Spotify Wrapped – a fun excuse to look at how different apps collect and use our data

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As it has been in previous years, the beginning of December means millions of people tweeting and Instagramming their Spotify Wrapped. The #SpotifyWrapped is as usual going viral. Everyone wants to show their friends what they’ve been listening to and Spotify makes it fun and easy to do that. So everyone does. These are last week’s Google Trends (Spotify is in blue, red is covid 19 and yellow – Twitter)

Clearly, the Spotify Wrapped feature is bringing the world’s attention to the service and does for great fun and a cheap marketing campaign. But what no one seems to think about is “how do they get those information” or “what do they do with them”. Well, Spotify, like many other streaming services, uses a special AI-based algorithm called BaRT (Bandits for Recommendations as Treatments) to analyze its users’ music taste and suggest songs and playlists they will enjoy. BaRT constantly analyses user preferences; which songs and artists they listen to, which ones they add to their ‘favorite’ playlist as well as the songs they skip. Each activity is being tracked and analyzed and then used by the algorithm to suggest songs you may like and create personal playlists. Also, using data from different surveys, BaRT can connect songs you like with your gender or age. Another thing the app does is track users’ location to suggest music popular in their region. 

Collecting data on musical taste does not seem like a huge threat to our privacy but any information is valuable. If you listen to workout playlists then you are probably gonna be interested in sports apparel, if you listen to Disney playlists and lullabies you are probably a parent and maybe you’ve been wanting to take your kid to Disneyland. The app knows when you’re in a bad mood, when you’re happy and maybe even when you’re going through a breakup. Now that sounds a bit worse, doesn’t it? Obviously, Spotify is not the only company that does this. All of them do, there is no running away from it but it sure is worth being a bit more aware of what exactly our data is used for.

sources: 

cnn.com

onezero.medium.com

spotify.com

trends.google.pl

One thought on “Spotify Wrapped – a fun excuse to look at how different apps collect and use our data

  1. 46286 says:

    Frankly speaking, I never thought about algorithms in music applications in such a way. Great ideas and a lot of space for contemplating. Thanks!!

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