Playlists made private by Spotify

In the past 12 months, I had two playlists made private by Spotify. This means they cannot be found on the search or even be seen by other users by using a direct link like https://open.spotify.com/playlist/23IXDdvjbr6fIDuvBsLXaQ.

I was informed of this fact through an email by Spotify titled ‘Notice under Spotify Terms and Conditions of Use’ which states that my account ‘has engaged in unauthorized use of the Spotify service in violation of the Terms’. That’s all the information I have. They do not clarify what ‘unauthorized use of the Spotify service in violation of the Terms’ specifically means.

For months, I have been trying to get this reverted or simply obtain the information of what I did wrong.

I have been developing these playlists through honest methods for years. I never bought followers or streams. I never used bots. Through this unilateral action, Spotify made my efforts in the past years useless.

Spotify’s support team does not offer any light on this. After many contact attempts, an escalation case was opened in March 2023, but I never received any follow-up. I have been contacting support in a loop. They not only do not explain what the issue that originated their action was but also abruptly disconnect the conversation when they feel it’s time to. They also do not provide a status of the escalation case. Sometimes they disconnect even before the conversation even starts, probably because they feel that my initial request, which is a long chunk of text aimed at providing context on the whole situation, is not worth their time. Spotify has been burning a lot of support time due to that, given their representatives had to spend a considerable accumulated amount of time reading my request over and over. In one of these occurrences, I spoke with the same agent on two different days and this person did not even seem to recognize the case. My gigantic initial message would be easy to remember, I would assume. No wonder their score on Trustpilot is 1.9.

I also sent hundreds of messages requesting the status of the escalation case to support@spotify.com. I never received any response. And I am not alone in this. Other curators are being punished for undisclosed reasons and receiving the same treatment from Spotify.

It’s unfortunate, however, that Spotify believes they can unilaterally take these actions without the consideration of telling users what they did wrong so they do not repeat whatever that is. I would be very willing to comply with whatever that is if the playlists were made public again. It’s unfortunate that their support is not interested in solving anything and is trained to disconnect conversations in the middle.

Curators like me are forced to rely on the correct functioning of these platforms, and we believe that by following the rules, the other side will keep their side of the bargain, but this does seem the case here. Playlists made private by Spotify hurt independent curators and that is not good for the industry as a whole.