How Can I Follow Someone on Spotify?
There is no user search, which is why finding a person is harder than following them.
Open their profile and tap Follow. The difficulty is getting to the profile, because Spotify has no user search.
The search bar finds artists, albums, playlists and podcasts. It does not find listeners. To follow a person you need a link they sent you, or you have to reach them through something they made.
Three routes work. Open a profile link they shared. Open a playlist of theirs and tap the creator's name. Or connect Facebook in settings, which surfaces friends who have done the same.
Artists and playlists are different and are searchable normally — those you can simply look up and follow.
The absence of user search is deliberate and it shapes the whole social layer of the product.
Spotify is not built to be a place where you find people. It is built to be a place where you find music, and the social features exist to support that rather than to create a network. There is no friend request, no mutual connection, no messaging, and no way to browse users.
What exists instead is a one-directional follow that gives you very little: you see what they are listening to in the friend activity panel on desktop, and their public playlists appear on their profile.
That is the whole relationship. There is no feed of their activity, no notification when they add something, and nothing on mobile resembling the desktop friend panel.
So the reason following a person is hard to do is that Spotify does not consider it important, and the reason it does not matter much once done is the same.
Where following genuinely matters is on the other two objects. Following an artist puts their releases into Release Radar and triggers notifications about new music, which is the mechanism by which an artist reaches their existing audience. Following a playlist keeps it in your library and surfaces its additions.
Those two are the follows worth caring about, and they are the ones the search bar actually supports.
Following a person you have a link for
A Spotify profile link opens directly to the profile, where the Follow button sits under the name.
To send your own: open your profile, use the three-dot menu, and choose Share, then Copy link to profile.
The link contains a user ID rather than a readable name, which is why it has to be shared rather than guessed.
On desktop you can also paste a profile link into the search bar and Spotify will resolve it, which is the closest thing to a user lookup that exists.
Reaching a profile through a playlist
Open any public playlist they created. The creator's name appears under the title.
Tapping it opens their profile, where you can follow.
This is the most reliable route in practice, because people share playlists far more often than profiles.
It also works in reverse: following somebody whose playlists you like is the only real use of the feature, since the playlists are the thing you actually wanted.
Finding friends through Facebook
In Settings there is an option to connect Facebook, which surfaces friends who have connected theirs.
This is the only automated friend-finding Spotify offers, and it only reaches people who have made the same connection.
It is also the one most people decline, which is why it rarely finds anybody.
There is no equivalent for contacts, phone numbers or email addresses.
Following artists, which is the one that matters
Search the artist by name and tap Follow on their page.
Following puts their new releases into your Release Radar, triggers a notification on release day if notifications are on, and makes their music more likely to appear in your recommendations.
For the artist, the follower count is the audience they can reach directly, and it is one of the figures playlist curators and labels look at.
It is also the only number on Spotify that behaves like a subscriber count anywhere else — monthly listeners move with placement and promotion, while followers accumulate and stay.
What your own profile shows
Your public playlists, your follower and following counts, and optionally your top artists.
Listening activity is private unless you are on desktop with friend activity enabled, and even then only to people who follow you.
A private session, available in settings, stops anything appearing while it is on, and it switches itself off after a period of inactivity.
Individual playlists can be made private, and that is separate from the account — a public profile can hold private playlists, which is the configuration most people want and few set up.
Questions people ask about following on Spotify
Why can I not search for a person on Spotify?
There is no user search. The search bar finds artists, albums, playlists and podcasts only. A person has to be reached through a link or one of their playlists.
How do I share my Spotify profile?
Open your profile, use the three-dot menu, and choose Share, then copy the link. It contains a user ID rather than a readable name.
What does following a person actually do?
Very little. Their public playlists appear on their profile and their listening may show in the desktop friend activity panel. There is no feed or notification.
Does the person know I followed them?
Their follower count changes and they can see their followers list. Spotify does not send a notification for it.
Is following an artist different?
Yes, and it is the one that matters. It puts their releases into Release Radar and triggers release-day notifications.
Can I hide what I am listening to?
Yes. Use a private session from settings, which switches itself off after a period of inactivity, or keep playlists private individually.
Keep reading
- followers on a Spotify artist profile — Followers are the audience an artist can reach directly on release day, which is what followers on a Spotify artist profile is aimed at.
- what the follower list shows — The reporting on the artist side is narrower than people expect, and what the follower list shows covers it.
- followers against monthly listeners — The two numbers behave completely differently, and followers against monthly listeners explains which one is durable.