What is a Spotify Private Session?

Everything online is data—your choices, habits, and even how you unwind. Take something as simple as listening to music. On Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming platform, even your favorite songs fuel its data-driven engine. From targeted ads to the wildly popular Spotify Wrapped, which breaks down your listening habits and compares them to global trends, the platform thrives on collecting and analyzing user data. But what if you want to enjoy Spotify without putting your privacy on the line? Enter Spotify Private Sessions. Are you curious about what a Spotify Private Session is and how it works? Here’s everything you need to know to listen with a bit more privacy.

Spotify data collection

Before we get to the ins and outs of Spotify Private Sessions, it’s important to understand how Spotify works. 

Spotify doesn’t just function as a music player; it also operates as a combination social network-advertising powerhouse. The platform collects a lot of data about its users, including listening habits and locations. This is in addition to the data you intentionally submit when you sign up, such as your name, email, billing information, etc. Essentially, Spotify tracks everything you do when you use it. What you search for, the songs you start, the ones you skip, when you pause—Spotify monitors it all. 

When spelled out in Spotify’s Privacy Policy, this accounts for many data points. In fact, in the aggregate, Spotify collects more than 100 billion data points from its users daily. Spotify breaks its data collection into four categories: usage data, technical data, general (non-precise) location data, and device sensor data. 

Usage data

Usage data is the data Spotify gathers while you’re using the service. This includes: 

• Your membership tier
• Your actions (including date and time), such as:
  • Your search queries
  • Your streaming history
  • The playlists you create
  • Your music library
  • Your browsing history
  • Your account settings
  • The interactions you have with other Spotify users
  • Your use of third-party services, devices, and applications in connection with Spotify
• Spotify’s own inferences and assumptions of your personal interests and preferences based on the way you use the service
• Content you submit when participating in any promotions, such as contests or sweepstakes
• Content you post to Spotify, such as images, audio, text, titles, descriptions, communications, and more

Technical data

While usage data covers the “how,” technical data covers the “what,” such as the device, operating system, browser, etc., on which you’re using Spotify. In total, this includes:

• URL data
• Your browser cookie data and IP addresses
• Device data, including:
  • Your device IDs
  • Your network connection type (Wi-Fi, 5G, 4G, LTE, Bluetooth, etc)
  • Your internet service provider and/or mobile carrier
  • Your network and device performance
  • Your browser type
  • Your language settings
  • Your device operating system
  • Your Spotify application version
• Additional data that helps Spotify discover and connect with third-party devices and apps, including:
  • Your device name
  • Your device identifiers
  • Your device brand
  • Your device version
  • Devices on your Wi-Fi network that can connect to Spotify (like Bluetooth  speakers)
  • Devices made available by your operating system when connecting via Bluetooth, plugin, and/or installation
  • Spotify partner apps 

General (non-precise) location data

Now for the “where.” Spotify may use the technical data they collect, such as your IP address and language settings, to:

• Determine your country, region, and/or state
• Meet geographic licensing and copyright requirements
• Serve you content and ads relevant to you and your location

Device sensor data

Finally, device sensor data. This is one of the more unique data categories; it covers “motion-generated or orientation-generated mobile sensor data” such as your accelerometer or gyroscope.

In its Privacy Policy, Spotify isn’t entirely clear about the purpose of this data collection. Essentially, however, it’s a way for Spotify to make inferences about your activity while listening, such as driving or running. 

What is a Spotify Private Session?

So, to feed its advertising machine and to make its service more engaging for sustained use, Spotify collects (and shares) tons of data. Furthermore, by default, the artists, songs, and albums you listen to, as well as the playlists you create, are public – anyone who follows you on the platform can view them. So, those guilty pleasure tracks you thought were secret? Others may know about them. 

To help mitigate this, however, you can start a Spotify Private Session. Spotify Private Sessions prevent others from viewing your listening activity and limit some of the data collection Spotify uses to run its recommendation algorithms. In essence, it functions a bit like your browser’s incognito mode. While it’s not a perfect solution, and it won’t prevent Spotify from collecting data altogether, it does help create a more private experience.

Do Spotify Private Sessions count towards Spotify Wrapped?

One of the most fun parts about being a Spotify subscriber is Spotify Wrapped. Even if you’re not a Spotify subscriber, you may be familiar with Spotify Wrapped; Spotify subscribers eagerly share their personal Spotify Wrapped results on social media each December. Essentially, Spotify Wrapped is an annual review of each user’s listening habits. It summarizes which artists, songs, and genres individual subscribers have listened to the most each year.

But what about if you start a Spotify Private Session? Many subscribers have wondered if that music counts towards their year-end Spotify Wrapped. The simple answer is no. While the number of minutes listened during a Private Session will be reflected in Spotify Wrapped, songs, artists, and genres will not.

This reveals a potential added benefit of Private Sessions. Maybe you consider certain music a guilty pleasure; maybe you share your account with your kids. If you don’t want certain music included in your personal Wrapped, start a Spotify Private Session before you play it.

Do Spotify Private Sessions count towards Instafest?

Like Spotify Wrapped, Instafest summarizes the music you most listen to. It uses data from Spotify (or Apple Music/Last.fm) to create a fictional music festival lineup from your top artists. And similarly to Spotify Wrapped, Instafest is a popular source of content for social media users.

The similarities don’t end there. Like your Spotify Wrapped, any artists you listen to during a Private Session won’t count towards your Instafest. So if there are certain artists you don’t want to appear in your Instafest, starting a Private Session whenever you listen to them will ensure they won’t headline your fictional musical festival. 
If your main concern with regards to Instafest is privacy, it’s worth pointing out that Instafest operates under a privacy-friendly privacy policy. While we’ve established Spotify collects and stores a significant amount of your data, this doesn’t appear to be the case with Instafest. In fact, no “account data used by Instafest is stored or collected, and it is not shared with any third parties. The information is only used on your personal device to generate your Instafest graphic.”

How to start a Spotify Private Session

Fortunately, starting a Spotify Private Session is simple. Here’s how:

How to start a Spotify Private Session on mobile/tablet

1. Open the Spotify app.
2. Tap the Home icon.
3. Tap the Settings icon.
4. Tap Social, then toggle Private Session to on.

How to start a Spotify Private Session on desktop

1. Open the Spotify app.
2. Click the dropdown arrow next to your profile display name.
3. Click “Private session.”
4. Once enabled, a closed padlock should appear to the left of your profile photo and display name.

How to further optimize your Spotify privacy settings 

Because Spotify is desperate for data, Private Sessions automatically end each time you restart Spotify or following a long period of inactivity. But there’s a way around this. To enable permanent Private Sessions and further limit data collection, follow the step-by-step guides below.

How to optimize Spotify privacy settings on mobile/tablet

1. Open the Spotify app.
2. Tap the Home icon.
3. Tap the Settings icon.
4. Tap Social.
5. Toggle “Private session” to on.
6. Toggle “Listening activity” and “Recently played artists” to off.

How to optimize Spotify privacy settings on desktop

1. Open the Spotify app.
2. Click the dropdown arrow next to your profile display name.
3. Click “Settings.”
4. Scroll to “Social.”
5. Make sure the “Connect With Facebook” setting is turned off.
6. Toggle “Make my new playlists public,” “Share my listening activity on Spotify,” and “Show my recently played artists on my public profile” to off.
7. Toggle “Start a Private Session to listen anonymously” to on. 

Take your privacy to the next level with a VPN

Optimizing your Spotify privacy settings is important, but it shouldn’t be the endpoint in your online privacy journey. Thankfully, you can level up your privacy on and off Spotify with a VPN.

A VPN, short for virtual private network, secures your connection to any network with encryption. This is especially important when you’re connected to public networks, such as free Wi-Fi hotspots. These networks are unsafe to use by default because anyone else with network access can eavesdrop on your individual activity. With your VPN active, however, you can safely access hotspots and shield your personal traffic from snoopers.

A VPN is also useful when paired with Spotify because it allows you to change your IP address and mask it with the IP address that matches your VPN server. This limits the accurate location data Spotify can collect from you and, in turn, share with third parties.