Spotify Says Sorry

Flamin ek! Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has issued an apology to users over the way in which the company communicated the service’s new terms and conditions, following a streaming storm in a teacup over privacy fears.

The company came under fire last week for basically, as described here by Forbes being “really creepy” with the data it is now requesting from users. This includes access to information stored on mobile devices including contacts, photos and media files in addition to location and sensor data.

Explaining in a blog post, Ek said: “We are in the middle of rolling out new terms and conditions and privacy policy and they’ve caused a lot of confusion about what kind of information we access and what we do with it”.

Ek went on: “We understand people’s concerns about their personal information and are 100 percent committed to protecting our users’ privacy and ensuring that you have control over the information you share”.

The jolly green giant then outlined what the company would do – and perhaps more to the point not do – with users’ photos, location data, contacts, voice-controlled systems, stating that it will only use data for “Specific purposes that will allow you to customize your Spotify experience”.

Ek stressed that personal information is not shared with its marketing and ad partners, although he added that some data is shared with mobile phone companies by necessity, and Spotify of course shares the data anonymously with commercial partners.

The Gen believes this to have hit a nerve as people are used to the adage of there being no such thing as a free lunch, especially on the Internet. They are used to services such as Facebook mining their data and behaviour but for a subscription based music service it’s perhaps a step too far.

Read Ek’s full ‘Sorry’ blog post here.