Can You See Who Follows Your Spotify Playlist?

If you're actively building a Spotify playlist, then you've probably wondered who exactly is following your playlist.

It would certainly be wonderful to know this, but unfortunately…

You can't see who follows your Spotify playlists, but you can see how many followers each of your playlists has. To see this number, simply click on the playlist, and locate the number of likes directly below the playlist description.

Will Spotify Add The Ability to See Who Follows My Playlist?

Spotify has officially stated that they have no immediate plans to allow playlist curators to see who follows their playlists, despite the fact that this is one of the most requested features.

In fact, Spotify used to have this feature, but it was removed in March 2013.

So it doesn't seem like that this feature is going to be coming back, and the main reason for this is to ensure the privacy of Spotify listeners.

Secret guilty pleasures can stay secret I suppose.

Do Other People See If You Play Their Playlists?

The creator of a playlist is not notified if you play their playlist. They will only be notified if you Follow the playlist.

Your Followers can also see the playlist you're listening to in the Friend Feed.

To keep this private go to your Desktop App > Preferences > Turn off ‘Publish my activity on Spotify'.

Do You Get Notified If Someone Likes Your Spotify Playlist?

You will get notified by Spotify is someone likes your playlist, but you won't receive any personal information about that person.

So you can keep tabs on how your playlists are growing, but that's about it, as you won't be able to gather any other data on your followers.

How To See Who Follows Your Personal Spotify Account

While you can't see who follows your playlists, you can see who is following you on your personal Spotify account.

Some listeners may also follow the playlist creator to stay up to date with any new playlists that they may add and Spotify does allow users to be able to view who follows their Spotify user accounts.

In other words, you can assume that people who follow you likely follow one or more of your playlists.

To view who follows your Spotify user account, follow these simple steps:

1. Open the Spotify app on your phone, computer or web browser
2. Make sure you are logged in and click on your Profile Name
3. Click on the “Followers” tab

Once you click on the Followers button, you'll be displayed a list of all your followers.

Personally, I don't find this very relevant, as I have way more playlist followers than profile followers, so it doesn't really help me.

But it's at least good to know its here in case any of your followers have playlists of their own that you might want to have your music on.

Since you know they follow you, you already have an “in” with them.

How To Organically Grow Your Spotify Playlist Followers 

Great, now we know how many people are following our playlists, but how do we grow them?

Probably the fastest way to grow is to run Facebook and Instagram ads, but this is not how I would run ads.

If I'm going to pay money for ads, then I want to use them to get new fans on my EMAIL LIST, not to Spotify.

Your email list is KING because you don't own the Spotify platform. If you send people there, you have no guarantee that they will even follow you or your playlist.

Even if they do follow, you have no way of communicating with your followers.

Maybe you are running a sale on your merch, but how in the world are you going to tell all your Spotify playlist followers about it?

You can't.

But if you build your email list, you now have an audience that you own and control, and you can then send people from your email list to Spotify, to your shop, to Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, you name it.

An email list of engaged subscribers is a real asset.

If you want to learn how you can get started building an email list, then check out my article here.

In the meantime, how do we grow our Spotify playlists?

1. Share Your Playlists On Social Media And With Your Email List

Hey, there's that email list thing again.

Just build it into your regular posting schedule to promote one or more of your playlists that you are trying to grow.

If you regularly update your playlist, this actually gives you something of value to promote too, so you don't have to feel like you're bugging your fans.

After all, if they like your music, and you're building a playlist full of music that is similar to yours, then you're helping them find new music they like.

That's a win/win!

2. Promote Your Playlist On Forums, Groups, and Subreddits

I've had some good success just joining Facebook groups, forums, and subreddits where I know fans of my micro-genre of music hangout, and then sharing my playlist.

Knowing your micro-genre is key because it helps you to identify who are the people who are going to be the MOST LIKELY to love your music.

Once you know who these people are, you just have to find them, and then attract them to your brand.

Think of it this way…

Let's make up a fake unit of measurement called “marketing points”, which represent the time, money, and resources you have available to you to promote your music.

Labels might have thousands or millions of “marketing points”, but you might only have 100.

Do you really want to waste your valuable and few marketing points on people that don't like your genre, or simply aren't the most likely to enjoy it?

Of course not.

We ONLY want to spend our time on the people who are LIKELY to love our music and brand.

So figure out your micro-genre, and then join the groups, forums, and subreddits they hangout in online.

If you need help figuring out your micro-genre, then grab my free guide here.

How To Make Money From Spotify Playlists

There is really only one way to make money from Spotify playlists, and that is to get your playlist listed on a third party playlist submission tool like “SubmitHub“.

Some will say that you can get paid directly by artists for song placements on your playlists, but this is forbidden by Spotify's terms and conditions, and can even get you banned from the platform.

So do not ever accept payment to put a song on a playlist, and don't ever pay someone else to put your music on their playlist.

This policy helps protect the listener experience on Spotify. If everyone was just paying for playlist placements, then the only music we would hear would be by those with the most money, and not necessarily the best music.

The reason you can use a tool like SubmitHub is because you aren't actually paying for a placement. You're just paying for playlist curators to give your music a listen for possible placement.

In order to qualify, you need to have at least 1,000 organic followers on your Spotify playlist.

Once approved, artists can start paying you to listen to their music for possible placement on your playlist.

I hope you got value from this post on, Can You See Who Follows Your Spotify Playlist?

If so, feel free to share, and let me know in the comments below…

What other questions do you have about growing on Spotify?