How To Change your Username on Spotify

Can you change your username on Spotify? If you have grown up with the service, can you change your name to reflect an older, wiser you? Given the importance of usernames online, having one that reflects you as a person is important. So can you change your name on the app?

Unfortunately no. Well, you can but it’s a royal pain to do. I’ll cover that in a minute.

A username is your online identity for that particular app or website and due care and attention needs to be put into choosing it. Especially when it’s a chat app, social network or somewhere you interact with others. We all change as we grow and the username you picked when you were thirteen probably sounded so cool back then. Now you’re in your twenties, it doesn’t sound quite so cool.

If you joined Spotify with your email address, Spotify generates a username for you. If you joined using Facebook, you got to choose your own name or Spotify will use your Facebook name. The auto-generated usernames were annoying but at least thousands of users were in the same situation and had the same type of username.

If you joined through Facebook, you had the chance to pick your own Spotify username. That either worked for you or against you.

Change your Spotify username

There is only one way I know of to change your Spotify username and that was confirmed by the company themselves. You have to create a new account, select a username you like, contact Spotify Customer Support and have them transfer your old data to your new account and shut down your old account.

Apparently, it has something to do with the way Spotify writes your account to the database. Where most account details are changeable, the username is not and messes everything up if they attempt to change it. It was easier to not allow username changes than to change the entire database schema to allow you to change your name.

So while not being able to change your username is an annoyance, there is a solid reason behind it.

As you can imagine, getting CS to change your account isn’t quick and will take a while to get hold of a representative let alone have them perform the data migration from your old account to the new. This is the only way you can change your username on Spotify though. The one you choose during setup is hardwired into your account from the outset.

You can contact Spotify CS through the web form here, through their Twitter account or Facebook. Depending on how busy they are, they will walk you through the migration process.

You can import your playlists to your new account but you will lose any followers you might have, your friends, favorites, favorite artists and all that good stuff.

Create a new Spotify account

When you set up your new Spotify account, you still have the option of signing up with Facebook or with your email address. The same options still apply, Facebook lets you choose a name while the email address option doesn’t. If you have a username in mind that isn’t likely to be taken, choose Facebook. If you want a little more privacy or doesn’t mind a random username, choose email address.

1. Navigate to the Spotify sign up page here.
2. Choose Sign Up With Facebook or Sign up with your email address.
3. Complete the form or add your Facebook details.
4. Allow Spotify to auto-generate a name, use your Facebook name or select your own.
5. Complete the application wizard.

Once you have your new account, you will need to contact Spotify CS and ask them to help you migrate your old account to your new one. You will obviously need to swap over your payment method yourself if you’re a premium user and add all your friends, albums, artists and so on.

Spotify CS can migrate your playlists but nothing else. If you had student discounts or any other offer running on your original account, you will likely lose these and won’t be able to apply for them again until the waiting period has elapsed. That’s a whole year for the student discount!

Spotify is a solid music platform that offers great value for money and the ability to listen to anything, anywhere. While not being able to change your username is an annoyance, in the grand scheme of things, it’s a small thing compared to the value the service as a whole brings. Even then, Customer Services will still try to help!