How to Follow Someone on Spotify

Following people and artists on Spotify keeps their public playlists and new releases within reach. The steps differ slightly for users versus artists, and between mobile and desktop — here's each one, along with what following actually changes on both sides of the connection. For the wider picture of how follows work, see our Spotify followers guide.

Quick answer: To follow a user, open their profile and tap Follow. The catch is finding the profile first — Spotify's people-search only reliably matches exact usernames, so most people follow via a shared profile link, the Friend Activity feed, or a mutual playlist. To follow an artist, open their artist page and tap Follow.

How to follow a user on Spotify (mobile)

Following a person on the iPhone or Android app takes only a moment once you're on the right profile. The whole trick is getting there, because the Follow button only shows up on the account's actual profile page — not in search results or on their playlists.

1. Get to the person's profile — search their exact username, or open a profile link they shared, or tap their name from a shared playlist to jump straight to their page.
2. On their profile, tap the green Follow button that sits just under their display name and follower count.
3. That's it — the button flips to Following, and they now appear in your Following list. Tapping the same button again unfollows them.

A follow is instant and doesn't need approval — Spotify profiles are public by default, so there's no request to accept the way there is on some social networks. If you want, you can follow several people in one sitting: back out to search or the playlist, open the next profile, and tap Follow again.

How to follow someone on desktop

The desktop app and the browser-based web player at open.spotify.com work almost identically, and both give you one route the mobile app doesn't: pasting a profile link straight into the search bar to land on someone's page.

1. Open the Spotify desktop app or the web player and sign in to your account.
2. Navigate to the person's profile — type their exact username into search, or paste their profile link into the search bar and press Enter.
3. Click Follow beneath their display name. To reverse it, hover the button (it reads Following) and click to unfollow.

Desktop has one extra advantage worth knowing about: the Friend Activity sidebar on the right, which lists what people you already follow are listening to and links back to their profiles — handy for discovering mutual connections to follow next.

How to follow friends on Spotify

The hard part is finding friends, not following them. Spotify's search is built around exact usernames rather than display names, so typing a friend's real name usually returns songs, playlists, and artists — but not their account. That's by design, and it's why so many follows happen through a link someone hands you directly. The reliable routes:

• Ask for their profile link (three dots → Share → Copy link to profile) — the surest method, because it drops you on their exact page with the Follow button ready.
• Facebook friend finder in Settings → Social, which surfaces people from your connected Facebook account.
• Friend Activity sidebar on desktop, where the names of people your friends listen alongside link straight to profiles.
• Shared and collaborative playlists — tap a contributor's name to open their profile, then follow from there.

For the full walkthrough, see how to find and add friends on Spotify.

How to follow an artist

On any artist page, tap or click Follow under the artist name. Finding artists is far easier than finding users, because artist search matches names directly — searching "Taylor Swift" lands you on the verified artist page, no username required.

Following an artist behaves differently from following a person. It tells Spotify you want to hear about that artist's new releases, so their singles and albums surface in your Release Radar and notifications, and following also feeds Spotify's recommendation engine — your followed artists nudge what shows up in your personalized mixes and suggestions. Following a user, by contrast, mainly makes their public playlists and activity easier to keep up with; it doesn't drive release alerts the same way. You can also follow a playlist using the same button to keep it saved in your library and get its updates.

What following actually does

Following is deliberately low-key on Spotify, which is a music service rather than a social feed. Here's exactly what changes when you follow someone — and what doesn't:

• You appear in the other account's followers list. Following isn't anonymous — they can see you there if they look — but Spotify sends no notification, so the follow won't ping them.
• The accounts you follow show up in your own Following list, reachable from your profile, so you always have a tidy roster of people and artists to jump back to.
• Their public activity and playlists become easier to keep up with, and on desktop their listening can appear in your Friend Activity feed.
• For artists, you get release notifications and a recommendations boost; following doesn't expose any private listening data on either side.
• Unfollowing is silent too — tap the Following button again and the connection simply drops, with no alert to the other person.

Curious about the other side of the relationship? Here's how to see your own followers and who's already following you.

Want to see who you're following, plus your followers and public playlists on one screen? Open Music Profile Viewer, a free Spotify profile viewer — read-only and it stores nothing.