?

[Dian]

Hey @testuser9,

Thanks for the question.

If a playlist is not explicitly added to your profile via the "Add to profile" setting, it doesn't matter if it is private or public, it won't appear in the search field. If you manually share a link to a public playlist, that is not added to your profile, the person with the link can find the playlist via the link.

Hope this helps,

Cheers!

[DaddyThickShake]

I read all the above but I am still confused - the reason being ... I only make playlists public when I feel they are "ready" to be share publicly. Therefore, I have made sure I've changed the majority of my playlists to "make private." However, when I view my profile, a number of the playlists I've set as private are showing up under the Public Playlists section. Does this mean that anyone who follows me can see those playlists even though I've marked them as private? If so, why are only some of them showing up and not all of them? Either way, my feeling is that ONLY lists marked as public should be visible to everyone, including followers. Then, when and if I decide to make a playlist public, it would then be visible to followers and searchable by others. Thanks for your help.  - DaddyThickShake

[DaddyThickShake]

Now I see that my account name was not recognized here, so I'm being seen as a visitor even though I have a premium account. Why is that?

[Kiril]

Hey @DaddyThickShake,

Thanks for posting and welcome in the Community!

Playlists that are set to private, should not be visible on your profile for people to discover or to follow. But you can still share links to such private playlists to specific friends, if you'd like them to have access. You can doublecheck your current settings after consulting this article here which has further clarifications on how the privacy on playlists is meant to work. 

Hope this clears things up. If you have any questions or need anything else, the Community is here for you.

[AbsolutelyNoFB]

I discovered today that all my private playlists, some of them NINE YEARS old have now been made public -- without my knowledge or consent. This is terrible.

From this thread and others, it is clear that Spotify has no idea what PRIVACY means and so little respect for the customer I wonder why I am still a customer. Even if Apple Music is worse than Spotify in many ways, Apple doesn't kick their customers in the face again and again like Spotify does. This may be the straw that finally gets me to move over to Apple.

[Alex]

Hey there @AbsolutelyNoFB,

Thanks for reaching out about this and sharing your feedback.

I would suggest you check out my post here, where I clear up what is happening and explain what this change in privacy settings actually means. In short, your playlists are still private, as they were before, only the wording in the app has changed.

Hope this info helps.

[AbsolutelyNoFB]

I read the thread. Quite frankly, Spotify's hand wavy explanation where terms mean the opposite of their definitions is not credible.

For years, private playlists were labeled as private. Then Spotify made them all public and labeled them all as public. The explanation that you referenced implies that Spotify was lying to customers since the beginning and playlists were never actually private. Anyone could simply phish for links and pull up private playlists.

So now you say "make private" really makes them private. Well, it looks like they are actually all still public, even after the user goes through and spends a lot of time to select each one and then clicks "make private".  When a playlist is initially displayed, it is easy to see "Public Playlist" is still at the top of the playlist and then is replaced a moment later with "Private Playlist". So "Private" is just a make believe UI replacement.

Playing games with private customer data and eroding customer trust seems to be the default modus operandi for Spotify. I really don't like the company's flippant attitude towards data that customers have indicated should be private.

As customers already had indicated that playlists were private, can you tell me why these settings were not preserved? It would be easy for Spotify to keep private playlists as private. This would reflect the user's intention and would have been the ethical thing to do.

Anyway, I'm not going to waste anymore time on this. Spotify made a mess of something simple because the company is not ethical. Plain and simple. The more I think about how the company works and the lack of user input and complete disregard for the customer, I realize my time as a customer is coming to an end. Companies that kick you in the face for no reason do not deserve to be supported.

[tmuha]

All of my playlists were just made public, this definitely happens.