What Is the Difference Between "Make public"/"Public Playlist" and "Add to profile"/Profile Playlist

[dnls]

Hi,

This question has been asked before but the answers were not really answering the question:

What Is the Difference Between "Make public"/"Public Playlist" and "Add to profile"/Profile Playlist?

What private playlists are is clear enough. What I and others do not understand is what the different is between the "public" and "profile" playlists? In other words, what does the "Make public" menu item do differently from the "add to profile" menu item?

Thanks for the actual explanation!

[AdamDamon]

Hi @dnls,

Thanks for posting in the Spotify Community, and welcome!

You can make a playlist public, but not add it to your profile (as in your screenshot). In this case, the public playlist won’t appear on your Spotify profile under Public Playlists, but any playlist followers can choose to display the playlist on their Spotify profiles. Also, if you share the link to a public playlist with anyone, the recipients can play the playlist, follow it, and in turn share it with other users. 

If you add a public playlist to your Spotify profile, it will show up on your profile under Public Playlists. Also in this case, if you’re listening to the playlist and you have the option enabled in Settings for “Share my listening activity on Spotify” (as well as not being in a Private Session), then any users following your profile who are using the desktop app can see the public playlist’s name appear in their Friend Activity panel, next to the last song you listened to.

Feel free to also read more about playlist privacy in this support article.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and have a good day!

[dnls]

Hi @TreyAnastasio

Thank you so much for the explanation!

OK, to paraphrase, to make sure I understand correctly:

"the public playlist won’t appear on your Spotify profile under Public Playlists"

So my public playlists do not appear under "Public Playlists" unless I "add to profile" them additionally, correct?

"any playlist followers can choose to display the playlist on their Spotify profiles. Also, if you share the link to a public playlist with anyone"

The first case (before "also") is still a bit unclear to me: Could you explain how anyone is able to find and follow a playlist that is not on my profile? Your second case is clear: if I manually shared a public-but-not-profile playlist to someone, then they could follow it (even I do not do that). But I have a hard time imagining any other case... Guess your first case would apply, if I added a playlist to my profile, then get followers, then remove the playlist from the profile but leave it public? In this case I could hypothetically have a public-but-not-profile playlist with followers (?) Or is there any other scenario that I missed? Do public-but-not-profile playlists appear in search results, for example?

@Spotify UX/UI team: I would find it much easier and more intuitive to just have "public playlists" and "private playlists". To have "public playlists" not shown under "Public Playlists", despite using the exact same term!, is rather confusing.

Cheers!

[AdamDamon]

Hi @dnls,

Thank you for your reply!

That’s right, public playlists that you’ve created won’t appear under the "Public Playlists" section of your Spotify profile unless you’ve also selected "Add to profile.”

If you do add a public playlist to your Spotify profile, and other users find it there and follow it, then yes—if you subsequently remove the playlist from your profile, then any playlist followers would be able to keep following the playlist.

You’re also right that public playlists can be found in Search results, even if they’re hidden on your profile (since they’re not private). And as mentioned previously, since they’re public playlists, anyone can share them with others.

If you don't want other people to find your playlist, you’ll need to set it to private. However, it's possible that if someone is already following the playlist, they'll still be able to see it; to avoid that, you can create a copy of the playlist, set it to private, and then delete the original one.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and have a good day!