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Businesses Music

Spotify Wants To Know Where You Live and Will Be Checking In (cnet.com) 57

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Spotify knows a lot about its users -- their musical tastes, their most listened-to artists and their summer anthems. Now it will also want to know where you live or to obtain your location data. It's part of an effort to detect fraud and abuse of its Premium Family program. From a report: Premium Family is a $15-a-month plan for up to six people. The only condition is that they all live at the same address. But the streaming music giant is concerned about people abusing that plan to pay as little as $2.50 for its services. So in August, the company updated its terms and conditions for Premium Family subscribers, requiring that they provide location data "from time to time" to ensure that customers are actually all in the same family. You have 30 days to cancel after the new terms went into effect, which depends on where you are. The family plan terms rolled out first on Aug. 19 in Ireland and on Sept. 5 in the US. The company tested this last year and asked for exact GPS coordinates but ended the pilot program after customers balked. Now it intends on rolling the location data requests out fully, reigniting privacy concerns and raising the question of how much is too much when it comes to your personal information.
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Spotify Wants To Know Where You Live and Will Be Checking In More

Spotify Wants To Know Where You Live and Will Be Checking In

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  • Really? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tripleevenfall ( 1990004 ) on Thursday September 12, 2019 @02:17PM (#59186822)

    And why can't they use IP information to ascertain a general location?

    Looks like my years of Spotify premium membership will be coming to an end.

    • Be glad they're not asking for DNA.
      • And why can't people spoof their gps location?
        • People probably can. But the number of people with the skills to do this will be vanishingly small, compared to the number of people currently sharing Spotify family plans over large geographical distances.

    • Re:Really? (Score:4, Informative)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) on Thursday September 12, 2019 @02:34PM (#59186976)

      Because IP geo-location is not, in any way, shape or form, reliable, especially for mobile users.

      • Because IP geo-location is not, in any way, shape or form, reliable, especially for mobile users.

        I dont really mind though. Can anyone update me on what they could do with this information?

    • What would happen if you stick to cellular only? You wouldn't have a local IP address (just one with your carrier, which doesn't indicate location). For this reason, IP alone isn't a good indicator for location.

  • during time weekly patterns show nobody home, thug with the data robs the house. outside the home info is great for stalkers too, of course

    • Location data is particularly sensitive, as it hands out information on where you've been, giving companies and advertisers details about your personal life.

      Yeah, "companies and advertisers"?! I'd think burglars would be the best customer for this kind of data.

      • but that's okay, it's not like poor hackers in former soviet third world shitholes steal and sell mass volumes of data from businesses for cheap.

        • I must just point out that former Soviet states are by definition second-world, not third-world. If you want to use that terminology.

  • just another reason to not use spotify (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chromal ( 56550 ) on Thursday September 12, 2019 @02:26PM (#59186874)
    They actually failed to secure my interest or use of their system by requiring registration to hear more than thirty seconds of audio. Hey, you know who doesn't intrude upon its users like that? Almost everyone else; bandcamp, soundcloud, youtube, and others don't demand fealty and indentity for basic access to artists' creations.
    • I mean they canâ(TM)t just let everyone listen to whatever they want for free, theyâ(TM)re not a charity.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chromal ( 56550 )
        This isn't about how they choose to monetize their service, this is about how they are a closed system with a viral membership scheme requiring registration for access, like Facebook. As am artist, people should prefer systems that don't place barriers between their creations and their audience, which Spotify has been doing (while others do not). It's looking as if Spotify is scheming to do more than be a content delivery platform, they want to exfiltrate data about their endusers, and that's an unhealthy r
  • This is really simple to solve. Spotify needs to move to a device plan where a certain number of devices can register under a plan to use the service under a single bill. Who cares where the device is located or who the person is using the device is. What the difference if non-family friend lives in my house or my aunt May 300 miles away uses the service? The bill is still paid and Spotify can limit the number of devices using the service under that billing account.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flippy ( 62353 )

      This is really simple to solve. Spotify needs to move to a device plan where a certain number of devices can register under a plan to use the service under a single bill. Who cares where the device is located or who the person is using the device is. What the difference if non-family friend lives in my house or my aunt May 300 miles away uses the service? The bill is still paid and Spotify can limit the number of devices using the service under that billing account.

      While I don't use Spotify, and certainly won't given this policy change, it's more accurate to call it a "Household" plan rather than a "Family" plan. That's what it really is, a group of users residing in the same place.

      As far as what you describe above, it is not in their financial interest at all to offer that. It'd be tantamount to offering a discount to everyone. After all, if you and 3 friends who don't reside in the same place can sign up for a plan that's less than 4 individual p

      • While I don't disagree there's no benefit to the company, I fail to see a significant reason why four people who share a surname, four possibly-unrelated people who live in the same house, four people in the same unit block and four people in the same street should need to be charged differently for listening to music.

        If the family plan is profitable for them across six people (and you'd have to assume it is, or they'd be raising prices) there's no reason obvious to me that four friends wouldn't result in t

    • Sounds like Netflix. Seems to have worked out for them ok.

  • If I were a Spotify customer, this would be enough for me to just cancel the service. Its way beyond the point where you can trust even reputable apps to not sell out your "anonymized" GPS data to someone to reidetify. Aside from that, I wonder how they'll implement it. If you get to choose when it gets access to GPS, then you can use apps like Fake GPS to trick it.

  • Just bought a DVD player... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Thursday September 12, 2019 @02:29PM (#59186910)
    I looked at the activity it generates using tcpdump. Even though I didn't load the spotify app onto it, the DVD player tried to connect to a spotify URL: esdk-ffl.spotify.com I have no idea why it tries to connect to spotify. I have never used spotify, nor do I intend to use spotify. I have blocked the DVD player from gaining any manner of access to the Internet.

    • I see no reason why a DVD player needs internet access, so would never connect it to a router in the first place.

      • I want the player to have access to a media server on my home network. So I allow it to do that, and only that. Otherwise, I agree with you. A DVD player has no reason to connect to the Internet.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
          Said dvd player (hmm it’s 2019 blu-ray and even 4k blu-ray is a thing) has firmware which might need upgrading from time to time, on a time frame no one knows about in advance, rhat might be a reason

          • has firmware which might need upgrading from time to time

            I can update the firmware via USB. I check the support website regularly for firmware updates.

            • It's still reasonable to say, for your typical doesn't manually check for updates for anything... postpones windows updates for months/years until the thing finally reboots when they aren't looking.

              • ...It's still reasonable to say, for your typical doesn't manually check for updates for anything......

                I agree. I'm an outlier. :)

      • Yeah, that's easy enough at the moment.

        Some Amazon Kindle models come with free lifetime mobile coverage, which is used to deliver books and receive telemetry. They ship the things with a SIM card then pay the bill for it out of their sales. I wonder how long it'll take for the cost of that to drop to the point where DVD players and other household appliances can do the same thing?

        With eSIM there won't even be a physical SIM card to remove.

  • reigniting privacy concerns

    Like you aren't drowning yourselves in metric-riddled apps/sites on the form factor with the least privacy-seizing power (actually any under-the-hood control) in general?

    Okay, no, I guess this isn't necessary mobile-exclusive, even though it's obviously a "location/GPS" conversation. And that "spotify" and "privacy concerns" are still a bipolar laugh on full-feature devices. You want The Cloud, you get it. They can surely squelch most casuals with geoIP anyway.

  • Like when I am at the office, and my wife is still at home. We live at the same address, but not all the time. Does that mean we cannot use this type of family plan?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by flippy ( 62353 )

      Like when I am at the office, and my wife is still at home. We live at the same address, but not all the time. Does that mean we cannot use this type of family plan?

      I suspect that's not what they're looking to prevent. I'd imagine that if the two physical locations are less than a reasonable distance apart, that'll be OK. Just not one of you in NY and the other in CA.

      • Yeah, so when I'm at a trade show this weekend in Denver, I can't use Spotify in my hotel room, whilst my wife continues to use it at home in Ventura, CA on the SONOS system. Just another reason to NOT use Spotify and instead stick with Tidal's family plan [tidal.com]!

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by flippy ( 62353 )

          Yeah, so when I'm at a trade show this weekend in Denver, I can't use Spotify in my hotel room, whilst my wife continues to use it at home in Ventura, CA on the SONOS system. Just another reason to NOT use Spotify and instead stick with Tidal's family plan [tidal.com]!

          I can't say for sure what Spotify's actual algorithm looks like. If it were me, I'd structure it like this to be reasonable to users such as yourself, but still stop abuse:

          Look at the last 10 location checks. Are 8/10 of them in the same limited geographical error? Yes -> no problem. No -> possible abuse, look into it more deeply

          If it worked like that, it would allow for occasional travel.

          If it DOESN'T work like that, it means either Spotify fully thought it out and made the decision to screw users wh

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MikeKD ( 549924 )

            Yeah, so when I'm at a trade show this weekend in Denver, I can't use Spotify in my hotel room, whilst my wife continues to use it at home in Ventura, CA on the SONOS system. Just another reason to NOT use Spotify and instead stick with Tidal's family plan [tidal.com]!

            I can't say for sure what Spotify's actual algorithm looks like. If it were me, I'd structure it like this to be reasonable to users such as yourself, but still stop abuse:

            Look at the last 10 location checks. Are 8/10 of them in the same limited geographical error? Yes -> no problem. No -> possible abuse, look into it more deeply

            If it worked like that, it would allow for occasional travel.

            If it DOESN'T work like that, it means either Spotify fully thought it out and made the decision to screw users who travel separately on occasion or Spotify didn't think it out fully. Either of those would be enough for me to ditch them, if I were a user (which I'm not).

            I highlighted the problem/assumption. Why wouldn't Spotify go full Google and just have some "aI" flag it and kill the account? The loss of revenue would probably still be magnitudes smaller than the cost of a real, thinking, human.

  • None of their goddamned business. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Thursday September 12, 2019 @02:32PM (#59186954)

    My turntable doesn't care where I am. It doesn't squeal on me.

    My CD Player doesn't care.

    Neither does iTunes, nor any of my iToys.

    Sirius doesn't care, either.

    I really can't see myself becoming a Spotify victim.

    But, go ahead streamers, keep lining the pockets of the vendors for something you can't hold in your hands, something you can't pass down to later generations.

    Enjoy your empty ether.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      CDs cost money. iTunes costs money. Sirius costs money.

      The big difference Spotify has over all of these offerings is a free (ad-supported) version, which works great for people like me who don't listen to a lot of music (most days I don't listen to any and even when I do play music, it's usually 30-60 minutes in the background while doing something else). I can't really bring myself to feel any regret for a service I never purchased to begin with for a media I never really took much interest in. Now, to

      • Used CD shops and garage sales work wonders to keep music costs down.
        Rip to MP3 or whatever your flavor of choice is, put on player of choice, put CD away if ever needed again.

    • The good thing is, if you are looking to rent music, there are plenty of other options. SoundCloud has never asked for permissions beyond SD card access. Then there's YouTube that has the majority of content Spotify does, plus it's free, and no ads if you know what you're doing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dremon ( 735466 )
      > something you can't pass down to later generations.

      Yeah exactly, unlike my amazing collection of vinyl, music cassettes and VHS porn which can be passed to "many generations". Mainly as nostalgic love to antique, not as something to use.

      • Yeah exactly, unlike my amazing collection of vinyl, music cassettes and VHS porn which can be passed to "many generations". Mainly as nostalgic love to antique, not as something to use.

        VHS and Cassette can rot in hell.

        I dunno 'bout you, but I play 1 or 2 records a day weekdays, and a whole bunch weekends. To me it *never* ceased being a major part of my life. I grew up with the stuff, to me LP is as natural as air or water. Part of me.

  • When Spotify was refusing to deal with the US, I didn't care to make a VPN and European account to listen to them. I went with Rdio and Pandora. Both worked extremely well. Then, Apple, Google, and Amazon created their own subscription services.

    These days, between BandCamp, Apple Music, and Amazon Prime Radio, I have no need for Spotify. Them probing price increases (as per a previous Slashdot post), and demanding location info (sure, it is for enforcement... loc data is a juicy info quantity, and I won

  • Apple seems to understand that "A 'family' is self-defined". And many times, they are located in more than one place.

    Their "Family Plan" for Apple Music seems to not care who or where your "Family Members" are. Pay the extra $5/mo (making the Apple Music Sub. go from $9.99/mo to $14.99/mo), and you can "Invite" any ol' 5 AppleIDs into your "Family". Plus, you can elect to allow them to ALSO "Share" any or all of the following:

    iTunes, Apple Books, App Store Purchases, and iCloud Storage.

    Designating a "Family

  • I'm divorced, I live at my house and my girlfriend's, and my kids live at those 2 places and their mother's. I guess Spotify doesn't want my business.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      I'm not sure what you think the actual problem would be. Sounds like you'd be fine.

      • He would be fine, Im guessing my situation where my family lives outside the US, but my new wife and her kid who lives with me, will be out of luck.

        This makes me really ticks me off, Like family can't be split apart ? Kind of guessing these people don't understand how multi national families work, and being from Europe you would think they would understand.

        Oh well, first time the haunt me ill cancel service.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vux984 ( 928602 )

          "This makes me really ticks me off, Like family can't be split apart"

          Sure... but if you've got two essentially separate households going. Is it really the end of the world to have two accounts. I mean sure its nice get a price break when you can but there is always some limit. Lots of family plans for services draw the line at 5 or 6 people, but some families are larger... so they need more ... or they need the more expensive business plan... lastpass family is like that.

  • Between Amazon Prime Music, Pandora, IHeartRadio, Radio App, your local library (Freegal), YouTube, and personal music collection, most people don’t even need to pay for a music streaming service to get the music they want.

  • Dear Spotify,

    Fuck you, no.

  • Reclaim your music collection, run a FOSS streaming server with no ads and no tracking. It's that simple.

  • I'd just like to take a moment to advocate for piracy here. If you don't like this, pirate stuff. I at one point might have felt bad about promoting piracy, but with the way everyone wants your data, and their own streaming service, and the diminishing ways of actually owning your stuff and being able to port it around easily, I feel like Piracy is the answer here. Services like Spotify, Netflix, and iTunes used to be a decent way of accessing content legitimately, but there is now too much downside.

    Or y

  • Apple seems pretty focused on privacy. They will win my business if this goes on my phone in Canada.

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