Pre-saving music on Spotify could be allowing labels to track users: report

Spotify users who pre-save an upcoming song or album could be sharing more personal data than they are aware of with the artist’s label, as reported by Billboard.

In order to pre-save music, users have to approve a number of permissions that give labels more access than Spotify usually gives them. Pre-saving upcoming music gives the labels permission to track what the user listens to.

It also gives the access to change which artists the user follows, and could even potentially remotely control their music streaming, according to Billboard. This is the kind of data that music-streaming platforms keep for themselves in order to compete with other platforms.

Billboard found that Spotify users who attempted to pre-save music from British band ‘Little Mix,’ were prompted to agree to give Sony a number of permissions.

For instance, they were asked to allow Spotify to give Sony permission to “view your Spotify account data,” “view you activity on Spotify,” and “take actions in Spotify on your behalf.” It also asked for permission to “control Spotify on your device,” and surprisingly, “stream and control Spotify on your other devices.”

These permissions are only visible when you click on the submenu, so users may not even be aware of what they’re agreeing to.

We’re currently at a time where social media giants are facing heat for their data privacy policies, but streaming services have been largely left out of the conversation.

Source: Billboard