I don’t like country, but last night I did a friend a favor and went to a country concert with her. Today Spotify is suddenly playing songs from the artist in my playlist. I’ve never listened to country songs before and certainly didn’t do anything to indicate to Spotify that I wanted to listen to this kind of music. How did Spotify do this and how do I get them to stop? This is so creepy.
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If there was a concert last night in your area, then the promoters and Spotify probably worked on a joint marketing collaboration. The fact that you went to the concert might have nothing to do with it.
Did you have your cellphone with you at the time?
Maybe the app was given your GPS location
It’s really scary once you start to realize what kind of information random apps on your phone could be tracking.
For all the people freaking out about the conspiracy that COVID vaccines are some kind of government tracker, people are sure dense about willingly carrying a device in their pocket that does for sure track your location.
https://support.spotify.com/us/article/understanding-my-data/
Here’s what they track, the do state that postcode is one, and cross site interests..
So if you bought the ticket, Googled the artist or used a map to get to the location, they might list it as an interest.
One theory I have heard that is used to explain stuff like this is although you didn’t search for Country music your friend did and other people in your area did so your phone used that information to give you that.
Your phone isn’t listening to you, if that’s what you’re asking. The truth is more sinister, your phone knows what websites you go to, what purchases you make, and where you are.
The fact that your phone was at a concert venue during this concert is actually pretty low hanging fruit, Spotify knows when concerts are scheduled because they want to know what their users listen to. But you also used an app on your phone to show them the ticket, and probably used your phone to get directions there.
They don’t need to know what you are saying or hearing, that is more difficult to process and far less reliable.
People should be a lot less concerned about their phones listening to them, and way more concerned that they don’t have to because they already know everything about you.
>certainly didn’t do anything to indicate to Spotify that I wanted to listen to this kind of music
besides discuss the concert near your phone, buy the ticket with a card, then travel to the venue… These are all data points that are collected about you and sold
What I hate about Spotify is I’ll listen to my stuff (video game music for The Division 2 and Spotify will just cram other artists and songs that have nothing to do with the ost of the game.
The things that can be done when you have a very large data set are scary. The common conspiracy theory is “your phone is ignoring your privacy requests and sending secret spy data”. Security analysts disagree, and propose the problem is “It’s hard to do something without interacting with at least a dozen companies who are tracking everything you do and pooling their data to get more information”. But people consider THAT a conspiracy and prefer to believe their phones spy on them.
So it is creepy, but the way it worked out is probably not as straight a line as you think.
You say your friend bought the tickets, had them on her phone, she drove, and you didn’t buy anything at the venue. But do you know for sure she never made any social media posts that tagged you? If you used your phone at all while around her, any number of apps aren’t just tracking your location, they could be tracking hers. And on their backends, they’re asking questions, “Can I find two people who look like they’re driving together?” So they matched you with her and thought, “Hmm, they might be on a trip.”
So you might’ve disappeared from their tracking when you got to the concert and stopped leaving a trail. But they already figured out you were probably with her. Depending on how deep the information goes, they could tell because while tracking her they probably noticed she didn’t stop to drop you off anywhere and particularly never went by your home.
Given all of that, the dark, nameless data brokers can reasonably say you were at the same concert. If Spotify’s paying those brokers and has enough information to connect you to what the brokers have about you, that tells Spotify you were probably at the concert. Plus it’s low-risk for them: if you skip the song oh well, they know maybe you don’t like that artist.
Also consider people at the concert were also using social media apps. Someone probably took a picture that has your face in it. ALL of these companies are heavily investing in facial recognition. So if you’ve ever posted to or been tagged in any of these social networks, that could be enough for them to recognize you *by face* from some rando’s picture and note that you were at a location. That goes off to the data brokers and can end up in Spotify’s algorithm.
There are some other possibilities.
Sometimes Spotify recommends a concert to me not because I have an interest in the music but probably just because they’re getting paid to make sure tickets sell. Maybe I’ve never listened to the genre but want something fun to do on a Friday night. It doesn’t cost them anything to try. Part of why I STOPPED using their generated playlists was I felt like they were pants. I only ever got shuffled versions of playlists I already had or a bunch of weird garbage too far away from what I wanted to hear. You have to keep in mind they get paid to promote certain artists, and that can supercede following your preferences. They know your rough location, they’re being paid to promote artists in the area. Why just that artist? Maybe the others didn’t make a deal with Spotify.
There’s also that using your phone is such an innocuous thing, there are hundreds of apps you might’ve opened quickly just to check something and you’re so used to doing so you don’t remember it as odd. Any one of them could be selling information to the data brokers, who then sell it to people like Spotify.
This stuff sounds like a conspiracy but there are a lot of confirmed links. Data brokers buy as much data as they can from many different sources. Then they do their best to try and match information among sources to build profiles about people. They win big when they manage to connect a lot of different sources. Laws are trying to keep up but the truth is if you can gather enough “anonymized” data you can usually find things the law intends to prevent you from finding.
The depressing part is you really can’t opt out of all of this without a lot of aggravation. You have to not use a smartphone. Use cash only. Aggressively never let any friend ever mention you on social media, to an extent that means “don’t have friends”. If you live the kind of life it takes to avoid this, odds are you STILL end up being tracked. It’s just by law enforcement this time, because it all tracks with the kind of people who do some bad things.
It’s not as easy as “Apple spies on you” or “Google spies on you”. They don’t have to. Dozens of other companies are working hard to do it. Honestly Apple and Google are big losers in this space because they can’t spy on you the easy way. But it’s notable when Apple makes services they tend to prefer “your data stays on your phone and you only send us what you have to”, and Google prefers “you must send us all of your data or nothing will work”. So Google’s much more well-positioned to be spying on you than Apple.
But dang. Every time I look at my GMail inbox I can tell Google doesn’t even seem to understand the data I willingly give them.
your credit card bin (the first 6 digits) is assigned to one specific bank. If a bunch of the same bins bought a bunch of the same product that would be enough for spotify to correlate.
Or your location (like if you used waze to get to the concert)
Or just the fact that your contacts are listening to the same music.
Or maybe you googled the artist to find out more.
or maybe she shared a link with you to pique your interest.
I keep saying these phones are actively listening.
Once I was talking to my son about a platypus. Just a random discussion about a platypus that he initiated. I didn’t search anything, we were JUST TALKING. Within 2 hours of finishing our discussion, the first video I see on Tiktok is of a platypus.
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