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“tracking you”
It’s their service, of course they know what you listened to.
They also collect a bunch of telemetry. There are ways to disable that of course
Wait? What? Is there a guide?
Look up spotx, that’s the patch I use. There are others, and on mobile you’d need a modded apk which is annoying as spotify are currently in a war against those
That’s sort of missing the point - there are alternatives for finding and listening to music that don’t involve a “service”. Choosing those is always better than having a service not only track you, but deciding what you listen to. For some reason people seem to be okay with Spotify despite the mountains of red flags.
Deciding what you listen to is a feature, you can just choose a playlist and go about your day.
And I have discovered some amazing shit letting Spotify ‘decide what I listen to’
I use YouTube music, but same here.
The majority of the cool music I’ve found has been through carefully curating a playlist, and then going to Playlist Radio.
“always better”? Really?
Maybe you can use that brain of yours to imagine why people use and like the service rather than assuming they must have the exact same preferences as you but just be idiots
Yep, you’re right - some folks evidently just love stepping up to a trough of music slop without thinking about it.
You tried. Not very hard though.
What do you mean “music slop”? I’ve found tons of great music through Spotify recommendations.
And they also push a bunch of literal AI-created music and allow others to do the same. So literally AI-slop taking away the few meager fractions of a cent that would go to actual musicians.
And what reason do you have to believe that the person you’re chastising listens to that AI slop?
Never said they did. But they’re supporting a platform that has been literally caught doing it.
I mean, maybe that’s just your algorithm? All the AI music I’ve seen has been goofy novelty stuff like Obscure Vinyl, which I sought out intentionally and doesn’t affect my other listening. They haven’t pushed anything I didn’t look for.
This is a well-documented and much written about story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy_over_fake_artists_on_Spotify
“That’s sort of missing the point…”
Boy now that’s the single best encapsulation of Lemmy comments I think I’ve ever seen.
We have indeed successfully rebuilt the old reddit spirit that so many of us missed!
It’s sort of difficult to provide good “recommendations” without user data.
I guess you could look at recent releases, and let users pick what genre they prefer. But with users play history, playlists, etc available, it becomes a lot easier to create a good recommendation engine
It would probably be harder for them to anonymize your account.
To be fair, a Service like Spotify would make absolutely no sense if they would not be tracking my listening preferences to propose me the kind of music I like.
Just listening to random stuff on the internet would be like radio in the good ol’ days.
Exactly. When they start injecting ads for paid subscribers, fuck them…but fuck Spotify anyway for how little they pay artists.
And they support things like lunch and $100000+ donations to fascist political parties.
They support… lunch?
Wait, I support lunch! Sometimes even second lunch! Am I a fascist?? A hungry, hungry fascist.
Ha, I worded it a bit weird, sorry. Spotify organised a lunch for the maga inauguration and donated 150000 to them earlier this year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify?wprov=sfla1
They don’t personalize it by user, but it’s usually fun to watch Pornhub’s annual summary.
Missed opportunity tbh
Using usage data to improve user experience and similarly worded sentences are in pretty much every apps “Terms of Service”. They record what music I have listened to and compile playlist for me, so what? In similar manner navigation apps like Waze collect data about your driving habits to offer better routes.
It becomes an issue when:
- They collect data irrelevant to the user experience or not connected in any way to the services the company provides.
- They record activity for people who don’t even have an account through third parties (looking at you Meta)
- They scan every local network I connect to and collect detailed information (again… Meta)
- They sell the data about what I listened and/or any other collected data to third parties
- They use the data to train LLMs without my knowledge and approval, or opt me in by default and bury the option to opt out of this deep in the settings.
I haven’t used Spotify for a long time, but I use YouTube. YouTube ticks most boxes of that list. I bet Waze do too, and Spotify maybe. That are for me the problematic areas we need to be discussing. Collecting data is not entirely bad. It is a good thing when that data is handled only in the user’s interest, it’s bad when it’s being abused, which unfortunately is the norm rather than exception nowadays.
Exactly. Lemmy users have got so hyper focused on privacy they seem to have forgotten why it’s important, and treat it as a goal in its own right.
Every time you interact with anyone, they learn something about you. That’s not usually cause for concern, so it needs to be a little bit more nuanced.
I agree with you but the problem is that the incentives to collect data responsibly are FAR outweighed by financial benefits of doing it, and the barrier to entry is not much larger. So, when the vast majority of data collection is abusive, and the incentive structure is there to ensure it continues to go that way, folks are understandably upset to hear about ANY data collection these days.
Spotify isn’t the only tech company with a personalised yearly wrap-up. Not even close…
But I think they did it first (or at least they made it popular)
Maybe. I got no idea really. But the post doesn’t say “first”, it says “only”.
Yes, they figured it out successfully, meaning the rebrand was successful and people liked it. Everybody else then copied the structure and format. Hooray! /s
Is like to see the Wrapped for my 1273 trusted data partners.
I really like how Letterboxd used their big data. By using the Watchlist (the to-watch list of movies users wants to see) of everyone, they can find movies a lot of people want to watch, but it’s impossible to stream and very challenging to buy, and license those movies for their online rental store.
Steam review, too.
Transcription
Tweet by “delia” @delia_ai:
spotify the only tech company to figure out how to successfully rebrand “we’ve been tracking you” to “isn’t this FUN”
You are a really kind user
I mean, even back in the day of listening to local .mp3s on my desktop. I’m pretty sure at least some of the software I used (Windows Media Player, Music Match Jukebox, probably others I can’t remember) kept track of the title number of listens. I definitely remember going through and looking from time to time out of curiosity.
I also just love data and analysis. I love keeping track of things. I love sparking my memory, using data like this to remember a song I loved for like 3 weeks 8 months ago and forgot about.
I hate Spotify for a variety of other reasons. Once I’ve accumulated enough CD’s or direct downloads to have a good sized library again i’m going to cancel it. But I do hope that whatever locally hosted open-source software I use for that will have tracking and analysis tools because it’s fun.
Humans have a soft spot for collecting data. We have had people counting “how many black spots do I see looking directly at the sun” daily since 1749.
For a moment I thought you meant that there’s a group of people looking at the sun and counting black spots that persist in their vision after doing so, then I realized how dumb that was and that you probably were talking about sun spots. That moment of confusion really got me going though.
Admit it, you wanted to see the data during that moment.
Be sure to make 2 backups of your library. Should be no problem if it’s all mp3s. Also you can add a lot of metadata to the files themselves, there are software libraries/programs for this
I think mp3 files store that; I’ve seen Dankpods pull thay databfrom random crap old mp3 players.
Last.fm was obviously first.
In their defense, for a while there, they were the best algorithm out there. It was actually really good. Not anymore. It’s fucking awful. One of the worst shuffles I’ve ever seen, super repetitive and actually insulting suggestions.
But also, everybody should dump Spotify for a shit ton of ethical and political reasons.
Tidal has gotten insufferably repetitive lately, too. I’m about to go back to a local music player if the situation doesn’t improve, because I suspect the rest are just as bad.
Yo ho ho~ 🎻
I remember when Pandora was originally great
Lol… It was okay for a very very brief time. After di.fm and before grooveshark. And tbh, even then, it wasn’t very good. There was some music services that I swear I’m forgetting that were right around that time that were really good and then a lot of people loved pandora for some reason…
I love Pandora specifically because if you put in something as specific as a song it would recommend other similar songs.
And not just similar in terms of year genre or artist, but similar in terms of how they sounded. And you could even open the details and you could see how their music staff and genre experts had tagged each song. And that was really cool.
Stuff like “hand claps”, “breathy vocals,” “virtuosic acoustic instrumentals”, etc.
Accurate: they turned ‘surveillance’ into ‘personalized vibes.’ Best branding trick is making people feel like the tracking is for them.
The wrap up is tracking you? This is the dumbest thing I’ve seen all year
What? How else do you think they get all the info they are showing you in the wrap up if not by tracking?
It’s normal that they track what you listen to on their application. They send you recommendations based on your music taste.
It would be shocking if they sent you details about the books you’re reading or locations you’re visiting.
So it’s not dumb then? I don’t really understand what you are trying to say tbh
I wasn’t clear. I’m seeing this take on Spotify as if they are illegally tracking your listening habits.
We usually use track for apps like Facebook who track your behavior on your phone, in other apps, on your browser etc
Saying Spotify is tracking you in the wrap gives a wrong impression.
They are making a profile of your listening habits but it’s a normal thing for a music app to do. How else would you know the details of a song you just listened to or how can they recommend you new things.
??? the wrapped is a collection of data they have on you. It is them showing things they tracked about you last year
