Adding Spotify friends without Facebook

I have, regrettably, two Spotify accounts. One was created from within Facebook and automatically included all my Facebook friends who use Spotify. Because I don’t want to lose my Spotify life if I leave Facebook, I created a second Facebook-independent Spotify account using a different email address (this is possible).

However, it would be nice still to follow my Facebook friends’ music selections and activity. Until I close my first account, however, all links to Spotify resources on Facebook will initiate a new session in the Spotify app using my first set of credentials (the Facebook one), and unless I link my second account to Facebook this will remain the case. That of course, defeats the purpose.

However, it is quite straightforward to follow an arbitrary Spotify user once you know their username. However, for accounts created from within Facebook – that is, where the option to create a username is not offered – the username is an unpredictable string of integers.

The process for adding such a user as a friend in a non-Facebook connected Spotify account is as follows:

1. Identify the user you wish to follow on Facebook

2. Navigate to Spotify app tab and find some Spotify activity

3. Inspect the URLs until you find something like this: http://open.spotify.com/user/1161221123/playlist/0UQmCCyK4l2dasfdsafdsaHKkyFl1?fb_action_ids=101512321234189447&fb_action_types=music.playlists&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=28838148123123211232

4. Use the search field in Spotify to navigate directly to that user’s landing page, by inputting spotify:user:username where username is the number in bold above

5. Click follow!