StreamHistory FAQ: Spotify export, Wrapped differences and privacy

No. Your file is processed on your device and never uploaded to our servers. StreamHistory.app reads your Spotify export inside your browser, so your messages, history and other contents stay on your device.

To be completely open: the page itself also loads ad, consent and analytics scripts (Google AdSense and a cookieless Umami counter). Those scripts never receive your file or anything read from it. See the privacy policy for details.

Opening and browsing your file is free, and stays free. A one-time €5.99 unlock (no subscription) adds exports and downloads and lifts the free size limits for large files on StreamHistory.app. It pays for development and hosting. Ads stay on for everyone, and free viewing never goes away.

Lost access on a new browser? Use Restore purchase with the email you paid with.

For the full picture, request Extended streaming history on Spotify's account privacy page. It covers every play since your account was created. The faster Account data package also works, but its streaming history only covers about the last year and has fewer details (no albums, skips or countries).

The export guide shows where to find both options, and what's in the file compares them field by field.

Spotify says extended streaming history can take up to 30 days. Many people receive it sooner, often within a week or two. Account data usually arrives within a few days. You first need to confirm the request through a link in an email, and the download link in the final email expires after some days (around two weeks), so download it promptly.

The export is a snapshot. It contains your plays up to roughly the date Spotify prepared it, and nothing after. If you requested it weeks ago, your recent listening is not in the file. Request a new export from the privacy page when you want to bring it up to date; you can load the old and new files together and duplicates are removed.

Several reasons, and none of them means either side is wrong:

• Spotify's own counting is not public. How Wrapped decides what counts as a play and how it ranks artists has never been fully published.
• Our rule is simple and visible. StreamHistory counts a stream when at least 30 seconds were played (you can change that). Total time listened includes every play, even short ones.
• The Wrapped period is shorter. Wrapped covers roughly January to early or mid November. We use full calendar years.
• Time zones. Spotify records times in UTC, and we convert them to your time zone, which can move plays around midnight into a different day or even year.

More on this on the every year's Wrapped page.

By default a play counts as a stream when it lasted at least 30 seconds. You can switch the threshold to 5, 10 or 60 seconds in the settings. Shorter plays are still recorded in your file and still count towards your total time listened; they just do not add to stream counts or rankings by streams.

Check a few things:

• Make sure it is the zip Spotify sent (usually my_spotify_data.zip), not a partially downloaded file. Download it again if it was interrupted.
• The zip must contain files like Streaming_History_Audio_*.json, endsong_*.json or StreamingHistory_music_*.json. If you only requested other data, there may be no streaming history in it.
• If you unzipped it, select the JSON files or the whole folder rather than the PDF.
• Try a current desktop browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari. Very old browsers and some in-app browsers are not supported.

Yes. Drop the zips, the JSON files or a whole folder together. StreamHistory merges everything and removes duplicate plays, so files from overlapping requests do not double-count. If you load both account data and extended history, plays already in the extended history are dropped from the account data.

Yes. You can request the export, download the zip and open StreamHistory in your phone's browser; there is nothing to install. Very large histories need a fair amount of memory, so if an older phone struggles, try a computer.

Many records in the file have no track or artist name. Usually they are podcast episodes or audiobook chapters (which have their own name fields), local files you played from your device, or tracks that were later removed from Spotify. Their time still counts towards your total, but songs without a name cannot appear in the top lists.

Yes, if they are in your export. The extended history includes podcast episodes and, in newer exports, audiobook chapters. Account data has separate podcast files. StreamHistory shows top podcasts and episodes alongside your music, and video plays are read from the video history files.

Spotify stores every play in UTC. StreamHistory converts it to your browser's time zone by default. If you lived somewhere else for most of your history, or want to compare with someone, pick another time zone in the settings and all dates and hour charts update.

Free: totals, the top 100 artists, songs, albums, podcasts and episodes, the year-by-year view, listening clock, monthly timeline, habits, search and fun cards.

For very large histories, the free view uses the first 150,000 plays and tells you so. Most people are below that; heavy listeners with a decade of history may be above it. The one-time €5.99 unlock includes every play, full lists beyond the top 100, CSV and JSON exports, shareable image cards and custom date ranges.

Your file is processed on your device and never uploaded to our servers. The results live in the open browser tab. When you close or reload it, they are gone, and you load the file again next time. IP addresses in the file are skipped while reading and are never stored or shown.

No. StreamHistory never asks for your Spotify password and does not connect to your Spotify account. It only reads the files Spotify sends you. That is also why it can show your whole history: connected apps usually only see your recent listening.

No. StreamHistory is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB. We only read the data export that Spotify provides to every user.