
Dear Spotify, please let me unlink my Facebook account - thewarpaint
https://eduardogarcia.xyz/blog/dear-spotify
======
hs86
I already unlinked my Spotfiy account from Facebook with this way:
[https://robblewis.me/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-
login...](https://robblewis.me/convert-spotify-facebook-to-email-
login/index.html)

No account migration of contacting support is needed. Just use your registered
email account to reset (or in this case actually set) your account password
and afterwards you can log in via your email+pw. Then in the Spotify
preferences the button to disconnect Facebook becomes available.

~~~
hnrodey
Wow, just confirmed this works. I can now log in to Spotify via
email/password. Thanks for this!

The only caveat is you will need to re-sign in to every device where you are
currently signed in via FB.

~~~
Insanity
That is expected behaviour though after unlinking :)

Cool that this works!

------
mithr
Spotify has some really strange "won't fix" issues...

I'm on a Spotify family plan. I recently bought a Spotify gift card on sale,
because you can usually apply those for a credit on subscription services.

Well, it turns out unlike the rest of their plans, Spotify Family doesn't
support gift cards. I didn't even consider that it might not apply to all
plans, and didn't check the fine print. Disappointed, I contacted support, who
were happy to inform me there's a solution! I should cancel my plan (kicking
all my dependents out), sign up for a _regular_ plan, apply my gift card to
it, and _then_ sign up to the family plan again. This would, of course, mean
that I'd have to reinvite my entire family to the plan.

They didn't really seem to understand why I was less than enthusiastic about
this "solution".

~~~
leokennis
Spotify still has a limit of 10.000 saved items. An album with 10 songs counts
for 11 (10 song entries and 1 album entry). Meanwhile you can create 10.000
playlists with 10.000 songs no problem. So the saved items is obviously a very
crappy (database?) design and they still refuse to fix it.

Very glad I have Apple Music now...

~~~
DGAP
That is a strange issue. I have all of my music (sans the few tracks not on
Spotify anymore) saved in a Starred playlist which I started 7 years ago when
Spotify saved music via "stars." Even there though, I only have 7K tracks -
how do you have 10k?!

~~~
113
I also have a lot of saved music as I tend to save whole albums instead of
tracks. If I find an artist I like and want to listen to later, I'll often
save their most popular album to come back to. It all adds up pretty quickly.

------
Brian_K_White
I turned off FB "platform intergration" entirely, years ago, and it took me
like 1 minute to google this up, which worked then and still works now. What's
the big mystery?

[https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Log-in-
to-s...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/iOS-iPhone-iPad/Log-in-to-spotify-
without-facebook/m-p/231300/highlight/true#M10977)

Ever since then I use that "device name" (really more like a Spotify account
number that stands in for a username) for everything. Logging in to Spotify
clients built in to TV and roku, Android & IOS apps, and managing the account
on the web site.

The account was created, Premium, with FB when that was the only option. Then
I got that device name and disabled platform integration on FB so it's not
possible for _anything_ including Spotify to access my fb account, and it's
been like that since 2012.

Disable "platform integration":
[https://m.facebook.com/help/211829542181913](https://m.facebook.com/help/211829542181913)

~~~
samstave
This is awesome and should be widely known.

I would really like a tool that will go through my accounts-list (maybe from
Last Pass, for example) which would crawl / determine / detect who is linking
to whom and how. Then offer ways to unlink.

Finally, another thing I would like is an "identity creator" app - one that
will shotgun out an entire set of accounts to be managed out as an identity.

For example - a tool that will go out and createa login/ID at some range/list
of sites, say, for a new-born child.

It will go and setup and lock-down into as-private-as-possible an account
across FB, HN, Reddit, DropBox, Google, etc. etc. etc.

And then keep those accounts locked and with a password-manager.

You can add/remove accounts across these systems as needed.

------
jaimehrubiks
I would like to know why some people stopped using Facebook claiming that the
main reason is "the recent databreach". If you don't want to use Facebook for
how they handle your data in the first place, it seems perfectly fine to me.
But, the data breach exploiting 3 vulnerabilities seems to be bad luck, I
don't really think they're not committed to security in that sense. I'd like
to know opinions from others.

~~~
daveFNbuck
The recent data breach made many people realize that you're always just 1
instance of bad luck away from having a bunch of aggregated personal data
stolen. It's pretty reasonable to decide you're better off removing yourself
as a target than hoping Facebook will never again experience bad luck.

~~~
arihant
It's not reasonable at all. You're 1 instance of bad luck away from death. But
that's hardly a reason to not leave home.

~~~
ReverseCold
It's hardly a reason to leave home, but it's definitely a reason to, for
example, not go skydiving.

You obviously can't remove all risk, but you sure can reduce it.

~~~
zrobotics
That might not be the best example, though. You are more likely to die driving
to the airport than you are to die while skydiving. That is an activity which
is similar to riding a roller coaster: it seems much more dangerous than it
actually is.

~~~
daveFNbuck
> You are more likely to die driving to the airport than you are to die while
> skydiving.

Can you back that up? I thought this was true too but did a quick check anyway
and I found skydiving death rates are 8 in a million but driving death rates
are 7.1 per billion kilometers. Driving to the airport is probably more
dangerous than your average drive, but it still looks like the car trip is
less likely to kill you.

------
mattnewton
Did the OP actually try the support option? It took me less than a painless 10
minutes over chat with support (and most of that was me asking if the discover
weekly model they had created for me would be ported over too, which seemed to
have been highly tuned lately. The support person could not say and probably
didn’t know what I was asking about)

~~~
thewarpaint
OP here, haven't tried yet but I think my point stands that this is something
enough users want to make it a proper feature rather than a "workaround".
Might be wrong, though.

~~~
mattnewton
IMO they did come up with a solution for it, via support. I think it is
interesting that people (seemingly) won’t try the solution because it involves
talking to support and that has such a connotation of being a costly time sink
from people’s terrible experiences with support contacts in the past.

Maybe that means Spotify needs to rethink their solution? Apparently they lost
at least one subscriber to Apple Music in this thread because that person was
adverse to contacting support and would rather switch services altogether. I
wonder if that’s a real trend among people now.

~~~
thewarpaint
Definitely agree that they need to rethink it. Look at their community center,
how many hours has Support spent on doing this process manually, over and over
again, in the last year alone?

[https://community.spotify.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/messa...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?q=unlink%20facebook&collapse_discussion=true)

------
dmannorreys
I had my Facebook account linked to my Spotify account. I didn't create an
account using Facebook, but linked them later on.

Even when I had a Facebook account linked, I could still login to Spotify
using a username (a bunch of numbers) that I was able to dig out from the
settings at some point.

I recently deleted my Facebook account, and everything went quite well. The
app said my playlists was created by user "null" (they fixed this after a
while and now displays the numbers which makes my username), but other than
that there's been no changes. So, just deleting your Facebook account and let
Spotify deal with it seems to work, but it require you to know the username
(and password. I don't know how I got that, maybe it was the same password as
the one I used before linking my Facebook account).

------
tzs
Obviously if you are getting rid of Facebook you would need to stop using
Facebook to login to other things, but for people who are not getting rid of
Facebook itself what are the security and privacy risks of using it for login
for other services such as Spotify?

Does a Facebook breach let the attackers get into your Spotify account? Does
it leak the existence of your Spotify account? Is there personal information
from your Spotify account that can be gotten via a Facebook breach?

Same question for using any other OAuth provider, such as Google.

~~~
CGamesPlay
> Does a Facebook breach let the attackers get into your Spotify account?

It would be a security breach that resulted in that (access tokens
compromised), rather than the oft-reported privacy breaches (profile data
compromised), but yes. The recent security breach involving access tokens
would not apply here, for example, because they were access tokens for
Facebook, not for linked apps.

> Does it leak the existence of your Spotify account?

Yes, see
[https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications)
and search for Spotify.

> Is there personal information from your Spotify account that can be gotten
> via a Facebook breach?

If Facebook issued an invalid access token that authorized an attacker to use
your Spotify account, they would be able to see anything you can see in your
Spotify account. If your profile data was leaked, anything Spotify published
to your Facebook profile might be accessible.

"Spotify" is a stand-in for any SSO app, and "Facebook" is a stand-in for any
SSO provider, of course. There's nothing special about Spotify and Facebook
here, it might as easily be FarmVille and Google.

------
SnowingXIV
Did this awhile ago, simply contact support or DM
[https://twitter.com/spotifycares?lang=en](https://twitter.com/spotifycares?lang=en)
and they will easily migrate all your stuff.

~~~
randomsearch
Yep also did this, took maybe 10 mins.

------
aldrinleal
You can always ask Support and they'll happily migrate your data to a new
account.

~~~
SyneRyder
Yup, they did this for me back in 2015, and it was a _really_ good customer
support experience. I'd actually created a second account & asked them to
close my original Facebook-linked one, but they offered to move across all my
playlist data etc over to the new account so I didn't have to start over. And
they checked in with me to make sure the data all looked good before deleting
the other account. I was really happy with how they handled it.

------
colemickens
I had unlinked my account using the officially supported method. It appeared
to work. Months later, I noticed they were still updating my profile picture.
I contacted them via Twitter. Four repeated explanations and screenshots
later, they confirmed the accounts were silently still linked (despite no
actual app authorization existing for Spotify in my Facebook account.)

Took them two weeks to manually unlink it (as in, they had to contact
engineering and have them look at it). No explanation of how it happened. No
explanation for how they were still accessing the data at all. I have no doubt
others are affected.

Spotify Connect is brilliant, every single other thing about the Spotify
experience is shoddy. (Like that song that just finished playing? Too bad, you
can't see the playlist history without manually skipping back many tracks,
etc)

------
wepple
I tried to cancel my paid account so I could create a new paid account without
FB login. It was so frustrating that I’m now a happy Apple Music user.

Protip to companies: if your product is excellent, make account cancellation
frictionless and the respect you show your users will pay dividends.

~~~
mattnewton
I had it migrated to a new paid account over chat with support in under 10
minutes - did you contact them? Arguably this should be a menu item somewhere,
and maybe it is and I couldn’t find it, but my experience was very painless.

------
benatkin
I like Spotify fine, and it's social feature doesn't bother me. I just use a
private session if I want to hide what I'm currently listening to, but that's
rare.

If 99% of people are OK with how it works, Spotify isn't going to change if
they don't want to. And this is small compared to Google storing browsing,
map, and search history, using it for ads, and nagging you if you opt out of
it, or Apple and Google blocking things from their mobile platforms without a
fair and consistent appeals process.

------
mrweasel
A little off topic, but I believe that Facebook, and to some extend Google,
have screwed over any future “free” services with their behaviour. Personally,
I will be very unlikely to sign up for ANY service that doesn’t offer a paid
tier, in the future. I believe that this will hold true for others who have
previously been quick to adopt new services and products. This will hinder
competitors from gaining traction.

~~~
reitanqild
Mostly agree.

Sadly as we've seen recently companies exist that are shady enough to both
charge the user and collect data without asking at the same time.

So I guess the rule of thumb is true and I'll still look for paid services,
but even then I guess we should be careful.

------
sverige
Spotify gave up on caring about their users a few years ago, I think. I
uninstalled after the app forced the "DJ fade in / fade out" between every
track -- including between movements of Beethoven's symphonies. (No, the
toggle to turn that off never worked for me. No, they never replied to my
attempts to let them know how awful it was.)

(No, I'll never go back to their service.)

~~~
rectang
Gapless playback without crossfades was a must-have feature for me and was one
of the reasons I migrated to Spotify. It continues to work for me on both Mac
OS and iOS.

~~~
sverige
Never could get it to work on Samsung, Apple 7, or Pixel.

------
iamben
The most frustrating Spotify problem for me is the link between mobile /
desktop play queues. I've moaned about it many, many times on the forums and
there's a giant thread of people moaning about the same thing, but it's been
years without resolve.

Basically, if I don't force-close the Spotify app on my Android before I get
my laptop open on the same wifi, the phone will overwrite any play queue on my
desktop. I exclusively use Spotify on my phone in the gym. I'll choose one
album at a time and play it through while I work out. My laptop is for work -
I'll maybe spend 15 minutes every few days queueing 10 or so new albums I want
to try. Utterly maddening when you forget to close the app, go to Spotify and
you're blasted with gym music and you've lost your carefully curated play
queue.

~~~
samstave
You just identified a wish-list-item I have for music apps: Location aware
playlists:

The device would be aware where it is located - or moving via either gps,
accelerometer or wifi ssid visibility or even an ibeacon.

The device will then know that it should play from selected sets/playlists
that I have tagged appropriate for that location.

I would like this in a video library management app as well.

Basically, the content most likely to be relevant to my current location or
activity should float to the top of the playlist or click-field.

All content should obviously be available, but preference to play a cetain
list over another based on location or activity without overt action from me.

Kind of like an "ok google - I am now running so play my running lists" and
"ok google - I just arrived at my office so either STFU or play my worklist"

"Looks like you just got on bart list"

~~~
dirkgently
Google Music does that already. But I know, Google isn't fashionable on HN. In
fact, there will be another revolt - Google is creepy!

------
blatherard
Also, it would be nice if Spotify could bring back the ability to follow
friends without requiring Facebook.

~~~
MetallicCloud
You can still do it. I follow 10 or so friends, and I've never linked
facebook. The mechanism for adding friends is needlessly obtuse though. You
need to add spotify:user:<username> in the search box to find them, then you
can follow.

My biggest gripe is they removed the ability to send songs to friends.

~~~
blatherard
Super, thanks!

------
jeena
Interesting that my blog post which is now 7 years still is not outdated:
[https://jeena.net/spotify-facebook](https://jeena.net/spotify-facebook)

Back then I stopped using Spotify because they forced every new user to use
Facebook to log in.

------
stephengillie
An unexpected downside of oAuth rears its ugly head.

~~~
mulmen
I mean the loss of trust in the provider is an obvious downside of centralized
authentication right?

The “unexpected” part is the loss of trust in Facebook as a provider.

I would argue trusting Facebook with anything was obviously going to end in
tears but I admit I’m not a normal user.

~~~
tjoff
Agree, the problem in regards to spotify is that for a while spotify required
facebook for new accounts.

The disconnect that led to that decision is absolutely mind blowing. To make
it even more surreal lots of people, even on HN, defended it.

~~~
mulmen
Yeah I just didn’t use Spotify until I could sign up with email. It kind of
surprised me they were able to gain as much traction as they did with what I
viewed as a user-hostile action right at signup.

~~~
carlivar
Spotify activity in the early days was super prominent in the Facebook
activity feed and that weird mini feed they used to have. So I think they
probably got more new customers from that angle as they might have lost from
the login limitation.

------
qwerty456127
Every website should let you change the way you sign-in (e.g. from
Facebook/Google/whatever to pure email/username and back and also change your
e-mail address and username) at any time you want.

------
sporiff
Spotify is an interesting one. A long time ago I had an Outlook account which
was linked to my Facebook which was linked to my Spotify. I later deleted my
Facebook and my Outlook account as well, completely forgetting about my
Spotify account. This year I re-registered for Outlook and was able to get
exactly the same address (I guess it had just been long enough?) and was then
able to reset my password for Spotify and log straight back in.

Needless to say I no longer use Spotify at all.

~~~
majewsky
> A long time ago I had an Outlook account which was linked to my Facebook
> which was linked to my Spotify.

I suppose you mean it the other way around? The way you're describing it
suggests that you could use Spotify to reset your Facebook password, which is
either confusing or terrifying. :)

------
Exuma
Hi, we don't care.

Sincerely, Spotify

------
whistlerbrk
Yeah, nothing listed here has worked for me. The issue is I had two accounts
with the same email address one with Facebook one w/o. Not sure how it
happened but if I try to reset the password of my account with my email
address I immediately receive a "welcome back to facebook" email.

So, they are keeping the OID information somewhere. I've asked, begged,
pleaded, and demanded for them to fix this and I've gotten absolutely nowhere.
It is infuriating.

~~~
efreak
Have you tried changing your facebook email address?

------
leongr
While it isn't really straightforward, Spotify support will transfer all your
songs, playlists, followers and if I recall correctly also your followed
artists to a new account. Another possibility is for them to delete your old
Facebook-linked account so you can create it again after which they'll also
transfer all your old data. It isn't an ideal solution but at least you won't
have to worry about losing your collection.

------
markatkinson
I don't have Facebook, and I desperately want to get rid of the panel on the
right telling me to login. So annoying. Apart from that really enjoy Spotify.

~~~
dan1234
Assuming you’re referring to the ‘See what your friends are playing’ panel; on
macOS it’s View Menu -> Uncheck ‘Friend Activity’. The right hand panel should
then close.

~~~
markatkinson
On windows, but I will give it a try, thanks for the tip

Edit: You are a champion, that worked!

------
druidcz
I was able to unlink FB my account with help from customer support. I had to
provide details about my payment. They then basically deleted my account and
created a new one and copied the playlists. There were some issues with
Discover Weekly and Daily Mix playlists, but they resolved after a couple of
weeks. I guess the process could be smoother and more automated, but I am glad
now don't use FB login anywhere.

------
bzickafoose
Now, if we can just garner enough user support to get Spotify to remove the
10,000 song limit, that would be awesome.

[https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-
Incre...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Increase-
maximum-Songs-allowed-in-Your-Music/idi-p/733759)

~~~
efreak
Google Play has a similar issue too, though it's quite a bit higher. I think
it might be around 100k songs is the max you can add to your library (and of
course, adding this many also seems to make it slow down a lot, making it
difficult to remove them).

------
thewarpaint
OP here, instead of replying to individual comments I'll sum it up here. As
the post states I am aware of the "contact support" workaround. I haven't
tried it yet but I think my point stands that this is something enough users
want to make it a proper feature. Even if right now it only takes a 10 minute
call to Support. Might be wrong, though.

------
brettaaron
I created my first Spotify account in 2011 I'm pretty sure the ONLY way to
authenticate was Facebook. There's no way I would have used Facebook rather
than email. Years later I realized how absurd this was, found out you can't
unlink them, and just made a new account. Spent a couple of days transferring
my playlists.

~~~
gambiting
I've had a Spotify account for just as long and never had it linked with
Facebook, purely because I didn't have Facebook at the time. I just log in
with id and password.

~~~
tjoff
For about a year you were unable to create a new spotify account without a
facebook account.

Accounts created before that were unaffected.

------
jwally
It’s literally the only reason I still have a Facebook account. Couple that
with Alexa picking out the worst version possible of the song I requested
(“Master of Puppets - live by not Metallica on Spotify”) but seems to get it
right with prime music; I’m about to drop it.

------
vmsp
I also created my Spotify account with Facebook. When I wanted to unlink them
I just sent an email to support and they did it pretty quickly with no issues.
I haven't used FB and Spotify for years now, so things might have changed, but
OP should try and do the same.

------
finchisko
I made that "Login with Facebook" mistake too. Somehow I can login with some
numeric username and password, but Spotify still downloads my recent facebook
profile pic, what I don't like, because I want no connection to Facebook
whatsoever.

------
ramoz
Literally created another account last night and transferred all my playlists.
Was actually straightforward on the desktop (drag and drop playlists from old
to new account. Lost all of my history, but w/e.

Removing/blocking followers would also be appreciated.

------
herbstein
I created my Facebook account with my parent's email address back in the day
(when I turned 13). Today it has been completely unlinked, but Spotify is
still connected with that old email account. There's no way to actually change
that.

------
p3nt3ll3r
Also please let me opt out of social feed - not just for 6 hours on mobile,
permanently. It is total BS that I as a paying customer am required to be
"social" on your app.

------
village-idiot
I never use oauth unless I can avoid it. I’ve got LastPass and that makes
creating a custom login per site trivial, so I have no need to hand more data
to some oauth provider.

------
mcemilg
And also I cannot change my name if I will not add facebook account. It is
very ridiclous. They are very huge startup but they did not much time for
adding a simple form. :P

------
edwnj99
Got the same problem here. I deleted the facebook account. now i have to login
with my user id and password. How can they miss something so simple.

------
AlphaWeaver
Does anyone know how to do this with StackExchange?

------
jm547ster
A quick email to support helped me do this a couple of years back. Don’t know
if it should be any more trouble nowadays

------
dan_m2k
Trying to click through to this piece from HN on Facebook tells me this link
is malicious. Sour grapes on FB’s part?

~~~
thewarpaint
Not at all. It's my personal blog, has very low traffic, it's only a basic
HTML+CSS page, probably hits a few spam rules here and there.

------
Finnucane
This is what fake FB accounts are for.

------
bluedino
I’d like to be able to do this on Instagram with my inactive Facebook account

------
aerovistae
I already did this with the help of their customer support two years ago.

------
prdonahue
Do what I did to unlink it: delete your Facebook account.

