Spotify Now Lets Users Temporarily Block Facebook Sharing

Spotify, the popular streaming music service, was one of Facebook’s launch partners for the Open Graph launch last week. The relationship between the two companies is so close now that new Spotify users actually  have to use a Facebook account to sign up for the service and their listening data is automatically shared with the social network unless they opt out. Quite a number of Spotify’s users, however, weren’t happy about this change and didn’t want to see their playlists and every single song they play on Spotify shared with Facebook and their friends there (though the requirement only applies to new users – those who signed up before the integration don’t have to connect their Facebook and Spotify accounts).

Private Listening

Now, Spotify has made some changes to its desktop app to calm some of its users’ fears. Thanks to a new “private listening” mode, users can now temporarily turn the Facebook sharing feature off for one session. On Twitter, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek noted that users should think about this mode as an equivalent to your  “browsers (sic!) private mode.” The difference, some will surely point out, though, is that your browser doesn’t usually share every page you visit with your friends on Facebook.

If you want to turn off Spotify’s social features completely, you have to go into the preferences and looks for the “disconnect from Facebook” button.