August 4, 2025, 5:54 am | Read time: 3 minutes
A new website is currently causing a stir. Under the name “Panama Playlists,” it collects publicly viewable music data from celebrities, politicians, and tech CEOs on Spotify. It’s not just about harmless favorite songs—the platform also raises serious questions about privacy at the streaming service.
According to the site’s operators, with some research, real Spotify accounts of numerous personalities can be found, many under their real names. The website reveals: “Many use their real names. With a bit of detective work, I could say with quite certainty: Yes, that’s them. We’ve been combing through their accounts since summer 2024. Playlists, live listening feeds, everything. I know which songs they played when and how often.” Those affected include celebrities like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, whose Spotify playlists are open to view.
Celebrities Confirm Authenticity of Their Spotify Playlists
Some of those affected have already confirmed the data. For instance, tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “I can confirm that this playlist is real.” His publicly viewable Spotify playlist “Best Music Ever” mainly features music from the early 2000s.
Further feedback has also been received. The U.S. tech portal “The Verge” spoke with several listed individuals. Many confirmed the authenticity of the music data. However, in some cases, songs appeared that might have been played during a fitness class, not necessarily reflecting the actual music choices of the person involved. Nevertheless, the case of openly accessible celebrity playlists on Spotify demonstrates how easy it is to analyze personal preferences and activities through publicly available data.
Privacy Gap at Spotify?
By default, Spotify playlists are publicly visible. Users must actively set them to private if they wish to keep this content private. Individual playlists can also be set to private.
The creators of Panama Playlists have apparently systematically searched for Spotify accounts and playlists of well-known individuals and celebrities and evaluated their public content. But it doesn’t stop at publicly visible lists. For some affected journalists, data on playback frequency was also disclosed—information that is not supposed to be freely accessible. How exactly this data was obtained remains unclear. Spotify itself has not yet commented on the incident.
Read also: “More and More AI Garbage—Why I’m Not Interested in Spotify!”
The Panama Playlists not only bring a smile to the faces of those curious about the music tastes of prominent personalities but also highlight a potential privacy gap at the globally popular streaming service.