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Solved: How To See Your Friend’s Activity On Spotify

By Matthew Vultaggio

February 27, 2023

Let’s be honest – if there’s one thing that social media has given us, it’s the ability to be incredibly nosey.

Whether that’s seeing where your friend-cousin’s-wife’s-daughter is spending her holiday or what your favorite celebrity is getting up to on their weekend trip to Vegas. 

If you’re a Spotify user, you’ll also have the power to snoop through your friend’s listening activity.

How To See What People Are Listening To On Spotify

If you love music as much as we do, you’ll know that our music tastes can reveal a LOT about us.

So, if you want a sneak peek inside the mind and life of your friends, sneaking a peek at their listening activity is a great way to do it. And yes, you can do it. 

So, if you want to learn how to see what music other people are listening to on Spotify, stay tuned… 

Can You See What People Are Listening To On Spotify?

Yes, you can! However, your snooping abilities may be slightly more limited than you hoped for.

You’ll need to be following someone to see what they’re listening to, but sometimes, this isn’t enough.

Spotify users can also restrict who can see what they’ve been listening to. 

However, if you’re following someone who hasn’t restricted their listening activity, viewing what they’ve recently listened to, or are currently listening to, is easy. Simply: 

  • Log in to Spotify for desktop with your username and password
  • In Spotify desktop, click on your own avatar in the top right-hand corner, and then click on ‘profile’ from the drop-down list
  • You’ll want to see all of the accounts that you’re following. To do this, go the ‘following’ page, or click the ‘followers’ button
  • Now, select the username or the avatar of the person whose activity you wish to view. This will should all of their published playlists and a selection of music they’ve been listening to

There’s one catch to this process, though: the person whose activity you want to see will need to have their Spotify account linked to Facebook, and so will you.

You can connect your Facebook and Spotify accounts together via Spotify desktop. 

When your own Spotify and Facebook accounts have been connected, you’ll need to stay on the Settings page, hit the ‘Display Options’ feature, and find the ‘See What Your Friends are Playing’ button.

Hit ‘enable,’ and this should display all of your friend’s listening activity on the sidebar on the right side of your screen on Spotify desktop. 

When you’ve done this, you can follow your Facebook friends on Spotify by finding the ‘Add Friends’ icon in the right corner of the activity sidebar.

Then, select ‘add friend’ next to the person’s name. 

If you’re not using Spotify desktop, you can also do this on your mobile with the Spotify app.

To do this, open the Spotify app, select the ‘gear; icon in the top right corner, and select ‘find friends.

From here, you can either follow all the people on the list or add specific individuals to see their listening activity. 

Can You See Your Friend’s Spotify Activity On The Mobile App?

Most Spotify users listen to music on their phones rather than desktops.

Viewing your friends’ listening activity on a desktop is simple, but can you do it on the mobile app?

For years, Spotify has offered its users plenty of cool social features, including collaborative playlists and listening activities on a desktop, but some features on the mobile app have always been slightly restrictive.

However, Spotify seems to recognize the demand for these features on the mobile app, and you’ll soon be able to see a person’s listening activity straight from your phone with the ‘community’ feature.  

Spotify Community: A Work In Progress

The Spotify Community feature is still in development, though, so it’s not ready to go just yet.

However, the feature will be able to pull all of your friend’s listening activity and any updates to playlists, so you can see it all in one place.

You’ll be able to see some of your friend’s most recent listening activity, and what they’re currently listening to. 

Although this feature has already been rolled out to some users, it’s not fully functional yet.

So, you may have to wait a little longer before taking advantage of the community feature on your mobile app! 

If you want a sneak peek at community, then you’re in for a treat. Bear in mind, though, that you need iOS to do this.

Simply open up your Safari browser and type in ‘spotify:community’.

This will force the page to open up, so you can see what community will look like when it’s released.

This trick is known for being slightly temperamental, too, so it may not always work on your phone. 

However, this feature still isn’t fully functional, so you won’t be able to click on songs and play them, and you probably won’t get updates in real-time. 

Other Ways To See Friend’s Listening Activity On Mobile 

Until the community feature is launched, there isn’t a way to see what your friends are currently listening to on Spotify via the mobile app.

However, you can still see which artists they’ve recently jammed out to from your phone. To do this, simply: 

  • Open up the Spotify app on your mobile 
  • Click on your avatar next to ‘your library’ at the top-left of the screen
  • Click on ‘view profile under your name
  • Then, click on your following list, and find the name of the person whose activity you want to view 
  • Click on their profile and scroll down until you see ‘recently played artists’

Remember: people can choose not to display their recently played artists on their profile.

So, if you’re unable to see a list, they may have disabled this feature. 

The Bottom Line

If you want to catch a sneak peek at your friend’s favorite jams, Spotify can help you!

However, there are a few restrictions to viewing peoples listening activity, so you may not always be able to see what your friends are listening to – especially if they’ve switched the feature off. 

While we’re still not able to view real-time listening activity in the app, the Spotify Community development feature is in the works and appears promising.

So keep your eyes peeled for this feature – we know you’ll love it, as will we!

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Thank you for reading this article, my friend, and I hope you found it helpful as you build your own successful career in music. 🙂

Click here to see a list of my favorite and most recommended tools and resources that I’ve personally used to get my music streamed over 5,000,000 times on Spotify as an artist (called Best Friends Club).

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