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Spotify Wins Patent to Snoop on Users to Gauge Their ‘Emotional State’

Writer's picture: Vision NewsVision News

Music streaming service Spotify has won a patent that will enable it to snoop on users’ speech and background noise in order to choose songs that best suit the listener’s “emotional state.”


Welcome to 2021, the dystopian nightmare we were warned about.


“Spotify has received a patent that will allow it to use speech recognition and sound analysis to assess a user’s demographic attributes, determine their emotional state, and even glean insight into their location,” reports RT. “The information will be used – hypothetically, at least – to pick the perfect song to play without requiring any conscious data input from the listener.”


Spotify applied for the patent back in February 2018 but it was quietly approved earlier this month.


The technology is said to utilise the user’s emotional state to tweak its algorithm and 'perform better suited song suggestions in pursuit of a “positive metadata/emotional state.” in plain English, its listening in to your conversations, via any devices microphone that has the app, with the explicit intent of manipulating your emotional state. Nice to know.


Spotify secured another patent back in October called “methods and systems for personalizing user experience based on [user] personality traits,” while also publishing a paper in July that detailed its plans “to link streaming behavior with brain scanning, genetic, and physiological data.” yes really.


Want 'Smack my Bitch Up' by The Prodigy when you're wound up? then you'll probably be out of luck as some nerd in silicon valley doesn't think that's a good idea.

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