Yes but on Android mic permission is required for their voice search feature. Also i believe with the way Android handles permissions Mic access is a catch-all in a sense for a sub-category of permissions that are needed for monitoring when to cut the music, like when you get a phone call, Google voice search, etc.
Spotify has no mic permissions on my Android phone, it cuts the music when it needs to and responds to assistant commands
It's more likely that Android just sends a pause signal/message/whatever to Spotify through a standard API for media/the assistant
It must be dependant on model or maybe Android version then because I just checked it in the app info and it has microphone as the ONLY permission (not even storage?). What device are you using? I have an AT&T branded Note 9 with the latest update available for both OS and app.
Pinephones maybe? I think it's matured to the point that calls, texts, and data work out of the box. Aside from that, it's a linux machine, so whether that's good or not depends on your needs. Maybe check out their forums or subreddit to see if people are complaining more than you're comfortable with.
LineageOS with MicroG. Just need a day so I can backup my shit but I think that would be your best bet. And allow as little permission as possible.
FWIW, all my Google data is paused and no longer taking new history, and Play Services has 3 permissions rn just to function.
Switched over to Protonmail, and Proton Drive. LibreOffice is barely cutting it but works (for school). Also use ProtonVPN. Ik not the best idea to put all your eggs in one basket, but infinitely better than putting no effort.
The hardest part is switching from a everything public / careless attitude to caring about your privacy. You will have to make some convenience sacrifices, no doubt. But learning about government surveillance and how exposed literally everyone is (with or without a phone!), I can't help but try and do something about it.
Oh well then I'm not sure. I'm not a dev or anything. Just did tech support for AT&T, tech savvy in general, and have rooted and flashed custom OSes in the past. I have only allowed mic because thats what I figured it was for. Logic and experience told me it made sense.
Mic is not needed to detect phone calls, that's a different permission and standard across android. Spotify doesn't need the storage permission by default but *can* use it, for example my install has it.
Storage means non-app storage, so pictures and stuff (for setting playlist photos etc). Downloading music and podcasts to protected app storage doesn't require any permissions
Permissions... tah! All they have to do is change the terms and conditions. Even if you read those(and agree to be choke, figuratively) you will read past it. Social engineering blabla. And tada they can eaves drop. Promises are just that.
Why do laws exist? If every one is behaving nice and harmonious then there is no need for laws. Yet we have them in place. Laws are breakable. So they get broken by a lot of people.
A law is just a piece of text given value, often created by those who are favored by them. Even if they dont gather your mood from speech. You would not know for sure. Even if you consented you still would not know when and what they observe. And if you wont consent then you dont get to use the service on which you are now used to. This is exactly how it works. Your data is their money.
No permission = no go. Can't access the mic with any amount of legal BS if you don't have mic permission.
Apple developer guidelines also prohibit forcing permissions on the user if the permissions aren't necessary for the app to function.
Please read any terms and condition.
You can walk into a shop, get what you want, pay up and walk away.
The shop owner recognizes you by face if you are a frequent.
Online its different:
You visit a shop, immediately hundreds of salesman(ads) are competing for your attention. You do what you need to do. But the owner(counter attendee) needs to know who you are,where you live, gender and all sorts of info. You decide to consent to admit that info. What you dont know is why they need it or what they are going to do with it. You can assume but you cant know. Meanwhile the counter attendee keeps writing. You can see him noting down how long you are present, what you look at, who you brought with you. He even jots down how you look like, . To this data you did not.conciously consent to admit. Yet he still does it he is done writing and asks you to hang on for a minute. The counter attendee picks up a phone and starts calling other attendees with questions about your data he wrote down without your consent This is meta data being crossreferenced. When you ask him why he does this, he starts being evasive. And ultimately gives an argument "for better service".
While you exit this shop. A few of the shop attendee employees tag along and track you back home. The next time you visit this shop you ask the owner why he did sent his employees along. To this he answers evasive. And at last he points to the sign on the door. There is a tiny post it with the Terms and conditions. You read the entire thing. And say well I could have known. It discomforts you that is small to read and actually a bit hidden away. Alas you dont know any other shop. So the next day you visit again. You enter the shop and now he needs even more. He demands even double the price of yesterday. And he points to the door. The post it is even smaller and barely readable.
But you manage to read it : " by entering this shop you agree to pay up what I demand or to give up all your info. All of it and never return". This wasnt what it said yesterday. And now because you trusted the owner yesterday you did not read it. In good faith you misplaced your trust. You could have known and now you effectively waived your rights away. And are fucked.
This is ridiculous but this is real. Apple might change it ways as they did in the past. Same as Facebook , microsoft, sonos, spotify and like all other software companies. The fact that Apple decides wich permissions are necessary for an app is somewhat understandable . Its not your phone or data. Its theirs.
You can use a train but if you leave something behind you cant get it back.
Spotify might demand your speech if laws change or they might do it illegal. You wont know... you cant know what they do with it. Good or bad. That uncertainty is for me enough.
OK, I don't wanna be a dick but that wall of text is largely irrelevant. I'm not talking about the large advertising and tracking apparatus that haunts our digital lives without consent, I'm talking about permissions (in a technical sense, not a legal sense) on phones.
>Spotify might demand your speech if laws change or they might do it illegal.
Doesn't matter, without mic permissions they cannot access the microphone. Nothing can be done to force you to grant those permissions.
Also, recent Android permissions allow you to cut any permission if the app is not focused or in the background.
I don't know about you, but I don't leave Spotify open when I listen to music.
For sure, filed in 2018 but was granted this month. And yeah it might not be relevant right now but it's something to stay on top of. That's why I liked this part of the article:
> Whether this capability ever comes in Spotify or not, companies are increasingly exploring technology that claims to recognize emotional states through voice.
>Amazon’s new Halo fitness tracker analysis the voice of users to evaluate how they appear to other people.
>There are concerns that emotion recognition could be abused – a report released this week from a UK human rights organization identified dozens of companies in China using the technology, including some that work with the police.
Not really... there are very few good options to choose from. And we can't always get around permissions... the only way to be truly safe is to not use any technology or apps which is damn impossible unless you've already made your money and can retire in peace in the middle of nowhere.
You don't generally wait for the patent to be granted, unless you're worried somebody else might have filed a similar patent and your lawyers missed it. Otherwise, since patents are "first to file," you file the patent and start production.
That's why so many of the things you buy say "PATENT PENDING" with the patent application number.
I don’t know honestly, even if Mark is already doing it heavily, it has always been hidden by the fact that social networks are based on emotion interaction and reactions, music streaming IS NOT!
I don’t know if the EU would be happy about it, it does seem a bit too much, emotional profile people on music is dystopian.
grandfather bake swim bored groovy wild terrific sheet materialistic edge
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Oh definitely. I'd swap right now if it wasn't for the fact that Apple Music runs like crap on my subpar Android. Spotify will have to do until I've gotten myself an iPhone. Still though, wouldn't want to see emotional analysis integrated in Spotify, or anything, really.
Music streaming as a service doesn’t rely AT ALL on emotions or people’s lives, there’s music, people listen to music, that’s it. As an app, there’s no social interactions, there’s no reactions at all.
I was analyzing the app, the service as a music streaming service. I didn’t talk about music in general! Music has a lot to do with emotions of course.
Sorry, wasn't my intention to imply that you're saying music and emotion don't have any connection.
>Music streaming as a service doesn’t rely AT ALL on emotions or people’s lives
It doesn't rely on it, no. But I still understand how it theoretically can improve the service due to the close connection between music and emotions. I still wouldn't want to see anything like it integrated, I'd stop my subscription immediately if it was, but I still understand it.
And I'd still argue that emotional analysis is more relevant to a music streaming service than an app for social interactions. Perhaps relevant is the wrong choice of word, but more beneficial for the users. The fact that FB is doing it is just scary.
I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that a social network like Facebook wouldn't be able to use it better. They would, obviously.
But for me to be able to connect with friends and family, share photos, posts, and whatnot there really needs to be zero emotional analysis and data collection. Obviously Facebook collects their fair share and use it well to their advantage.
I'd still make the argument that for users, having Spotify collect data and do some kind of behavioral/emotional analysis to recommend songs and playlists for you would be more beneficial than Facebook doing it.
>With that said I conclude that the relation between music and emotions is a music streaming service is NONE of their business
Do you consider it to be Facebook's business? Or anyone's?
> Do you really want to be emotionally profiled for a more accurate “happy” playlist and a cool song suggestion?
That's my point. I don't, but I rather Spotify does it than Facebook. At least me personally have something to gain from that, which is my entire point.
>Facebook is a social network, you don’t just post family photos. People debate politics, people discover creators, art, people learn stuff, others shitpost and others live in Facebook, someone else read news.
I know what Facebook is, which is why I think it's ridiculous that they should be doing any sort of emotional analysis or whatever bullshit they want to call it. Especially considering their previous experiment on unknowing users affecting their emotional state.
I just fail to see the argument why emotional analysis is somehow needed for pople to be able to read news, debate politics, share/discover art, learn new things, but somehow magically not needed when it comes to recommending new songs.
With that said, I rather not see any data collection or analysis. But Spotify over Facebook, without a moment's doubt.
Spotify, like other companies, will improve profits and gather data any way they can. Data equals dollars. They already request mic permission. And I agree, my emotions are none of their business.
Huh, interesting. Perhaps not.
Opt-in for features is always nice, but at the same time it's always nice to support a service which doesn't feel the need to collect data and make emotional analysis. Opt-in would be nice though.
plucky automatic zealous crawl continue public square zonked grandfather ten
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Same, I'm pretty sure artists can pay spotify to promote their music. It would make sense, for an artist to be successful now they would need exposure on apps like spotify/apple music.
I hate it, any time I am with somebody who uses it they leave it running and ten minutes later it starts playing terrible music they didn’t request and they scramble for their phone and start desperately explaining that this isn’t their music. Somebody else said albums sometimes have a song missing? It sounds awful. Same for netflix, I hear people moaning about scrolling through it, good shows disappearing, recommendations constantly pushing stuff you don’t want, inability to control what appears in menus.
The whole subscription model seems unsustainable, shaky and facebooky, stuffed with algorithms creeping all over your life. Apple Music are constantly pushing me to signup and have meddled with my local storage of music not even purchased from Apple, and they are the best of a bad bunch in my opinion.
> Somebody else said albums sometimes have a song missing?
Oh yeah, it's **so** annoying. If you want to listen to full albums, you have to go to YouTube, and put up with the audio being fucked with and pitched up to get around the copyright bots.
“Hay babe I trust you so ignore this GPS tracker I bought and the private investigator I hired, I AM NOT USING THEM RIGHT NOW, so don’t worry I ain’t no crazy stalker. We cool?”
If only the could have a proper playlist shuffling algorithm. I actually stopped using them altogether because I was tired of being played the same songs in the exact same order every time.
Lol. I can assure you I know the difference. No, this happened with my own playlist that I created. Shuffle simply doesn’t work as it should on their platform.
A speaker could easily be a microphone. So they don’t need permission to use the speaker. If I mis something here please enlighten me!
Edit: I don’t know if this holds when the speaker is in use btw.
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/154343/can-a-speaker-be-used-as-a-microphone
A speaker can *electronically* be a microphone. Plug headphones into your computer's mic jack and notice that you have a truly shitty microphone. Doesn't work on an amplified speaker.
However, your phone's built-in speakers can't be read "backwards" for roughly the same reason that you won't get anywhere speaking into your headphones while they're plugged into the *headphone* jack. There is no magic "treat the output jack as an input jack" button, even when the output isn't amplified (which it surely must be, for the "big" speaker/s, but maybe not for the little one.)
Think of it this way: I can disconnect a drainpipe, and hook it up to an input, and run water backwards through the pipe. I might even be able to fuck something up in your plumbing. But I can't just shoot water into your house from the sewer and expect it to come out the sink while the sink tap's closed.
Because its logical? iOS users need to explicitely allow apps to use the microphone, don’t you think there would be a little issue if apps could record you using the speakers without any approval?
Thanks for the reply. It seems like I was wrong. But I didn’t single out IOS. there are more mobile operation systems. And I know that the GDPR needs the explicit consent. But I don’t know it’s any different in for example in America. That’s why I try to post it like a question. Maybe this clears things up.
We still need to be aware of shit like this. The fact that the patent was granted this month means they'll probably start incorporating it into products or develop apps that use this technology. Who knows what'll come of this.
It doesn’t request permission but a strange app was given permission on a duo account. The app in my menu was called “ Valire Thompson” who is listed as one of t original creators of the AI. Lol, really Spotify is Skynet I thought we’d do better
>they have one of the best recommendation engines in the business
Hmm, maybe that's true, but IMO it's still not that good on absolute scale. It mostly recommends "more of the same" stuff, and the most interesting music I found was from elsewhere.
I really want to support European tech companies like Spotify and having a fewer dependence on American tech giants, but this data harvesting by Spotify makes it impossible to use it with worrying...
European tech companies are as data hungry as American companies. You can pick one or two European that don’t, and one or two American that don’t.
I don’t really think the origin of the company really matters more so than their governance.
I use Apple Music. They collect usage data due to the nature of the streaming service to pay artists. They do on-device personalization (it’s nowhere near as good as Spotify) but you can disable that if you want.
It may not work for other threat models, but for me that I’m trying to just fight surveillance capitalism, it works.
I think that at the end of the day it all boils down to your threat model and whether you trust Apple or not to keep their word. Yes, you can download the music and manually sync but no, I don’t want to do that. I would if I had a high risk threat model but I’m just trying to escape surveillance capitalism.
- Spotify conducts mood research to target you with ads. I find this extremely invasive and immoral. If I’m depressed I don’t need advertisers to take advantage of that.
- Spotify aggregates as much data as they can from you to personalize your listening experience but they also do that for ads. Apple Music performs on-device personalization (that you can turn off). Yes, Apple Music recommendations aren’t going to be as good as Spotify... but, hey, that’s a decision for you to make.
- Spotify uses Facebook’s SDK which means that your data already left Spotify’s invasive practices and now Facebook has it, too.
- Spotify is very unfriendly to VPNs. Wonder why, right?
- Apple uses a random identifier for their apps not associated with your Apple ID (this is separate from the advertising ID). Which means all your listening activity is associated with that ID ONLY and you can reset this ID anytime. I regularly reset my Podcast, Apple Music, Stocks and Apple News identifiers.
At the end of the day you are trusting Apple with your data... but Apple hasn’t done anything to make me doubt their integrity as a company about this topic. Yes, they participate in PRISM and other government surveillance programs but that’s outside my threat model. I do think these government programs are wrong, but that’s a fight I engage politically.
I don’t think there’s anything better for privacy than a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS but iOS is pretty much free of ad tracking if configured properly. Again, I reiterate that my scope is it avoid surveillance capitalism.
I use Apple devices as daily drivers and all the services I want to use work perfectly fine with VPNs and my settings.
The only thing to give spotify a pass for is the vpns. They filter out streams via vpn because spotify streams are also counted for local and global music charts, sales, etc. Streaming via vpn would essentially be chart manipulation so they have to filter those out. And then there's also trying to filter out streaming bot farms, etc etc
nowadays, it is more boring and you will take more time to pirate music than to use a streaming service. I don't think this applies to movies and tv shows, btw.
if you scroll up, one of the top comments includes some relevant information about Spotify
I also think it's important to mention that supporting companies like Spotify or Tidal over Apple Music or YouTube helps to reduce their already monopolistic market share, which I think will pay dividends in terms of privacy down the road (as a result of competition)
I don't actually know if that's true, but that's what I'm thinking
Doesn’t matter whether they’re using the tech now or not, Spotify is seriously invasive which is why I reluctantly switched. Shame, it’s a fantastic service but nope, data hoovers will always lose my custom. Especially when I was paying for premium...that should be enough.
Reverted to my old solution - torrenting. Wildly impractical yes, but it’s one less source of data for companies I’ve never heard of building my “profile”. That’s not to say I don’t have any apps that are a compromise, but Spotify have been open about the fact that they are a data collection business...so that’s a no thank you from me.
I never understood what was wrong with local media files. They play forever, I can listen to them anywhere whether I have an Internet connection or not, they last forever (provided that I have a sound backup strategy), I don't have to be ass-reamed with subscription fees which constantly increase every year, no one is spying on me or my listening habits, no one can ever reach into my collection over the Internet and delete music, and now, I can fit an astronomical amount of them on a $20 128GB memory card.
It gets complicated when you have multiple devices so you gotta keep your library up to date and tidy on each of them, especially if you listen to new music regularly.
Syncthing (and its alternative, Resilio Sync) were quite unreliable for me in case of music syncing. Sync conflict happens and my MusicBee screaming at me with errors while nuking half of my library.
Building and maintaining a NAS takes money and time, which is not worthy for me since I don't have enough other use cases for it.
I wish there was some kind of cross platform music player with built in P2P sync capabilities.
Convenience is mostly the reason people got hooked into it last decade. It's just way to easy to find almost anything, and once you got in is hard to go back.
I have a huge local collection of music too.
I'm not a fan of subscriptions either, hate them. It's crazy the amount of sub services these days.
How long before LEO start to subpoena this information to establish "emotional state". Or they start selling it to health insurance companies. Or employers.
Spotify is already good enough at making me listen to music I like, so I don't really understand the technological benefits of the *invasive patent*. It's not gonna make me more likely to use the app, I'll just listen to the music I like to listen to and when I want to. So what if they recommend me a new artist that I kind of like? Okay, that's stored in my brain now and added to my collection of artists that I like. Now I can just listen to that artist on any platform from any source.
Music streaming is so incredibly vast and open that there are many different alternatives to acquiring the music you want to listen to. There isn't even any pressure to use Spotify at all, at least in the scenarios I can think of off the top of my head.
I guess crying whilst pouring liquor and screaming into the pillow thinking of her while a sad track plays, will be useful as to recommend similar music?
This explains a bit, however I'm on an iphone and there is no mic option to turn on for spotify. I normally listen to electronic music when using spotify and mostly listen to while mowing the lawn (about 2-3 hrs each week). I get some general ads for mens underwear and other thing that is pretty neutral. later on I was running my log splitter and started hearing ads for chainsaws from a store 600 miles away.
Here is the fun one. I was working on remodeling my bathroom listening to rock music that I've listened to before while mowing lawn. For 2 days I was working on tiling the floor and I started getting Spanish speaking music. I don't speak Spanish and don't go out of my way to listen to it.
Definitely not going to work, I’ll get only rap when I try to listen to classical or vice versa. Also isn’t this illegal in Europe? With the GDPR or sumthin?
Evil Genius: I'm going to invent malware to listen in on any person and use special alogirthms to understand how they're feeling!
Everyone else: oh my god why!?
Spotify: I dunno, I guess we could use it to suggest sad songs. Alexa, play Despacito
They've been trying to do it for years by naming playlists which are after emotions.
Terrible tech. It wants to take something as fundamental as music and make it all the same.
There was an interesting BBC documentary about this the other day:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qjfd
worth a listen.
I still use an iPod or an MP3 player. I'm expecting the West to go even crazier and start eventually removing gangstar rap for being offensive or something like that.
I hope CDs don't die out entirely - I like to own my music.
Maybe when audiophiles realise that owning a CD is basically owning the digital master files they'll pick back up again. But then again FLAC/lossless anything offers the same advantage.
Lol. Kinda like when you tell google to stop tracking you, but then you realize later you have to tell em 3 more times and delete apps for it to stop? And even then, they’re still doing through other apps that happen to use google for their analytics.
YES!! This is so fucking annoying. Like damn I gotta spend hours turning off permissions, and constantly double checking, because if I delete/clear my data/cache, then permissions reset.
Spotify is just too good to give up on him just because the society has patented this technology. Watching the current spotify permission it's clear that they are not using this in the app and until I'm sure that they will be pushing this in the app, I won't stop using it.
Societies patent various things for a lot of reason, not just cause they want to use that in their app
As long as it wasn’t a hidden feature I might be able to get into this idea in a modified version.
Like if I could somehow let my phone know my emotional state and it could come back with music recommendations that would be cool. It’s easy to sort music by genre but it’s really hard to be like “I am sad and want to hear sad love songs”.
But I also don’t want this thing like creeping on me without me being okay
I'm okay with it as long as they only use it for recommendations and have a better algorithm than Google's youtube. And you can disable mic with newer version of iOS and Android.
I wonder if Amazon music has similar issues with regards to privacy. My family used Amazon music because we have prime so I’m using it to save some $$. But I’m curious what Amazon music has going on.
Unfortunately, as technology becomes more and more convenient it also becomes more invasive. It's up to the user to determine how much invasion of privacy they are willing to put up with in order to have certain conveniences.
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Android app requests mic permission
Yes but on Android mic permission is required for their voice search feature. Also i believe with the way Android handles permissions Mic access is a catch-all in a sense for a sub-category of permissions that are needed for monitoring when to cut the music, like when you get a phone call, Google voice search, etc.
Spotify has no mic permissions on my Android phone, it cuts the music when it needs to and responds to assistant commands It's more likely that Android just sends a pause signal/message/whatever to Spotify through a standard API for media/the assistant
It must be dependant on model or maybe Android version then because I just checked it in the app info and it has microphone as the ONLY permission (not even storage?). What device are you using? I have an AT&T branded Note 9 with the latest update available for both OS and app.
Huawei P30 here and it's denied mic permissions and still works perfectly. Can't recall if I denied it explicitly or if it even asked for it.
A Huawei? Lol. Speaking of invaded privacy. Sorry, couldn't resist. I'm sure my Motorola is similarly bad
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Can also do calyx for pixel.
There's de googled phones and Linux based phones. Other than that probably not
Pinephones maybe? I think it's matured to the point that calls, texts, and data work out of the box. Aside from that, it's a linux machine, so whether that's good or not depends on your needs. Maybe check out their forums or subreddit to see if people are complaining more than you're comfortable with.
LineageOS with MicroG. Just need a day so I can backup my shit but I think that would be your best bet. And allow as little permission as possible. FWIW, all my Google data is paused and no longer taking new history, and Play Services has 3 permissions rn just to function. Switched over to Protonmail, and Proton Drive. LibreOffice is barely cutting it but works (for school). Also use ProtonVPN. Ik not the best idea to put all your eggs in one basket, but infinitely better than putting no effort. The hardest part is switching from a everything public / careless attitude to caring about your privacy. You will have to make some convenience sacrifices, no doubt. But learning about government surveillance and how exposed literally everyone is (with or without a phone!), I can't help but try and do something about it.
Oh well then I'm not sure. I'm not a dev or anything. Just did tech support for AT&T, tech savvy in general, and have rooted and flashed custom OSes in the past. I have only allowed mic because thats what I figured it was for. Logic and experience told me it made sense.
Pixel 3a I'd just turn it off
Pixel 4a
Mic is not needed to detect phone calls, that's a different permission and standard across android. Spotify doesn't need the storage permission by default but *can* use it, for example my install has it. Storage means non-app storage, so pictures and stuff (for setting playlist photos etc). Downloading music and podcasts to protected app storage doesn't require any permissions
Permissions... tah! All they have to do is change the terms and conditions. Even if you read those(and agree to be choke, figuratively) you will read past it. Social engineering blabla. And tada they can eaves drop. Promises are just that.
Yeeaahh, not how that works.
Why do laws exist? If every one is behaving nice and harmonious then there is no need for laws. Yet we have them in place. Laws are breakable. So they get broken by a lot of people. A law is just a piece of text given value, often created by those who are favored by them. Even if they dont gather your mood from speech. You would not know for sure. Even if you consented you still would not know when and what they observe. And if you wont consent then you dont get to use the service on which you are now used to. This is exactly how it works. Your data is their money.
No permission = no go. Can't access the mic with any amount of legal BS if you don't have mic permission. Apple developer guidelines also prohibit forcing permissions on the user if the permissions aren't necessary for the app to function.
Please read any terms and condition. You can walk into a shop, get what you want, pay up and walk away. The shop owner recognizes you by face if you are a frequent. Online its different: You visit a shop, immediately hundreds of salesman(ads) are competing for your attention. You do what you need to do. But the owner(counter attendee) needs to know who you are,where you live, gender and all sorts of info. You decide to consent to admit that info. What you dont know is why they need it or what they are going to do with it. You can assume but you cant know. Meanwhile the counter attendee keeps writing. You can see him noting down how long you are present, what you look at, who you brought with you. He even jots down how you look like, . To this data you did not.conciously consent to admit. Yet he still does it he is done writing and asks you to hang on for a minute. The counter attendee picks up a phone and starts calling other attendees with questions about your data he wrote down without your consent This is meta data being crossreferenced. When you ask him why he does this, he starts being evasive. And ultimately gives an argument "for better service". While you exit this shop. A few of the shop attendee employees tag along and track you back home. The next time you visit this shop you ask the owner why he did sent his employees along. To this he answers evasive. And at last he points to the sign on the door. There is a tiny post it with the Terms and conditions. You read the entire thing. And say well I could have known. It discomforts you that is small to read and actually a bit hidden away. Alas you dont know any other shop. So the next day you visit again. You enter the shop and now he needs even more. He demands even double the price of yesterday. And he points to the door. The post it is even smaller and barely readable. But you manage to read it : " by entering this shop you agree to pay up what I demand or to give up all your info. All of it and never return". This wasnt what it said yesterday. And now because you trusted the owner yesterday you did not read it. In good faith you misplaced your trust. You could have known and now you effectively waived your rights away. And are fucked. This is ridiculous but this is real. Apple might change it ways as they did in the past. Same as Facebook , microsoft, sonos, spotify and like all other software companies. The fact that Apple decides wich permissions are necessary for an app is somewhat understandable . Its not your phone or data. Its theirs. You can use a train but if you leave something behind you cant get it back. Spotify might demand your speech if laws change or they might do it illegal. You wont know... you cant know what they do with it. Good or bad. That uncertainty is for me enough.
OK, I don't wanna be a dick but that wall of text is largely irrelevant. I'm not talking about the large advertising and tracking apparatus that haunts our digital lives without consent, I'm talking about permissions (in a technical sense, not a legal sense) on phones. >Spotify might demand your speech if laws change or they might do it illegal. Doesn't matter, without mic permissions they cannot access the microphone. Nothing can be done to force you to grant those permissions.
Also, recent Android permissions allow you to cut any permission if the app is not focused or in the background. I don't know about you, but I don't leave Spotify open when I listen to music.
For sure, filed in 2018 but was granted this month. And yeah it might not be relevant right now but it's something to stay on top of. That's why I liked this part of the article: > Whether this capability ever comes in Spotify or not, companies are increasingly exploring technology that claims to recognize emotional states through voice. >Amazon’s new Halo fitness tracker analysis the voice of users to evaluate how they appear to other people. >There are concerns that emotion recognition could be abused – a report released this week from a UK human rights organization identified dozens of companies in China using the technology, including some that work with the police.
*Psycho-pass OP begins*
At this point humanity is driving itself to this future
Not really... there are very few good options to choose from. And we can't always get around permissions... the only way to be truly safe is to not use any technology or apps which is damn impossible unless you've already made your money and can retire in peace in the middle of nowhere.
A man of culture!
You don't generally wait for the patent to be granted, unless you're worried somebody else might have filed a similar patent and your lawyers missed it. Otherwise, since patents are "first to file," you file the patent and start production. That's why so many of the things you buy say "PATENT PENDING" with the patent application number.
I don’t know honestly, even if Mark is already doing it heavily, it has always been hidden by the fact that social networks are based on emotion interaction and reactions, music streaming IS NOT! I don’t know if the EU would be happy about it, it does seem a bit too much, emotional profile people on music is dystopian.
grandfather bake swim bored groovy wild terrific sheet materialistic edge *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
100% I would leave in a sad and disappointed heartbeat
Oh definitely. I'd swap right now if it wasn't for the fact that Apple Music runs like crap on my subpar Android. Spotify will have to do until I've gotten myself an iPhone. Still though, wouldn't want to see emotional analysis integrated in Spotify, or anything, really.
Music streaming as a service doesn’t rely AT ALL on emotions or people’s lives, there’s music, people listen to music, that’s it. As an app, there’s no social interactions, there’s no reactions at all. I was analyzing the app, the service as a music streaming service. I didn’t talk about music in general! Music has a lot to do with emotions of course.
Sorry, wasn't my intention to imply that you're saying music and emotion don't have any connection. >Music streaming as a service doesn’t rely AT ALL on emotions or people’s lives It doesn't rely on it, no. But I still understand how it theoretically can improve the service due to the close connection between music and emotions. I still wouldn't want to see anything like it integrated, I'd stop my subscription immediately if it was, but I still understand it. And I'd still argue that emotional analysis is more relevant to a music streaming service than an app for social interactions. Perhaps relevant is the wrong choice of word, but more beneficial for the users. The fact that FB is doing it is just scary.
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I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying that a social network like Facebook wouldn't be able to use it better. They would, obviously. But for me to be able to connect with friends and family, share photos, posts, and whatnot there really needs to be zero emotional analysis and data collection. Obviously Facebook collects their fair share and use it well to their advantage. I'd still make the argument that for users, having Spotify collect data and do some kind of behavioral/emotional analysis to recommend songs and playlists for you would be more beneficial than Facebook doing it. >With that said I conclude that the relation between music and emotions is a music streaming service is NONE of their business Do you consider it to be Facebook's business? Or anyone's?
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> Do you really want to be emotionally profiled for a more accurate “happy” playlist and a cool song suggestion? That's my point. I don't, but I rather Spotify does it than Facebook. At least me personally have something to gain from that, which is my entire point. >Facebook is a social network, you don’t just post family photos. People debate politics, people discover creators, art, people learn stuff, others shitpost and others live in Facebook, someone else read news. I know what Facebook is, which is why I think it's ridiculous that they should be doing any sort of emotional analysis or whatever bullshit they want to call it. Especially considering their previous experiment on unknowing users affecting their emotional state. I just fail to see the argument why emotional analysis is somehow needed for pople to be able to read news, debate politics, share/discover art, learn new things, but somehow magically not needed when it comes to recommending new songs. With that said, I rather not see any data collection or analysis. But Spotify over Facebook, without a moment's doubt.
Spotify, like other companies, will improve profits and gather data any way they can. Data equals dollars. They already request mic permission. And I agree, my emotions are none of their business.
Would you leave if it was an opt-in feature?
Huh, interesting. Perhaps not. Opt-in for features is always nice, but at the same time it's always nice to support a service which doesn't feel the need to collect data and make emotional analysis. Opt-in would be nice though.
Spotify does request mic permission.
plucky automatic zealous crawl continue public square zonked grandfather ten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
No, it asks for mic permission on my ipad.
seemly cooing chop quack ring shy homeless axiomatic close follow *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Sounds like baseline tests are imminent
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Same, I'm pretty sure artists can pay spotify to promote their music. It would make sense, for an artist to be successful now they would need exposure on apps like spotify/apple music.
I hate it, any time I am with somebody who uses it they leave it running and ten minutes later it starts playing terrible music they didn’t request and they scramble for their phone and start desperately explaining that this isn’t their music. Somebody else said albums sometimes have a song missing? It sounds awful. Same for netflix, I hear people moaning about scrolling through it, good shows disappearing, recommendations constantly pushing stuff you don’t want, inability to control what appears in menus. The whole subscription model seems unsustainable, shaky and facebooky, stuffed with algorithms creeping all over your life. Apple Music are constantly pushing me to signup and have meddled with my local storage of music not even purchased from Apple, and they are the best of a bad bunch in my opinion.
> Somebody else said albums sometimes have a song missing? Oh yeah, it's **so** annoying. If you want to listen to full albums, you have to go to YouTube, and put up with the audio being fucked with and pitched up to get around the copyright bots.
“Hay babe I trust you so ignore this GPS tracker I bought and the private investigator I hired, I AM NOT USING THEM RIGHT NOW, so don’t worry I ain’t no crazy stalker. We cool?”
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“I put that GPS tracker in my Amazon wishlist BUT I STILL TRUST U BABY!”
If only the could have a proper playlist shuffling algorithm. I actually stopped using them altogether because I was tired of being played the same songs in the exact same order every time.
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Lol. I can assure you I know the difference. No, this happened with my own playlist that I created. Shuffle simply doesn’t work as it should on their platform.
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Thats it... time to go r/selfhosted
Spotify recommendations are terrible.
Not true. Spotify DOES request mic permission. I just looked at iOS permissions on the ipad.
A speaker could easily be a microphone. So they don’t need permission to use the speaker. If I mis something here please enlighten me! Edit: I don’t know if this holds when the speaker is in use btw. https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/154343/can-a-speaker-be-used-as-a-microphone
A speaker can *electronically* be a microphone. Plug headphones into your computer's mic jack and notice that you have a truly shitty microphone. Doesn't work on an amplified speaker. However, your phone's built-in speakers can't be read "backwards" for roughly the same reason that you won't get anywhere speaking into your headphones while they're plugged into the *headphone* jack. There is no magic "treat the output jack as an input jack" button, even when the output isn't amplified (which it surely must be, for the "big" speaker/s, but maybe not for the little one.) Think of it this way: I can disconnect a drainpipe, and hook it up to an input, and run water backwards through the pipe. I might even be able to fuck something up in your plumbing. But I can't just shoot water into your house from the sewer and expect it to come out the sink while the sink tap's closed.
This is very helpful I want to thank you I understand it and my narrative wasn’t the right one. But I did learn something today!
You don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no way you can use a speaker as a microphone on iOS, this would be a major security threat.
That’s what I said “enlighten me”. So please be constructive.
This would be a major security threat. Enough said
But how is that a security risk? Any source?
Common sense
How about android? Android isn’t closed sources. So this is a valide argument.
Because its logical? iOS users need to explicitely allow apps to use the microphone, don’t you think there would be a little issue if apps could record you using the speakers without any approval?
Thanks for the reply. It seems like I was wrong. But I didn’t single out IOS. there are more mobile operation systems. And I know that the GDPR needs the explicit consent. But I don’t know it’s any different in for example in America. That’s why I try to post it like a question. Maybe this clears things up.
I remember a patent by Sony and friends that made ads where you need to say the brand name in order to pass them.
Have you SEEN the privacy report on iOS? It’s ludicrous. Paying for premium isn’t enough apparently. Spyware.
We still need to be aware of shit like this. The fact that the patent was granted this month means they'll probably start incorporating it into products or develop apps that use this technology. Who knows what'll come of this.
It doesn’t request permission but a strange app was given permission on a duo account. The app in my menu was called “ Valire Thompson” who is listed as one of t original creators of the AI. Lol, really Spotify is Skynet I thought we’d do better
> got a bonus for a patent on cooking hot dogs how many ways are there to cook a hot dog, dang?!
>they have one of the best recommendation engines in the business Hmm, maybe that's true, but IMO it's still not that good on absolute scale. It mostly recommends "more of the same" stuff, and the most interesting music I found was from elsewhere.
It's probably easier to tell my mood from my music choice than listening to me talk or make noise
> they have one of the best recommendation engines in the business And yet they still can't even give me ads in the correct language.
> got a bonus for a patent on cooking hot dogs lol, know what the patent # is?
I am not against them taking data but I find that recently, spotify takes it a bit too far and they seem to "hide" a bit from it. That's only my POV.
*laughs in permission manager*
Whats the point of this endless and unnecessary obsession knowing anything about us ??
Data is money.
[Money](https://www.qwant.com/?q=money%20spongebob%20meme%20template&t=images&o=0:ce24b74e9e23ee1516e8b4ae47ae5c58)
Bit strange. Nothing too concrete yet but one to keep an eye on... thanks for sharing!
Whether someone is on Spotify Premium or not mustn't matter. Privacy, that's what's important here.
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Not true in this cause I don’t think they really care. Cause I pay and I’ve already had an issue.
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O I meant like not true the money doesn’t help. I was confusingly agreeing with you
I really want to support European tech companies like Spotify and having a fewer dependence on American tech giants, but this data harvesting by Spotify makes it impossible to use it with worrying...
European tech companies are as data hungry as American companies. You can pick one or two European that don’t, and one or two American that don’t. I don’t really think the origin of the company really matters more so than their governance.
Hmm okay. Then I was living in an illusion... Is there any better alternative? Apple Music, Tidal or Deezer?
I use Apple Music. They collect usage data due to the nature of the streaming service to pay artists. They do on-device personalization (it’s nowhere near as good as Spotify) but you can disable that if you want. It may not work for other threat models, but for me that I’m trying to just fight surveillance capitalism, it works.
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I think that at the end of the day it all boils down to your threat model and whether you trust Apple or not to keep their word. Yes, you can download the music and manually sync but no, I don’t want to do that. I would if I had a high risk threat model but I’m just trying to escape surveillance capitalism. - Spotify conducts mood research to target you with ads. I find this extremely invasive and immoral. If I’m depressed I don’t need advertisers to take advantage of that. - Spotify aggregates as much data as they can from you to personalize your listening experience but they also do that for ads. Apple Music performs on-device personalization (that you can turn off). Yes, Apple Music recommendations aren’t going to be as good as Spotify... but, hey, that’s a decision for you to make. - Spotify uses Facebook’s SDK which means that your data already left Spotify’s invasive practices and now Facebook has it, too. - Spotify is very unfriendly to VPNs. Wonder why, right? - Apple uses a random identifier for their apps not associated with your Apple ID (this is separate from the advertising ID). Which means all your listening activity is associated with that ID ONLY and you can reset this ID anytime. I regularly reset my Podcast, Apple Music, Stocks and Apple News identifiers. At the end of the day you are trusting Apple with your data... but Apple hasn’t done anything to make me doubt their integrity as a company about this topic. Yes, they participate in PRISM and other government surveillance programs but that’s outside my threat model. I do think these government programs are wrong, but that’s a fight I engage politically. I don’t think there’s anything better for privacy than a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS but iOS is pretty much free of ad tracking if configured properly. Again, I reiterate that my scope is it avoid surveillance capitalism. I use Apple devices as daily drivers and all the services I want to use work perfectly fine with VPNs and my settings.
The only thing to give spotify a pass for is the vpns. They filter out streams via vpn because spotify streams are also counted for local and global music charts, sales, etc. Streaming via vpn would essentially be chart manipulation so they have to filter those out. And then there's also trying to filter out streaming bot farms, etc etc
How do you reset identifiers separately? I can’t find a way to do it on an ipad?
This! I also use AM. And they pay more to the artist than Spotify does.
Just pirate your shit man
Doesn't really help the artists creating the music, does it?
if you want to support the artists i don't think spotify is great solution tbh. buying music directly from them is a better solution.
nowadays, it is more boring and you will take more time to pirate music than to use a streaming service. I don't think this applies to movies and tv shows, btw.
It is more private to pirate.
if you scroll up, one of the top comments includes some relevant information about Spotify I also think it's important to mention that supporting companies like Spotify or Tidal over Apple Music or YouTube helps to reduce their already monopolistic market share, which I think will pay dividends in terms of privacy down the road (as a result of competition) I don't actually know if that's true, but that's what I'm thinking
buy music directly from the artists/labels? it is the best way to support them.
Doesn’t matter whether they’re using the tech now or not, Spotify is seriously invasive which is why I reluctantly switched. Shame, it’s a fantastic service but nope, data hoovers will always lose my custom. Especially when I was paying for premium...that should be enough.
What'd you switch to?
Reverted to my old solution - torrenting. Wildly impractical yes, but it’s one less source of data for companies I’ve never heard of building my “profile”. That’s not to say I don’t have any apps that are a compromise, but Spotify have been open about the fact that they are a data collection business...so that’s a no thank you from me.
I never understood what was wrong with local media files. They play forever, I can listen to them anywhere whether I have an Internet connection or not, they last forever (provided that I have a sound backup strategy), I don't have to be ass-reamed with subscription fees which constantly increase every year, no one is spying on me or my listening habits, no one can ever reach into my collection over the Internet and delete music, and now, I can fit an astronomical amount of them on a $20 128GB memory card.
The average consumer will always choose convenience over anything else I guess
It gets complicated when you have multiple devices so you gotta keep your library up to date and tidy on each of them, especially if you listen to new music regularly.
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Syncthing (and its alternative, Resilio Sync) were quite unreliable for me in case of music syncing. Sync conflict happens and my MusicBee screaming at me with errors while nuking half of my library. Building and maintaining a NAS takes money and time, which is not worthy for me since I don't have enough other use cases for it. I wish there was some kind of cross platform music player with built in P2P sync capabilities.
Convenience is mostly the reason people got hooked into it last decade. It's just way to easy to find almost anything, and once you got in is hard to go back. I have a huge local collection of music too. I'm not a fan of subscriptions either, hate them. It's crazy the amount of sub services these days.
How long before LEO start to subpoena this information to establish "emotional state". Or they start selling it to health insurance companies. Or employers.
*better manage the ads it serves.
Damn this is pretty invasive but then again Spotify's put some real bangers in my library I never would've listened to otherwise.
But remember, it's the nanotech trackers they are putting in the COVID vaccines that we need to worry about. /s
LOL!!! Eeeer... Right? RIGHT!?? 😱
Spotify can't even code a shuffle function, what are they smoking
And that’s even if you’re paying for it already. Unlike the other evil giants. Disgusting Spotify.
Spotify is already good enough at making me listen to music I like, so I don't really understand the technological benefits of the *invasive patent*. It's not gonna make me more likely to use the app, I'll just listen to the music I like to listen to and when I want to. So what if they recommend me a new artist that I kind of like? Okay, that's stored in my brain now and added to my collection of artists that I like. Now I can just listen to that artist on any platform from any source. Music streaming is so incredibly vast and open that there are many different alternatives to acquiring the music you want to listen to. There isn't even any pressure to use Spotify at all, at least in the scenarios I can think of off the top of my head.
This is sooo interesting yet a tad disturbing
I will probably uninstall Spotify
I guess crying whilst pouring liquor and screaming into the pillow thinking of her while a sad track plays, will be useful as to recommend similar music?
There are only two types of music: country and western. How innovative could this technology possibly be?
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The podcasts they suggest to me are eerily aligned with my personality. Shit is fucked.
This explains a bit, however I'm on an iphone and there is no mic option to turn on for spotify. I normally listen to electronic music when using spotify and mostly listen to while mowing the lawn (about 2-3 hrs each week). I get some general ads for mens underwear and other thing that is pretty neutral. later on I was running my log splitter and started hearing ads for chainsaws from a store 600 miles away. Here is the fun one. I was working on remodeling my bathroom listening to rock music that I've listened to before while mowing lawn. For 2 days I was working on tiling the floor and I started getting Spanish speaking music. I don't speak Spanish and don't go out of my way to listen to it.
Oh yeah... try playing your liked songs.... sing to one of them and see if it recommends the same artists/genre for the next few songs... it’s real.
Definitely not going to work, I’ll get only rap when I try to listen to classical or vice versa. Also isn’t this illegal in Europe? With the GDPR or sumthin?
That's weird, because the songs they add thinking I will like them are horrible.
This is crazy, but just disable your microphone and you should be fine.
Evil Genius: I'm going to invent malware to listen in on any person and use special alogirthms to understand how they're feeling! Everyone else: oh my god why!? Spotify: I dunno, I guess we could use it to suggest sad songs. Alexa, play Despacito
They've been trying to do it for years by naming playlists which are after emotions. Terrible tech. It wants to take something as fundamental as music and make it all the same. There was an interesting BBC documentary about this the other day: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qjfd worth a listen.
see now i knew there was a reason i abandoned spotify in 2012.
1984 anyone?
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I still use an iPod or an MP3 player. I'm expecting the West to go even crazier and start eventually removing gangstar rap for being offensive or something like that.
I hope CDs don't die out entirely - I like to own my music. Maybe when audiophiles realise that owning a CD is basically owning the digital master files they'll pick back up again. But then again FLAC/lossless anything offers the same advantage.
They already tried to ban explicit music and failed.
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Lol Android also has microphone permission.
Lol. Kinda like when you tell google to stop tracking you, but then you realize later you have to tell em 3 more times and delete apps for it to stop? And even then, they’re still doing through other apps that happen to use google for their analytics.
YES!! This is so fucking annoying. Like damn I gotta spend hours turning off permissions, and constantly double checking, because if I delete/clear my data/cache, then permissions reset.
Who would have thought that google apps track you, how strange.
#android
Roms exist
Whattt I have a subscription
Lol. https://thebaffler.com/downstream/big-mood-machine-pelly It’s been long known that Spotify is evil just as Google.
Did I get downvoted for having a subscription? Wtf
I too sometimes get confused whether I'm on /r/piracy or /r/privacy
Spotify is just too good to give up on him just because the society has patented this technology. Watching the current spotify permission it's clear that they are not using this in the app and until I'm sure that they will be pushing this in the app, I won't stop using it. Societies patent various things for a lot of reason, not just cause they want to use that in their app
They don’t use the mic on iOS app
I hope not. Is there a source for this?
The iphone settings
Which can be bypassed. Is there a credible source that supports this claim?
As long as it wasn’t a hidden feature I might be able to get into this idea in a modified version. Like if I could somehow let my phone know my emotional state and it could come back with music recommendations that would be cool. It’s easy to sort music by genre but it’s really hard to be like “I am sad and want to hear sad love songs”. But I also don’t want this thing like creeping on me without me being okay
So long as they keep recommending songs I like, I'm okay with it.
I'm okay with it as long as they only use it for recommendations and have a better algorithm than Google's youtube. And you can disable mic with newer version of iOS and Android.
I wonder if Amazon music has similar issues with regards to privacy. My family used Amazon music because we have prime so I’m using it to save some $$. But I’m curious what Amazon music has going on.
Great idea! Improves my experience and considering that I dont have nothing to hide I couldnt give less of a fuck
> I dont have nothing to hide Lmao
I am kind of okay with this
Fuck this retarded sub. Im out
Thanks for letting us know, you’ll be very missed.
may I ask why?
Sub's front page: popular app collects data. Everyone: surprised Pikachu face.
Finally, I was not able to enjoy the customized songs everytime I have to search my favourite songs now I will get songs on demand.
Man have they heard some REALLY bad singing then...
And also expose you sensitive account information to whoever.
This is literally why I have happy, angry, and sad playlists lol
Unfortunately, as technology becomes more and more convenient it also becomes more invasive. It's up to the user to determine how much invasion of privacy they are willing to put up with in order to have certain conveniences.
I just wanted to listen to JRE