More than 180 Musicians Protest Spotify’s Patent Monitoring of Open Letter Speech

Earlier this year, Spotify has an approved patent for technology that can monitor and record users ’speech and background noise to help curate and recommend music. Today, more than 180 musicians-a coalition that includes Access Now, Fight for the Future, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers, and human rights organizations-have signed open letter calling the company to make a public commitment never to use, license, sell, or seek this patent. The co-signers include Evan Greer (as the new album is called Spotify A Track), Tom Morello, Laura Jane Grace, Ted Leo, Sadie Dupuis, Downtown Boys, DIIV, and Talib Kweli. You can read it in full HERE.

“Spotify’s claim that the technology can detect, among other things,‘ emotional status, gender, age, or accent ’in order to recommend music,” the letter reads. “This is a dangerous recommendation technology, a violation of privacy and other human rights, and it should not be enforced by Spotify or any other company. “

“You can’t leave if you’re on constant corporate watch,” Morello wrote. “Spotify needs to drop it right now and do it right away for musicians, music fans, and all music workers.”

Dupuis added, “Instead of wasting money on creating disaster surveillance software, Spotify should focus on paying artists per cent per stream and be more transparent about the data they collect from us. all. “

The letter outlines five main concerns the coalition has about technology: “emotional manipulation,” discrimination, privacy violations, data security, and exacerbation of the disparate music industry. The letter explicitly requested that Spotify make a “public commitment never to use, license, sell, or seek out the recommendation technology,” and asked the company to provide a response to the letter on Tuesday, May 18 .

In January, after the patent was granted, a Spotify spokesperson said: “Spotify has submitted patent applications on hundreds of inventions, and we are constantly filing new applications. Some of those are this patent is becoming part of future products, while others are not. Our ambition is to create the best audio experience out there, but we don’t have any news to share at this hour. ”

Upon Pitchfork’s arrival, a Spotify spokesperson shared a letter sent by Horacio Guttierez (the Head of Global Affairs platform and Chief Legal Officer of the streaming platform) to Access Now in April. In the letter, Gutierrez wrote about the “patent recognized by the language”:

Spotify has never implemented the technology described in the patent in any of our products and we have no plans to do so. Our research and development teams are constantly designing and developing new technologies as part of our ongoing cycle of innovation. Sometimes those changes end up being implemented in our products and sometimes not. The decision to patent an invention does not always reflect the company’s intent to implement the invention into a product, but is influenced by many other considerations, including our responsibilities to our users and to society as a whole.

Read “Could Spotify’s New Discovery Mode Be Considerable Payola?”Above the Pitch.