Planning ahead for your Spotify for Artists accounts

Lifetime transfer options and steps to take now for Spotify AB accounts

Spotify AB

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Spotify for Artists Support

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HoursNo published phone line. Contact via the Spotify for Artists support site; sign in with an artist team account to open a support case.

Spotify for Artists Support

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HoursNo published phone line. Contact via the Spotify for Artists support site; sign in with an artist team account to open a support case.

(General customer service)

Verified Jul 2026

Spotify AB does not guarantee transfer of accounts after death. Lifetime planning provides options for managing accounts and controlling who has access to them.

How to protect your Spotify for Artists accounts

7 lifetime planning steps for your Spotify for Artists accounts:

1
Add a trusted person to your Spotify for Artists team at manage.spotify.com/teams. Assign them Admin access (full control including payment methods) or Editor access (profile and promotion but no payment changes). This is the single most important step — it preserves profile access without requiring any Spotify bereavement process after your death.
2
Address your distributor account separately. Your distributor (DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, Amuse, etc.) is where royalties flow. Note which distributor you use so your executor can identify it and use its estate-transfer process where one exists. If using DistroKid, consider purchasing Leave a Legacy on each release.
3
Note both your Spotify for Artists account and your distributor account separately for your executor. They are distinct accounts; neither one alone is sufficient.
4
If you have meaningful streaming revenue, address it in your estate plan. Include your distributor name, estimated monthly streaming income, and how the distributor collects and pays royalties.
5
Claim and verify your artist profile if you have not already. Verified profiles with the Spotify checkmark are easier for rights holders to manage after death.
6
Evaluate your distributor's estate-handling policies before signing. CD Baby and TuneCore retain releases on platforms under different terms than DistroKid. Pick based on how the distributor handles post-death catalog maintenance, not just on upload fees.
7
Back up content managed through Spotify for Artists: Canvas videos, profile images, bio text, and pitch history. These are tied to the account and may not be recoverable if access is lost.

Family sharing

Spotify for Artists supports team access at three levels (per support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/access-levels-in-spotify-for-artists/): Admin (all actions including adding and editing payment methods), Editor (edit profile, pitch releases, add Clips and Canvas, manage campaigns and Shopify merch, but cannot edit payment methods), and Reader (view stats, roster, and profile only). An optional Team Admin role can invite and remove team members and edit access levels. Team members are added at manage.spotify.com/teams. This is the primary estate-planning mechanism: adding a trusted person to the team before death preserves profile access without any Spotify bereavement process. Team access does NOT control royalty payments — those flow through the distributor.

Should you save your passwords for your family?

Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:

  • Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
  • It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
  • Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).

Frequently asked questions

There are three roles: Admin (all actions including adding and editing payment methods), Editor (edit profile, pitch, add Clips and Canvas, manage campaigns and Shopify merch, but no payment changes), and Reader (view stats and profile only). An optional Team Admin can invite and remove team members. Teams are managed at manage.spotify.com/teams. Adding a trusted person as Admin before death is the cleanest estate-planning step.

An inventory listing the Spotify for Artists account lets a fiduciary identify it and act on it through the operator's official channels.

There is no beneficiary designation option for Spotify for Artists. This account type does not support naming a recipient the way bank or investment accounts do.

SimplyTrustSimplyTrust Editorial·

Sources

Data sourced from Spotify AB primary sources (7 pages reviewed). How we research.