Spotify: The Most Intimate Form of Social Media?

by Sarah Booher

A teacher of mine in school once asked every student, “What aspect of your life reveals the most about yourself?” Some said childhood bedrooms, some said specific books, some said Instagram, and many responded by saying their Spotify accounts. The act of ‘Spotify Stalking’ - looking through someone else’s Spotify profile to gage information about them - is slowly becoming an acknowledged form of behaviour on social media. This past season of the American television show ‘The Bachelor’ was spoiled because one fan of the show noticed that two of the contestants were listening to each other's playlists on Spotify. The conclusion drawn from this was that the contestants must end up together, or else they wouldn’t be listening to each other’s music, right? With social media now an ingrained part of our lives, carefully curating a version of ourselves to present online has become second nature. But Spotify goes beyond the veneer and offers a largely unfiltered glimpse into people’s feelings and emotions.

Spotify is by nature not intended to be a social media platform, and it is that very designation that has made it one of the most intimate forms of social media in existence. Whether intentionally or not, Spotify playlists serve as a chronological catalogue of the important moments in one’s life. Each song on any given playlist is a timestamp of one’s emotions during that period in their life. Not only can I look back on a playlist from 2016 and tell whether I was feeling happy or sad based on the songs I had been listening to, but the playlists that I choose to make are a reminder of what was important to me during that time, what I considered important enough to memorialize.

I create playlists for occasions, for specific moods, and to remember certain moments or emotions. “I Can See the Sea” was for sitting in the library late at night during first year exams, staring out the window as the sun set at four in the afternoon. “SR88” is for driving up to the mountains to go skiing; I can still see that specific stretch of highway playing like a movie reel through my mind when I listen to it. In five years when I look back on my Spotify, “Moody Beach Walk” will remind me of the amount of time I spent going on long walks by myself during the fall of 2020. Each playlist is a time-capsule of my life and my emotions, what I was doing and how I felt doing it.

And all of it is public - by clicking on someone’s Spotify profile, you are instantly gaining a vast amount of insight about that person's innermost thoughts and emotions. You can see the songs that they listen to at two in the morning when they’re alone, or the songs that they sing in the shower. And when I’m on my laptop, a sidebar shows in real time a list of what every person I’m following on Spotify is listening to at that very moment. Someone listening to their workout playlist? I know they’re on a run. Someone shuffling through heavy electronic music? I assume that they are on AUX at a party. If someone last listened to music over twenty-four hours ago, they must be busy and out of the house, and if someone is listening to sad music at three in the morning, I can see that too.

And you can learn about relationships: someone who frequently listens to another person's playlist might be thinking about that person, if not actively spending time with them. The social side of Spotify serves as an authentic stream of one’s every emotion and feeling, existing as a constant catalogue of our routines and mental states.

Music has always been used as a way of expressing emotions and memories, both for ourselves and for others. Burning a CD for someone used to be a way of sharing something personal about yourself with another person, intentionally choosing songs to convey a specific meaning. Now with streaming services like Spotify having become the norm, sharing music is not so much an intentional choice but rather a byproduct. Listening to music has begun to exist in a grey area between being a private and emotionally intimate activity, while also being publicised for anyone to see and interpret.

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