How Spotify Creates Needless Barriers To Deleting an Account

2 min read

Spotify recently updated their terms of service. While their terms were never especially good (and the use of Facebook login exacerbated the situation), their updated terms appear to take contact lists and geographic information.

This is not necessary to play music. I've used Spotify since the early days (back from the dark ages when you could actually create an account without Facebook), but these updated terms are too much. I headed over to Spotify to cancel, and found a great example of how a company shows that it has no respect for its users. The account cancellation process at Spotify is foolishly, unnecessarily complicated. To demonstrate this, I made a video of the process, and how it stalls out.

As shown in the video, you need to submit a form that explains you want to cancel your account. This then triggers two emails: one confirmation that says that Spotify is working on your request. Then, several hours later, Spotify sends a second email outlining the process that needs to be followed to actually delete your account. This second email ended up in my spam account; the first one came through with no problem. If I was cynical, I might almost think that Spotify was messing with the headers of their emails to trigger spam filters. But no company hates their users that much (I hope).

It also appears that Spotify has taken steps to make the account cancellation process more complicated. Earlier versions - while still not good - at least eliminated a few steps.