Beware Before Connecting Your Spotify Account to Matchfy
We recently signed up for Matchfy to test it as a playlist curator, and we wanted to share an experience that caught us completely off guard.
Like many music marketing platforms, Matchfy asked us to connect our Spotify account. That's a pretty standard process these days, so we didn't think much of it.
A couple of hours later, we opened Spotify and noticed something was very wrong.
More than 80 songs had been added to each of our public playlists, and our account was suddenly following what appeared to be hundreds — potentially over a thousand — artists that we had never chosen to follow.
As a brand that takes playlist curation seriously, this was a huge problem.
Our playlists are carefully curated. Every song that gets added is there for a reason. We don't want a third-party platform making changes to public playlists that represent our brand, our taste, and our recommendations to listeners.
Worse, we then had to spend hours manually removing tracks from playlists and unfollowing artists that we never intended to follow in the first place.
Why This Matters
For casual Spotify users, this might be a minor annoyance.
For playlist curators, bloggers, labels, DJs, and music industry professionals, it's a much bigger issue.
Your Spotify account is part of your public identity. Your playlists, follows, and listening activity all help shape how artists, listeners, and industry contacts perceive your brand.
If a platform is given permission to modify that account, you should understand exactly what permissions you're granting and what actions may be taken on your behalf.
Check Your Spotify Permissions
If you've connected your Spotify account to any third-party service, it's worth periodically reviewing which applications have access.
You can do this through Spotify's connected apps settings and remove access for any service you no longer use or trust.
Our Advice
Before connecting your Spotify account to Matchfy—or any playlist pitching platform—take a few minutes to understand exactly what permissions you're granting.
If you're a curator, consider using a secondary Spotify account for testing new services whenever possible.
We're not writing this to tell people what platform they should or shouldn't use. We're simply sharing our experience so other curators know what happened to us and can make an informed decision before connecting their Spotify accounts.
Had we known our playlists and follows could be modified in this way, we would have thought much more carefully before authorizing access.
Consider this a friendly warning from a team that spent the better part of an afternoon cleaning up a Spotify account that was exactly the way we wanted it before connecting it.
