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Deprecation of the Spotify Follow Button

Posted October 15, 2021

Ole Hejlskov

The Follow Button enables developers to embed functionality to follow artists or users directly on their website.

Multiple factors have contributed to this deprecation, mainly:

  • Minimal usage - the Spotify Follow Button accounts for less than 0.1% of all followers for any given artist on the platform.
  • Passive user experience - when users click the follow button, there is little indication that they have completed the action and it does not encourage users to further engage with artists.

As an alternative to the Spotify Follow Button, we recommend linking directly to an artist page using HTML or building similar functionality using the Follow API and Library API, enabling more use cases such as following playlists and saving albums, podcasts, and episodes to the user’s library.

You should take steps now to remove the Follow Button HTML code from any websites or blogs where you have added it. The Spotify Follow Button will be shut down on December 15, 2021. On that date, any Follow Buttons embedded on your website will be hidden from view.