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Spotify Is Now Selling Your Information To Advertisers (engadget.com) 107

Posted by BeauHD from the digital-age dept.
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Engadget: Spotify is now opening its data to targeted advertising. "Everything from your age and gender, to the music genres you like to listen to will be available to various third-party companies," reports Engadget. "Spotify is calling it programmatic ad buying (Warning: source may be paywalled) and has already enabled it." The nearly 70 million people that currently use Spotify's free, ad-supported streaming service across 59 countries will be affected. The ads will be audio-based and stretch between 15-30 seconds in length. The advertisers who buy ad spots will be able to look for specific users by viewing their song picks to find the best matches for the products they're selling. Two weeks ago, China has released its first ever set of digital ad regulations that seems to all but ban ad blocking.
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Spotify Is Now Selling Your Information To Advertisers More

Spotify Is Now Selling Your Information To Advertisers

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  • Always been doing it (Score:5, Informative)

    by pete6677 ( 681676 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @08:37PM (#52558285)

    I figured they were doing this all along, and just now got around to announcing it. Telemetry is how all modern web businesses make money. How else would all of these services be "free"?

    • Re:Always been doing it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @08:45PM (#52558301)

      How else would all of these services be "free"?

      Well, one model would be to give people a sample limited service to hopefully upsell them into a paid spotify premium; that would be the classic 'how else'.

      Note that spotify says this only applies to its non-paying customers.

      But yeah, if you aren't paying for the service, this is pretty much what you should expect.

      • Note that spotify says this only applies to its non-paying customers.

        I'm certain I don't believe that. Paying customers would be a much better information extraction source with higher likelyhood of buying stuff.

        • Paying customer don't get ads on the service. Perfectly targeted ads that are not heard would be somewhat useless...

          • Paying customer don't get ads on the service. Perfectly targeted ads that are not heard would be somewhat useless...

            So paying customers do not give Spotify any personal information? I don't particularly care, but if you give any commercial outfit doing business on the internet any personal information, they are monetizing your info in some way.

            • I doubt it. The name and address are in a public registry where I live and I doubt they are sharing the credit card number.

              • I doubt it. The name and address are in a public registry where I live and I doubt they are sharing the credit card number.

                Well then, I'm 100 percent certain that you are correct. Thanks for the clarification.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Maritz ( 1829006 )

          I'm certain I don't believe that. Paying customers would be a much better information extraction source with higher likelyhood of buying stuff.

          When you pay you don't get ads. Maybe they sell the info anyway. That'd usually be illegal in Europe (dodgy EULA nonwithstanding), but dandy-as-fuck over the states.

          • I'm certain I don't believe that. Paying customers would be a much better information extraction source with higher likelyhood of buying stuff.

            When you pay you don't get ads. Maybe they sell the info anyway.

            Much info to be sold, even if you aren't getting ads.

      • I think that, to some extent, this telemetry and ad targeting is a sort of arms race. People only have so much money you can influence them to spend one way or another. Unless we set some limits, it's a race to the bottom to see who is best at invading people's privacy. From the point of view of the marketers, it's not really that they need the absolute best information on the potential customer. They just need better information then competing marketing firms have. Of course, it's important to point o
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 )

      You sell advertising. It's not always by using non-personally identifying information. That's the difference in this instance. *shrug*

      I don't know why people think companies are always making shit up. Why would they "get around to it?" If they were doing it before without telling users, they'd still be doing it without telling users.

  • Spotify Is Now Selling _Customer_ Information (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @08:39PM (#52558291) Homepage

    These headlines are so assuming. Your this. Your that. I am not a customer of Spotify, so they are not. I hope.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You are so assuming. Customer this. Customer that. I am a paid customer of Spotify, free users are not. Only their information is being sold.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      If you used Spotify, you were NEVER a customer of theirs, you were their PRODUCT.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Actually as a paying member of Spotify, I am a customer of theirs and they provide a good service.

        Shockingly when I used their free service, I paid by listening to their adverts. Is it so terrible if those adverts are targeted to things I'm more likely to be interested in.

      • If you ever use that quote you failed business school and probably think the entire world is black and white too.

        Grow up.

    • And that the actual paying customers of spotify are not being affected. This sounds like FUD. Perhaps we should all use itunes now?

      • Screw streaming, just get a portable player and put you files on it, no ads

      • It sounds like FUD because the article describes Spotify selling targeted ad spots, but there's not much value in just dumping the user's data to every customer buying ads. They'd need an expensive data engineer to come up with all kinds of statistical analysis methods to categorize and analyze that data, and then decide what to do.

        It seems more likely Spotify is selling ads based on aggregate statistics. "We have 46 million teenage-college students listening to Bieberpop, and 2 hundred listening to Nic

    • I don't know about Spotify, but Facebook is violating the privacy of people who are not their customers. They build facial recognition profiles of everyone in photos uploaded to Facebook, just in case the non-members might join some day. Their facial recognition database is, of course, far too valuable to just use in-house. I'm sure they plan to sell access to federal, state and local law enforcement as well as foreign agencies and companies.

    • Nothing is free, Period.

      How much do you pay for your daily sunlight, air and gravity?

      • Re:Nothing is free (Score:5, Funny)

        by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @10:29PM (#52558653)

        How much do you pay for your daily sunlight, air and gravity?

        I'm somewhat large, and so I actually get a rebate from my gravity bill.

        • How much do you pay for your daily sunlight, air and gravity?

          I'm somewhat large, and so I actually get a rebate from my gravity bill.

          No, dear fellow mom's basement dweller. All those sunlight units you never use, as well as the portion of air credits unused due to the stuffy atmosphere down there, are actually carried over to your gravity balance (after "administrative" debits, of course).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          How much do you pay for your daily sunlight, air and gravity?

          I'm somewhat large, and so I actually get a rebate from my gravity bill.

          Yes, but the GP's mass is so great, he generates his own gravity.

    • Yes things are free.

      There's this peculiar definition of "free" which has been cropping up here a lot recently which is entirely at odds with how just about everyone else uses the words. Under the definition, a tenner on the floor is not free money because you had to take time to pick it up and so there's some opportunity cost associated.

      The (streaming) radio station I like listening to is entirely free, in that I don't have to pay anything to listen to it, just like I could bick it up for free on any FM rec

  • Well bless their heart. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davmoo ( 63521 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @09:14PM (#52558411)

    You mean there are actually people who think Spotify gives away free music out of the goodness of their heart and a desire to make the world a better place, expecting nothing in return? How cute!

  • Usernames too (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 21, 2016 @09:16PM (#52558419)

    They also sell your username [spotify.com] if someone higher on the social ladder wants the one you're using.

    Hey, maybe that's how they can finally monetize Slashdot. I'll put up $5 for "CmdrTaco"

  • I blocked the ads with privoxy (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It works system wide.
  • This seems to be almost a Darwinian step in evolution for online data/service providers. I'm sure Spotify is only doing this to survive in the perilous digital wild.

  • Good luck with the gender thing. (Score:3)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Thursday July 21, 2016 @10:44PM (#52558697)

    Good luck with the gender thing.

    Most 56 year old FBI agents show up as 12 year old girls.

  • Too bad (harhar) the "service" isn't available in my locale.

  • Cough up some $$$ or deal with it. (Score:3)

    by moeinvt ( 851793 ) on Friday July 22, 2016 @07:28AM (#52559843)

    Remember, when you're using a "free" service, you're the product, not the customer, so don't complain when the company sells its product(users, or at least their eyes and ears) to its customers.
    It's not exactly hard to find deals and discounts for Spotify Premium either. Six months free, $99 for the first year, etc. I think they also offer a student rate of $4.99 per month or something.
    I love Spotify. Even the full $10 per month is worth it to get the full spectrum of music and avoid any annoying ads.

  • AND... an update to the Engadget story [engadget.com] says they're not selling it. Presumably it's being used in their in-house ad system. All better now?
  • Letting ad givers to target potential audience using some of the customer information like age, gender etc. does not mean selling data or compromising personal data. As what I get from the post, ad givers will not get specific user information they just inform spotify that I want my ads to be heared by only females, because I my product has no use among men.

  • You get what you pay for

    Has become:

    If you didn't pay for it they get you!

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