Cancel Spotify Premium

Five minutes here saves the two things people lose most often when they cancel: a period they'd already paid for, and something they can't get back afterwards.

1. 1Export or note your playlists. Followed playlists stay, but a Family or Duo plan collapsing back to individual accounts is where people lose collaborative ones.
2. 2If you're the manager of a Family or Duo plan, tell the other members first — cancelling removes Premium from all of them, not just you.
3. 3Check whether Spotify came bundled with a phone contract or a hardware promotion; those are cancelled with the provider, not with Spotify.

It does one specific thing, and it is worth being precise about what. Giving written notice of cancellation is the act that ends the auto-renewal obligation, and a dated notice fixes when you gave it. Clicking a cancel button also ends the obligation — but it leaves you with a confirmation email at best and nothing at worst.

That difference is invisible until it matters. If Spotify Premium bills you after the effective date, the question your bank asks is when you cancelled and what proof you have. A dated notice answers both in one document. This is also why it works when you can't sign in: the notice doesn't depend on reaching a button inside the account.

What it does not do is compel Spotify Premium to act. No letter can. Anyone selling you one that does is selling you something that doesn't exist.

Two different questions get mixed up here. The first — money back for a period you paid for and won't finish — is entirely Spotify Premium's decision under its own refund policy, summarised in the self-serve section below. You can ask for it on the form above and the request goes into the notice, but it remains a request.

The second is a charge taken after your cancellation was effective. That isn't discretionary and isn't really a refund: it's a disputed charge, and your card issuer can reverse it. The dated notice is the evidence that supports the dispute, which is the main practical reason to send one at all.

Spotify Premium renews monthly until cancelled. Cancelling drops the account to the free ad-supported tier rather than closing it, so your library and playlists remain and nothing further is charged.

The notice we send asks explicitly for auto-renewal to be disabled and for any stored payment method to be removed, rather than only for the subscription to end. Those are separate things at most providers, and leaving the card on file is how a lapsed account quietly restarts.

The account itself survives as a free account with its playlists, saved albums and followers intact. That means cancelling Premium does not remove your personal data — closing the account is a separate action, and a deletion request is separate again.

Every notice we send also carries a data-deletion request — under the CCPA if you're in the US, or the GDPR if you're in the EU or UK. Both give you a right to ask and oblige the provider to respond, though both also allow retention for specific purposes such as tax records. So it is a right to an answer, not a guarantee of erasure, and the notice asks Spotify Premium to say which exemption it relies on if it keeps anything.

1. 1Premium continues to the end of the current paid period.
2. 2The account then becomes a free account automatically — you are not locked out.
3. 3Downloads for offline listening stop working; the playlists that contained them stay.
4. 4Restarting Premium later is instant and keeps everything, which is worth knowing before you spend time exporting.

If the reason is the price rather than the service, there is usually a smaller number available before you give it up entirely.

• Duo or Family splits one bill across two or more people and is usually cheaper per person than separate individual plans.
• The free tier keeps your entire library — shuffle, ads and no offline playback are what you give up.
• Student verification, where you qualify, cuts the individual price substantially.