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Comment by JustSomeNobody | Hacker News Reader

I don't use spotify and I usually don't like social anything (except HN, of course). However...

Surely there are reasonable explanations. Let's break this down.

GPS and motion sensors. Why could they want this? Maybe they will switch up your play list when you go for that run. Seems plausible.

Contacts. Ok, everything is social, so maybe they want to send your current track to other spotify users in your contacts. Seems plausible.

Photos. Not sure about this one.

Sharing your information with partners. Does spotify play ads? wouldn't this be a standard part of sharing data with Apple and Google's ad network?

I'm not defending them, but this is the social world we live in. You either find alternatives or deal with apps that pack social features in.

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> GPS and motion sensors. Why could they want this? Maybe they will switch up your play list when you go for that run. Seems plausible.

They introduced a running feature a few months ago that does, indeed, attempt to match the bpm of a playlist to your running cadence.

> Contacts. Ok, everything is social, so maybe they want to send your current track to other spotify users in your contacts. Seems plausible.

Share a playlist with a contact. Share a track with a contact. Etc etc. I'm surprised this wasn't already in there if it's really a new addition.

> Photos. Not sure about this one.

Might be related to running. Strava, fr'instance, lets you add photos taken on your run. Or might just be to let you adorn a playlist with your chosen photo.

> Sharing your information with partners.

Doesn't everyone? Isn't this standard boilerplate? Spotify are attempting brand tie-ups in many areas so I can't see this as something out of the ordinary.

The photo one stumped me as well, but I figured it was something innocuous. I remember similarly misguided outrage over the Facebook app's 'new' permissions just a few months (I think) ago.

Side note: these features make me think I should probably switch from Rdio, though I guess some of those use cases are satisfied by Songza...

I THINK, and I could be totally wrong, but I THINK that on at least some platforms, when an app requires access to information stored locally on your phone, it's an all-or-nothing thing. So if Spotify needs permissions to local media files (which it obviously does) then there's no way to grant that without also giving it access to your local photos, for example. Could be totally wrong, I don't know, but I remember hearing that several times.

That would make sense.

Awhile ago there was some major app, I think Facebook, that updated its Android version, and everyone freaked out because the new version required a seemingly-outrageous level of access. Some kind soul went down the whole list and explained by everything it requested was critical to the functionality of the app, and I seem to recall one of those explanations involving access to local files.

Also, people need to take a step back and look at these privacy notices for what they really are: legal liability waivers. When Spotify says they are allowed to give your data to third parties, they are not saying "we are selling your data to third party marketers as we speak." They're saying, "if this data ends up in the hands of someone other than Spotify, you cannot sue us." That's it.

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