Did Spotify make my private playlists public?

Guys, we need to talk about private listening sessions on Spotify. Am I the only one who feels as though I have to make a definitive choice between: a] sharing my unfiltered listening habits with my Facebook friends and followers on Spotify, and b] forever pretending that only my carefully curated public listens exist? Surely not.

Those of us using the music-streaming service probably already know about the private session feature. It safely cordons off your personal brand [ugh] from the roving eyes of anyone privy to your Facebook timeline, which by default publishes each track you have played on Spotify as recent activity. Once enabled, private streaming gives you the freedom to plug your speakers in and blast as much mortifying music as you like.

Thats right. Those 2003 Vines Bsides or Avril Lavigne album tracks pumped at top volume are the stuff that Spotify private session dreams are made of.

But now it feels like were approaching a tipping point. I want to make a stand, throw my hands up and say: Screw it, Im going public, all the way, all the time #Yolo.

As a so-called millennial and member of Generation Y or whichever term the Time and New York Times thinkpiece writers are into using this year I feel that now is the time to take a leaf out of Generation Xs slacker handbook and shrug in the face of potential online humiliation.

At this point, it is more exhausting to micromanage how cool or uncool my listening history makes me seem to others than to deal with my friends knowing that Im actually quite a fan of Pinks R&B-tinged debut album [honestly, its her best work].

People born between the early 80s and early noughties have watched the personal practice of listening to music rapidly transform into the public experience of sharing play-by-play information with our friends online. As Charlie Brooker was annoyed enough to write about this two years ago, its evidently not just people from my generation who have noticed this shift, either.

Since then, a bunch of opinion pieces and bodies of research have popularised the idea of Gen Yers as eternal narcissists, obsessed with taking and sharing carefully composed cameraphone photographs of our food, our outfits or our last night out. It often feels as though you are not real if you havent heard the click of a camera shutter at a party, rolled your eyes and braced yourself for a quick untag, knowing youre going to look rough when the picture inevitably goes online.

Music has also entered that self-conscious world. Spotify public streaming is the digital band T-shirt of our time, shouting: Yes, I totally listen to that band Pitchfork named in Best New Tracks last month! rather than saying: I suppose I like these guys enough to wear their name on my chest.

Perhaps my generation grapples more with pressure to appear on-brand than we do with the sense of entitlement or overblown self-worth that Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic and Dr Jean Twenge describe. Maybe were just groping for ways to make our friends respect our tastes or, at the very least, not laugh out loud at the idea of talking about music with us.

I used to enviously watch friends on my Facebook feed publish that they were listening to the likes of Pitbull, David Guetta or LMFAO. No-shame Pitbull is a thing? With one playlist in my library titled Sad Girl Shit and another populated solely by a cover of Princes The Beautiful Ones by Mariah Carey and boyband Dru Hill, I thought that I wasnt ready to let it all hang out. Until now. Im over reading the words: You are now in a private session nothing you listen to will be shared. Well turn it off [and warn you] after a long period of inactivity, or when you restart Spotify. No need for warnings any more. Whos with me?

Tshepos choices. Are you ready to go public? Share your tracks below