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Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

bbc.com

51–60 of 179 posts

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#51

Here is the referenced July paper [1]. 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,…

> The point is that users aren't asking for Spotify to interpret their emotional state, they just want rather basic features to work. 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.

I'm always amazed how badly designed software is. To the point that anyone trying to use the damn thing could point out problems within 10 seconds. I was shopping for a replacement bathroom fan on home depot website. I just want to find one that will fit in the old hole. You would think I would be able to filter by the actual size of the box. But no, its not apparent at all what their listed measurements refer to. Just give me a drawing with the dimension of the box. Thats all. Better yet, take the fan out of the box and showing me some pictures with measurements. But nope. Every fan has different included information. And this is after a year of Corona. And everyone needing to shop online.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value does mining emotions provide for the customer?

I use YT Music's Mix feature to discover music and it's pretty good. If my supermix would figure what to play when, that would be pretty dope.

What emotion should Spotify be shooting for? Good music can cause a lot of different emotions; dopamine can come from many emotional sources.

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.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#53
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point is that users aren't asking for Spotify to interpret their emotional state, they just want rather basic features to work. 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.

Yes, how dare they want functionality to remove facebook from their account so they can login normally or other features?

Luckily it seems like they finally did that! I recently was able to log in without my Facebook account (although I’m not sure if it removed Facebook from the account or not, but I no longer need to login with Facebook to access Spotify)

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#54
A quick comparison of the WHOIS results for each and this verbatim copy of the article seems to suggest the "San Francisco Telegraph" is a thinly veiled extension of RT:

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...

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#55
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Luddites were right, and we tend to reject that conclusion today more because we have no idea what to do if it's true than because we really think it's false. (The Luddites were also not blanket opposed to technology, just technology that for absolutely no good reason made their lives worse instead of better.)

Luddites were opposed to advances in the textile industry, like automated looms. This does not strike me as a technology that made life worse in the long run. Affordable access to decent quality clothing for most of the worlds population sounds like a win. Especially for women who were freed from The responsibilities of manufacturing clothing for their families and could later pursue careers.

Textile mill workers were often harmed, say by byssinosis (“brown lung”) or by amputations of fingers and other body parts in machinery lacking appropriate safety guards, etc.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#56
post #45

Outrage now. In 2 years we'll have forgotten what it was like before every website in the world did this. In 5 years your toaster will have people personality and you will fucking hate it.

And that's the problem. I wouldn't even care about it, since theoretically "no one forces me to use it" (and I don't), but in 10 years there simply aren't going to be any toasters on the market that don't do this.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#57
post #48

This is one of those features that is good marketing because it makes headlines about their product. 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.

Not sure 'creepy af' is something a consumer-facing corporation wants their brand associated with.

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#59
Stuff like this will just have me on bandcamp exclusively. Spotify has been a terrible experience, but for the sake of my teenage son, we decided to get a family account. Spotify is too obsessed with telling me how to consume music, I don’t need an album shuffled by default, the artist picked the track listing for a reason. The way Spotify cues music is bizarre. Their user interfaces are confusing and clunky. For a platform trying to go all in on podcast it’s near impossible to know when new episodes are released (unless I’m missing something). I don’t need something to spy on my mood and suggest music, I’ve figured that out - Dub techno while working Ambient while reading HipHop when hanging with the homies and Slayer when I’m working in the garage!

Re: Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

#60
post #45

Outrage now. In 2 years we'll have forgotten what it was like before every website in the world did this. In 5 years your toaster will have people personality and you will fucking hate it.

'Your plastic pal who's fun to be with!'
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