Have you ever wondered what bops powerful figures are listening to on Spotify? You’d be amazed what you can get with a profile search — but just in case you want them all in one place, there’s the Panama Playlists, a newly published collection of data on the musical listening habits of politicians, journalists, and tech figures, as curated by an anonymous figure.
The site appears to have data for a number of notables, including Open AI CEO Sam Altman, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, US attorney general Pam Bondi, and Late Night host Seth Meyers. Five people featured on the website confirmed to The Verge that data for them is accurate; “Thankfully mine isn’t too embarrassing,” New York Times journalist Mike Isaac tweeted. Spotify’s Laura Batey said Spotify would not have any comments before this story’s publication.
“I’d be way more interested in is what podcasts people like JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt etc are listening to!!”
Among the notables are Vice President JD Vance — whose “Making Dinner” playlist features “I Want it That Way” by the Backstreet Boys and “One Time” by Justin Bieber, according to the site. Vance spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk did not respond to a request for comment.
Taylor Lorenz, who is also featured on the site — “Take a Bow” by Rihanna and “Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits appear on her playlist, “Favs” — confirmed her listing. “I mostly use Spotify to listen to podcasts and what I’d be way more interested in is what podcasts people like JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt etc are listening to!!” she said in a text message. Former Verge staffer Joanna Stern, who is a personal tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal, confirmed her information is accurate and added, “the maker of the Panama Papers Playlists seems to be anti-Third Eye Blind.”
Another featured journalist, Kara Swisher, said that the playlist listed for her wasn’t accurate. (It is called “My Peloton Music” and features “Savage,” by Megan Thee Stallion.) But Swisher also said that she shares a Peloton with her wife, so the site may have picked up her wife’s Peloton music. Reached for comment, the editor Amanda Katz, Swisher’s wife, said that playlist is “definitely not mine.” Katz added, “[Swisher] doesn’t even really use Spotify. In conclusion, trust no one.” Those songs might have played during a Peloton class, Katz said. If Katz is right, then judging people by the “My Peloton Music” playlists is about as accurate as judging people by whatever’s on at their gym.
This website is possible because Spotify’s design assumes everyone wants to share everything with the entire world and makes it difficult for users to protect their privacy. It defaults to making all playlists and profiles public. To change that, users need to go to the “Privacy and social” menu and toggle the “Public playlists” setting to private. However, that won’t retroactively make playlists private; instead, you’ll have to do all that by hand on each individual playlist.
It’s not clear who’s behind the website, or how they got ahold of this data
A lot of people use their name as their login — which may be because they signed up with their Facebook accounts. That makes searching for people particularly easy; I was able to find a Spotify profile for an Adam Mosseri that listed the “Hang” playlist on the Panama Playlists website. Mosseri did not respond to an email asking if that account belonged to him. I found two Palmer Luckey accounts; one, “Palmer Freeman Luckey,” contained the “Best Music Ever” playlist that the Panama Playlists identified. “I can confirm the playlist is real,” Luckey posted on X.
It’s not clear who’s behind the website, or how they got ahold of this data. Some of the profiles, such as that of NBC’s Al Roker, include play counts for specific songs — which aren’t part of the public profile. If Roker had his “Listening activity” setting toggled to “on,” it’s possible whoever put this together followed Roker, then manually counted how many times he listened to Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom,” but I can’t say for sure.
When The Verge staffers were reviewing our own privacy settings, one of my editors was stunned to discover I was following her. She thought she’d set her own profile to maximum privacy — but when the two of us collaborated on a friend’s playlist, I was able to follow her. She never received a notification. And when I checked in on my own profile, I was surprised to discover that I too had followers I had never been notified about.
Spotify collects a lot more personal data than most users realize. Search queries, streaming history, browsing history, interaction with other users, location data, device IDs and even data about how you hold your devices are among the information for collection listed in the company’s privacy policy. It is not possible to make a private profile; your profile name and photo are always available to any Spotify user you haven’t blocked.
The “Panama Playlists” is pretty silly as private data goes — discovering people’s favorite songs isn’t nearly as scandalous as getting into their email, direct messages, or other sensitive data. But it does reflect a generalized move toward total surveillance. A similar and more serious version of this kind of Silicon Valley carelessness around user privacy has resulted in multiple stories about politicians’ public Venmo transactions.
Some of the data featured was more specific than playlists. According to this site, Alexandr Wang, Meta’s chief AI officer, played The Lumineers’ “Stubborn Love” immediately after Meta’s $14 billion investment in Scale AI. Wang didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Casey Newton, my former colleague who writes the Platformer newsletter, confirmed his information was accurate: his number 1 song last year was “All You Children” by Jamie xx and the Avalanches. “Here is my comment: ‘All You Children’ by Jamie [xx and the Avalanches] absolutely slaps,” he wrote. “Highly recommended for your summer BBQ playlists.”
With reporting by Nilay Patel and Sarah Jeong.
