Spotify’s transparency differentiates it from other data mongers.
This year Spotify told me I should move to San Luis Obispo, called me an anti-hero, and reminded me to stop streaming Soulja Boy. Spotify Wrapped demonstrates the power of data collection and gives s a taste of how much of their data corporations have.
Empowered with understanding the scope of Spotify’s insight in my own life, I appreciate the value it offers to other s who may not be using the streaming service to listen to music.
Spotify collects personal and usage data from its 574 million listeners. The services tracks everything from your university to the time of day you’re listening to your playlist profiles and sells it all to third-party rs.
Spotify knows I go to Queen’s, am a night owl, and made three different angst-based playlists this past September.
I wasn’t the only person who woke up yesterday to check their Spotify Wrapped—Spotify publishes its very own Wrapped for rs. The degree of detail rs derive from Spotify data is staggering, with Spotify applying its omniscience in a multitude of ways.
This week, rs learned parents are listening to punk, and gen Z is wallowing in their post-breakup feels. In Spotify’s 2023 Culture Next Report Canada, the company sold rs on the effectiveness of reaching gen Z through podcasts, which the company claims has a 20 per cent success rate of converting s post-ad exposure. Most digital ads have a conversion rate between two and four per cent.
The effecacy of Spotify advertising predates Wrapped. In 2013, tequila company Jose Cuervo hosted a party at Portsmouth University after running a competition on university students’ best Spotify playlists. The company saw a 220 per cent rise in sales at the university following the campaign.
Chuze Fitness, a gym brand and Spotify r, used geodata from Spotify to target audiences in cities where they’d recently opened a new location. Sweetening the deal, Spotify data allowed the company to target people listening to gym pump-up playlists, ensuring the fitness brand was reaching their target demographic.
Data collected from Spotify is used to curate individualized playlists and expose s to new music they might like. My proliferate angst playlists were driven by the discovery of a personalized mix titled “2000s teenage dirtbag.” I bought a ticket to Osheaga to see artists Spotify discovered on my behalf, a weekend I owe to my data actualized.
It’s not just you—research projects at major universities are using Spotify data. Psychologists in the Netherlands used Spotify data to understand qualities of music involved in stress recovery. Spotify itself has an entire research arm, tapping into its datasets exploring consumer, tech, and other trends. In one study, Spotify explored the correlation between artist popularity and Wikipedia profile quality.
In a time where I know my data is being collected and sold, I appreciate getting a piece of the action. I’m wary of how much Spotify knows about me—much of it likely embarrassing—but the additional transparency of Spotify Wrapped contributes to building trust with the streaming service.
If researchers, companies, and Spotify are going to be privy to details on my inner consumer behaviour, I want access to the intel too.
Sophia is a fifth-year psychology student and The Journal’s Senior News Editor.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].