Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions
bbc.com
bbc.com
Spotify has a very cool feature called Community [2] where users can talk about what they want Spotify to do. The most upvoted ideas are things like "change my username" or "filter explicit songs." My personal wishlist is a "don't play this song again" button [3] and native Homepod support [4].
The point is that users aren't asking for Spotify to interpret their emotional state, they just want comparatively basic features.
1: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342854806_Just_the_...
2: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ideas/ct-p/newideas
Obligatory “If I’d asked customers what they want, they would have told me a faster horse.”
People may not realize the value of this new feature because they have not even imagined it.
Even no emotion is fine. Music doesn’t need to exercise our brains all the time. Or even every time you listen to a particular song.
And the part about "anticipating what's next" that reminds me of "What's expected of us" by Ted Chiang.
Or even
https://www.grainger.com/category/fasteners/screws/machine-s...
Specialty stores? I wouldn't want to do this at scale with Amazon.
I guess it must be significantly cheaper at scale. But it's such a waste of time for everybody it's infuriating.
What the people wanted was to go from A to B faster. How they did was "via a horse". Logically "faster horse" is their solution (of which I'm certain there were varying qualities of horses, some of which you wouldn't want to trust your life with).
What Ford did was focus on a problem "transportation is slow" (and horses make a lot of manure).
The Model T
>prized for its low cost, durability, versatility, and ease of maintenance
This was 5 years after the first car (Model A) in 1903. Which was 7 years after the prototype in 1896.
From: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ideas/ct-p/newideas
1. Add support for Apple Silicon (run on my computer)
2. Update the Spotify app icon for macOS Big Sur (fit the theme of computer/life)
3. Please bring back the Hide this Song Option and I dont like this song/ artist (listening to this puts me in a mood I don't like, don't play it)
- This is arguably the same thing as "detect emotional state": "wrong mood do not want". Ignoring that data signal suggests misaligned incentives/goals. While I'm certain many songs share common emotions between people, the degree to which we react to an individual song or genre varies. I'm not sure how they'd hope to accurately tune an emotional scale while also refusing to block songs/artists.
4. Emotes and user reactions - again: gather the data surrounding how a song makes you feel. The ability to gather and train on this data should be crucial, without it how could they capture users emotions? (I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just clear to me this is aligned with the patent)
5. Globe Learning - a suggestion to visualize music globally by artist home country/state/city
I wouldn't consider "inquisitive" or "learning" an emotion, but perhaps it's a higher order grouper "what state is the listener in". There's an emotional component to the process of learning and ignoring "confused", "curious" exploration of something foreign could lead to an better overall "fulfilled emotional state"
To rephrase your last sentence: People (including companies) may not realize the value of a new feature because it has been neither _implemented_ nor _measured_.
Sure, but in the meantime, they do realize the value of the features they keep requesting.
The sad reality is: not many people are going to leave Spotify because they can't change their user name or filter explicit songs[0]; they're essentially captive. The company instead wants to focus on features that will attract new users. The service will remain as bad as it can possibly be without hemorrhaging users, because from the POV of a growth-oriented company, existing users are worthless and not worth paying attention to.
--
[0] - Though I'm pretty sure at least marking songs as explicit was a feature years ago, when I used Spotify. A regression?
Edited for clarity
More widely, many, if not all, of any recommendation algorithm in any field (music and beyond) are not 'intelligent' (meaning smarter than the right human) in any way whatsoever; as noted, usually some tag sorting going on - and where items have been auto-tagged vs manual makes no difference to the quality; you're still dealing with a programmed personality when auto-tagged.
However, they do (appear to) 'work' (exhibit intelligence) when it's performed on a topic of which you know little; there they offer a helping hand.
It's a damn shame because the open nature of podcasts is one of the most appealing things about them. I get where they're coming from though.
If they weren't spending ungodly amounts of cash on podcasts (cough joe rogan) they could probably buy pandora (just guessing, not looking at any actual numbers) and replace their recommendation engine with theirs.
I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what the hell had just happened until I found a page promoting Spotify's dynamic ad insertion for podcasts.
This is an inaccurate assumption is how. Podcasts are audio adverts with interesting segments haha.
Ok maybe not that bad, but it's nowhere near 'few or no ads'
I'd definitely qualify the worst case of 28 out of 30 minutes being actual content to be "few or no ads".
I DO need them to understand (or give me a manual way to tell them) which playist is for my 4yo and stop trying to play me their songs when I’ve selected a playlist for me. Drives me nuts.
I've argued that recommendation system for music are near useless for years because they don't group music together by what I actually want to hear together, and that it needs to be more careful about interpreting my actions because what goes together varies by mood and purpose.
E.g. you can't just take genre,or artist, because the music I want before bed need to be slow, soothing and familiar. Transitions between tracks also need to be much less abrupt than other times of day.
Other times I want something new and surprising.
Or loud and upbeat.
Until they convince me they can do that they're not getting my money.
My current favourites:
- if you sort a playlist you're playing, then click the album art to find the currently playing song, it will skip to the position of the track in the _unsorted_ list
- playlists over a certain length just won't play via Spotify Connect. There's a couple of playlists I just can't play on my Sonos speakers.
- playing a daily mix hides the shuffle button, and yet it still uses the shuffle state you had selected previously. If you want to turn shuffle off you have to play something else, toggle shuffle, then play the daily mix again
I've tried reporting these. They made me jump through a thousand standard troubleshooting hoops despite them all happening on every device I own. Then a few days later they came back and said it was "working as intended". Mind blowing.
I'd be happy with them just not breaking the things that work.
I'm almost certain it didn't work on my friend's android when we tried it too. Also I'm pretty sure I discovered it by accident one day.
Huh nobody is using this feature we've never mentioned and only exists on one platform. Sometimes Spotify comes off as just completely daft.
I really hate Spotify for everything except their pretty complete library and reasonable pricing. Discovery, searching, UI, everything just plain sucks, I miss 8tracks.
1: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Mobile-Remove-cu...
Edit: I've been hoping for years 8tracks would be back, and low and behold, they have relaunched: https://blog.8tracks.com/2020/04/19/welcome-back-8tracks/
Edit2: not really, still not available outside of USA/Canada
Spotify isn't optimizing for placating the vocal minority of power users, they're trying to increase their paid subscription count. It would be great if we lived in a world where these were the same thing, but they clearly aren't.
People like Affevtiva running facial micro expression algorithms etc. What happens when all this data is complied by your friendly neighborhood Data Broker in the name of a "Better Customer Experience" with realtime FitBit heartrates/sleep quality from Google with Amazon applying tone of voice stress analytics with Apple Pay's recent purchase history on top of .........
I am writing this inside a Facebook VR headset with eyetracking hardware and can't be sure my 'gaze' is not something I have agreed to have monitored in some EULA.
If they get these neuro brain machine interfaces to the point they work - I can only imagine the outcome without any established boundaries.
And just how can this industry establish boundaries ? Who decides and who decides who decides ?
The machine learning systems here are just 'automation by averages' -- they are incapable of measuring any variables which could actually estimate your emotion.
Emotions are 'conceptualized bodily states' that the brain adopts in order to atune our motivation/etc. to our environment.
Indeed it isn't clear there are any devices we can attach to computer to even take measurements. At best, something like a continuous webcam feed would improve accuracy a little from "almost coinflip", and only for quite extreme emotions.
The problem with these systems is precisely that we are fed 'averages'. NOT that they are 'capturing sentiment' (ad-tech propaganda to sell their apps and ads).
My concern is that this propaganda is leading to people changing their behaviour: unaware they are being fed 'generic content' for some accidental, meaningless 'singanal' they sent, their habits/emotions/self-perception is being distorted to fit the stupidity of the average.
This is definitely happening on a global scale already.
It doesn't matter if a movie is "good", if netflix decides to feed it to everyone it will become #1. It doesn't matter is a song is "good", if spotify decides it's the next hit it will become one. &c.
It's like TV or radio on steroids, everyone listen to the same thing, read the same articles, watch the same netflix shows. Anecdata: a lot of my friends started to play chess seemingly out of nowhere, I really didn't get it until I learned there was a new netflix show about chess that made the game hype again
I don't get you. Isn't the shuffle button on or off based on the last time you changed it? If the shuffle is on, and you play an album, then you'll play it shuffled. I'd much rather that than Spotify trying to predict whether I want to play something shuffled or not, and auto-changing the button status.
Out of topic a bit but this reminds me of the famous dictum, attributed to Charles V (H.R.E.): I speak in Latin to God, Italian to Women, French to my Men, and German to my Horse.
Because many don't know the actual term for what they're analysing, I thought I'll post it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_prosody
Honestly, I don't think this is a good idea. It opens one up for manipulation. You feel this way and Spotify will suggest you something that makes you feel rather that way.
It doesn't matter if it's one or more songs meant to support these feelings or counter them, I don't think this is a good for people in the long run. That's not even considering the fact that they want to basically spy on people.
My point there is that there is absolutely intrinsic value in researching in this field, but it just seems to be rather misguided whenever companies suffer from a high VC valuation.
Suggesting playlist:
1. Nine Inch Nails – Hurt
2. Michael Andrews – Mad World
3. Klaus Nomi – The Cold Song
4. Johnny Mandel – Suicide is Painless
Enjoy! :)
I miss this! http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/06/songza-goes-universal-wit...
Of course they're not literally preventing me from doing anything, after all I can just search for the music I want, but often times I would find myself hours into music I've never heard of because the platform decided to play it after what I chose to listen to was over.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not the way I enjoy listening to music. For me the process of discovering a new album is part of the experience, and i missed doing it when it was so convenient for me not to.
I'm not proposing that Spotify should remove the feature entirely, it's just not the way I want to listen to music.
(The Luddites were also not blanket opposed to technology, just technology that for absolutely no good reason made their lives worse instead of better.)
Making textiles was a job that require a lot of investment (apprenticeship) in learning the necessary skills. Automated looms put a lot of skilled labor out of work, while concentrating wealth into the people that owned the automated looms, which only required much cheaper unskilled labor.
Luddites were not opposed to technology! They were opposed to businesses using new technologies to destroy their livelihood. If they had been included in sharing the benefits of the new technologies, the Luddite movement wouldn't exist.
> This does not strike me as a technology that made life worse in the long run.
The luddites would have agreed. From [1]:
>> As the Industrial Revolution began, workers naturally worried about being displaced by increasingly efficient machines. But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.”
> Especially for women who were freed from The responsibilities of manufacturing clothing for their families and could later pursue careers.
WTF? Luddites were highly skilled artisans that were being forced to abandon their careers.
[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
> the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines" ... “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods [...] and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.”
They simply wanted to be included in reaping the benefits of technology. The popular belief that misrepresents Luddites as anti-technology instead of fighting against abusive labor practices is a good example of anti-labor propaganda.
And before we smash all the computers, maybe we can start with something less drastic, like smashing publicly traded companies? I rarely see privately held "lifestyle businesses" getting into hot water over customer abuses.
We should also probably stop letting “shareholder value” drive our morals.
Where you draw the line isn't agreed upon by any means, so someone somewhere will end up doing it. In fact, there's no doubt that every nuclear-capable government is doing top-secret neuroscience research with the intent of figuring out how the brain works and utilizing that to extract information and manipulate POW or political rivals. The little public newsworthy neuroscience work that's out there[0] is the portion being paid for by corporate interests which actually don't have too much to gain from it in the near future, at least until the tech gets cheap enough to be implanted in either a phone or a car.
0: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/mind-reading-algorit...
But put simply, I think that we need to make it highly illegal to use information asymmetry to take advantage of people at a large scale.
People need legal protection against the natural "just make it work already" instinct that makes us blindly accept TOS terms and follow dark patterns. It would be laughable to argue that a significant portion of users actually understands what they are agreeing to.
You, as a hacker, have a responsibility to your community, family, friends, to build an alternative platform for them.
If you refuse this responsibility, you are failing your own family and community, and leaving them to suffer all the consequences.
You can't realistically tell your family to quit Service X, no matter how fucking bad it is, unless you're willing to provide them with an alternative, hardware and all, including either a replicated experience or on-demand support.
If you can't build an alternative to Service X, you must start teaching yourself immediately until you are able to do it.
I'm just a messenger, don't blame me for the current reality.
How are you going to teach yourself to acquire music licensing agreements that still allow you to run a profitable service at scale?
Given the money at stake and the number of people who could technically build such a service, what makes you believe that the problem is a lack of willpower or know-how?
profit not needed, only sustainability, is cheap
All these recent scary tech inventions? They are all driven by collecting data for targeting ads, fine-tuning marketing strategies, and manipulating people better. Let's go after the root cause.
They can't even differentiate artists with the same fucking name.
[1] https://pitchfork.com/news/new-spotify-patent-involves-monit...
[2] https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotifys-latest-inven...
> Streaming music platform Spotify has won a patent enabling it to snoop on users’ speech and even background noise in order to gauge emotional state and location type to serve up the appropriate soundtrack. Not creepy at all!
> 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. The information will be used – hypothetically, at least – to pick the perfect song to play without requiring any conscious data input from the listener.
Straight out spying, basically. It's what people were warning about with Siri, Cortana or whatever it was called. And it was dismissed with "I don't care, I'm not doing anything illegal and I have nothing to hide".
As to what does that mean, whether the things described in the patent have actually been used or it isn't just a bunch of nonsense, I don't really know.
It doesn't have to actually work particularly well (beyond what you can get with a pretty obvious guess), and probably won't. But it captures the media's attention and the public's imagination, just to claim that you're doing this.
https://pitchfork.com/news/new-spotify-patent-involves-monit...
Customers don’t like having their speech recorded to be recommended “relevant content”.
What is Daniel Ek doing? Who files surveillance patents in the midst of the biggest privacy-oriented comms migration in history?
As for addressing the data concerns, Spotify premium does not have ads and Spotify at heart is not an ad company like Google
Brain dead filter bubble repeatedly playing what I've already played is why I don't subscribe to this garbage service.
I only get new music when I manually load a playlist.
Pirates.
No matter what legislation mega corps push, piracy will always be a competitor to them.
Nice touch.
https://www.rt.com/news/513966-spotify-monitor-emotions-pate...
It isn't directly relevant to the subject of this article, but a search for this headline/copy shows it has permeated a lot of right-wing and other questionable sources of info, but appears nowhere else.
https://www.editorials360.com/2021/01/29/in-spotify-music-li...
https://www.newswars.com/spotify-wins-patent-to-surveil-user...
That said, the patent it references may not be all that new:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...
Edit: actually there are lots of media articles about this story. I've changed the URL from https://www.rt.com/news/513966-spotify-monitor-emotions-pate..., to https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55839655, which is one of the more substantial ones.
Mad software patenting skills.
Oh wait...