“I really enjoy some of the suggestions after finishing an album, but sometimes I can’t find those songs later on. Is there a way to see my Spotify listening history so I can find those tracks?”
Absolutely. Spotify provides a feature known as “Recently Played” or listening history for this purpose. In this article, we’ll guide you on how to find your Spotify listening history on both mobile devices and desktops. While Spotify currently doesn’t provide an option to delete songs or clear the listening history, there are alternatives to avoid misleading recommendations from certain songs in your recently played.
The listening history on music streaming platforms like Spotify is a convenient feature with several benefits. One of them is the ability to rediscover your favorite songs by reviewing what you’ve recently listened to. This can be particularly helpful for finding tracks you might have forgotten but wish to listen to again. It also facilitates playlist creation based on your recent preferences, making it easier to add tracks to playlists without searching for each song individually.
Moreover, Spotify uses your listening history to offer personalized recommendations. By analyzing your preferences and habits, the platform suggests new songs and artists that align with your taste.
Spotify makes it straightforward to find your listening history. There is a “Recently played” section right on the Home page of your Spotify displaying albums, artists, and playlists you recently listened to. If you want to see the specific tracks in your listening history, use the following steps on your mobile and desktop devices.
To access your Spotify listening history on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device, follow this guide:
As of now, Spotify’s listening history feature allows you to view your past activity going back approximately two months.
You can also see your listening history of specific tracks on your Spotify desktop app. However, the web player only shows the recently played playlists and albums.
As you may have noticed, the recently played list accessible through the Spotify app is not a complete listening history of your account. Nevertheless, Spotify offers a “Download your data” tool that allows you to request a copy of your personal data, including your “Streaming history for the past year” and “Extended streaming history for the lifetime of your account.” If you wish to access your complete listening history data, which includes track information and details about when and how you streamed content, follow the steps below to request it from Spotify.
1. Log into Spotify.com/account. Scroll down to the “Security and privacy” section and select “Privacy settings.“
2. Check the boxes below “Account data” and “Extended streaming history“, and click the “Request data” button.
3. Go to your email inbox, find the “Confirm your Spotify data request” email from Spotify, and click the “CONFIRM” button. Then, wait for your data to be prepared for downloading.
Unfortunately, You cannot clear your Spotify listening history or recently played unless you delete your account, nor can you remove songs from the Recently Played. While Spotify used to offer the option to delete songs from the Recently Played section, this feature was removed and has not been restored as of 2023.
However, if you wish to manage specific songs in your listening history, for instance, removing songs played during sharing your phone on a road trip or songs recommended by autoplay that you dislike, and you want to avoid them influencing your recommendations, there are alternative methods you can consider.
Although Spotify currently doesn’t provide an option to remove songs from your Recently Played or clear your listening history, you can take alternative measures to prevent specific songs from playing in the future or reduce the impact of certain songs and playlists on your Spotify music recommendations.
If you wish to keep certain songs from appearing in your Recently Played on Spotify, you can turn on Private Session before you listen to them on Spotify. By default, Private Session is not enabled. Once activated, the music you listen to during the Private Session will not be visible in your Recently Played, won’t be published to Friend Activity, and your Top Artists won’t be updated.
Please note that if Private Session is turned on, it will end when you restart Spotify or after an extended period of inactivity. This feature provides users with a level of privacy and control over the visibility of their listening history on Spotify.
1. Go to the Spotify app on your Mac or Windows computer. Click your Profile icon at the top right and select Private session.
2. The Private Session is enabled with a padlock on the top of the screen.
The Taste Profile on Spotify is the platform’s understanding of your musical preferences based on your listening habits. It plays a crucial role in personalizing your music recommendations, including features like Discover Weekly and your Home page. Additionally, the Taste Profile contributes to personalized experiences such as Spotify Wrapped.
If you choose to exclude a playlist from your Taste Profile, both past and future listens from that playlist will have a reduced impact on your taste summaries and recommendations. Streams from excluded playlists will not be included in the top artist or track counts for Spotify Wrapped, but still contribute to your total listening time.
The exclusion of a playlist from your Taste Profile becomes effective within 48 hours. While some recommended content, like Discover Weekly, may not be immediately affected until the following week.
If you wish to minimize the influence of certain playlists in your listening history on your music recommendations, here’s a guide on how to exclude a playlist from your Taste Profile on Spotify. You can perform this action on your mobile and desktop Spotify app, as well as the web player.
If you want to prevent certain songs in your Recently Played list from being played in the future, you can use a helpful feature to hide the song from a Spotify playlist. If it’s an individual song displayed in your Recently Played, you can use the “Don’t play this” feature instead.
However, it’s important to note the following:
To hide a song in a playlist from your Recently Played, follow these steps:
To stop a song in your listening history from being played in the future:
Another effective way to prevent certain songs from appearing in your Recently Played list is to download them as MP3 files for offline listening. This approach also ensures you’re prepared for situations where an internet connection may not be available.
To download Spotify songs and playlists with or without a Premium subscription, you can explore a smart Spotify music downloader — Pazu Spotify Converter. This tool is designed for both Spotify Free and Premium users, enabling you to download all Spotify songs, playlists, or albums for offline listening. It can extract Spotify music and convert it to various high-quality formats, including MP3, M4A, AIFF, WAV, FLAC, and AAC. This allows you to enjoy Spotify Premium features within a free account and transfer the downloaded tracks to other MP3-compatible devices for added convenience. An additional benefit of using Pazu Spotify Converter is that the downloaded songs won’t be shown in your listening history.
Now, let’s learn how to use Pazu Spotify Music Converter to download and convert Spotify songs with a free subscription from the following tutorial.
Download, install, and run Pazu Spotify Converter on your Mac or Windows. Log in to your Spotify account with the built-in web player.
Click the gear icon on the top right corner. Here you can select the output format (AUTO[M4A], MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, or AIFF), choose output audio quality, customize the output path, organize the output files in various ways, rename output files, and more.
Use the integrated Spotify web player to search the songs, albums, or playlists, you want to download. Click the Add to List button to load all songs in the album or playlist.
Click the Convert button to start downloading the Spotify songs to your local computer.
You can download individual songs or batch-convert the entire playlist.
To download individual songs or specific songs of your choice, simply uncheck the ones you don’t want to download.
Check all the songs in the playlist or album to download them all.
Once the conversion is done, you can find your Spotify songs downloaded as local files by clicking the folder button or directly going to the output folder you customized in the previous step.
Note: The free trial version of Pazu Spotify Converter enables you to convert the first three minutes of each song. You can remove the trial limitation by purchasing the full version.
Download and convert any Spotify songs, albums, playlists to MP3/M4A etc.