How can I delete Facebook and keep my Spotify account?
October 24, 2019 9:05 AM   Subscribe

If I signed up for Spotify using my Facebook account (10 years ago), can I separate the two and delete Facebook while keeping my Spotify account (with 100s of playlists) intact? I'm thinking I am going to have to delete my Spotify account and start over (or delete it permanently too...)

The only darn service I signed up for using Facebook is Spotify. OOPS. The only reason I have not deleted my Facebook account permanently is because I use Spotify. Is there an approved/confirmed method for switching my Spotify account to an email-based authentication that does not ping Facebook?

An "official" response from Spotify in 2012 says: "If you created your Spotify account using Facebook then there is no way to separate your accounts." True?

Also, this person on Reddit claims to have found a solution that works, but it is from 4 years ago. I imagine both services have changed dramatically since then...
posted by mrgrimm to Computers & Internet (8 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
When I deactivated (not deleted) Facebook, the only difference to my Spotify account is that now I have to login with a ~10 digit numerical username (that I did not create). None of my playlists, etc were affected.
posted by sacrifix at 9:09 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


I signed up for Spotify the same way as you, and deleted my FB account over a year ago, I still have my Spotify account with no ill effects.

Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what I did, I suspect it was the same as that Reddit post. I do remember having to use that 10 digit number as a username.

Here is a relatively new article detailing what looks like another method.

Regardless of the method, I'm pretty sure you have to do it from the Facebook side, which means you'll still need access to to your FB account.
posted by jeremias at 9:54 AM on October 24, 2019


I didn’t even think about this when I deleted my Facebook account last year, and can’t recall what I had to do to next log into Spotify, so it must not have been a big deal. I use Spotify every day.
posted by sallybrown at 9:57 AM on October 24, 2019 [1 favorite]


If you can't figure out the log in issues, one thing you could do is make all your playlists public/shareable, make a new spotify account, and then "follow" all the playlists on your original account. They should show up under your playlists.
posted by CMcG at 10:14 AM on October 24, 2019


I also de-activated (did not delete) my facebook account, but kept spotify. I believe what I did was create a device password so that I could log in to the same spotify account (with a long random digit username instead of my facebook username, like sacrifix said). If I remember correctly, I had to re-activate facebook temporarily. If you haven't closed your FB account yet that's probably easier. I currently have facebook deactivated and my spotify was unaffected--all playlists intact.

Here are the links that I believe ultimately helped me:
Spotify forum

and

set device password
posted by kochenta at 11:00 AM on October 24, 2019


In preparation for deleting my Spotify account, I used the API to download all my playlists as JSON files. The API also allows you to add tracks to a playlist. So there's a possible workaround.
posted by bricoleur at 12:37 PM on October 24, 2019


For my Spotify and other accounts where I had signed up via Facebook, I just followed the Forgot/Reset password links on each site. They then sent the reset link to my email associated with my Facebook account (even though I didn’t create a password when I originally signed up).
posted by hexaflexagon at 9:19 AM on October 25, 2019


I asked Spotify support about this in 2016, and I got this response:
You originally created your Spotify account through Facebook. However, your Spotify and Facebook accounts have now become unlinked. This is why you can't log into Spotify at the moment. Not to worry, we can help out with this.

We can free up your email address so you can open a new Spotify account. We’ll back up all your music/playlists/followers and transfer them over, so you won’t lose that awesome music catalog you’ve been building.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:42 PM on October 25, 2019


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