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Spotify patent would suggest songs based on users' emotions

bbc.com

141–150 of 179 posts

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

#141
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet their client still utterly blows as a podcast player and manager...

It would be better if they just split off the podcast app from the main one, it's too cluttered as is.

I'd be happy if I could simply search English podcasts outside of English-majority countries.

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

#143
I know that this goes against the general HN sentiment, but I actually would like that feature as I do have multiple playlists for different moods.

As for addressing the data concerns, Spotify premium does not have ads and Spotify at heart is not an ad company like Google

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

#144

How about suggest songs based on what I've liked but haven't heard? Brain dead filter bubble repeatedly playing what I've already played is why I don't subscribe to this garbage service.

They do this. I've found plenty of new songs and artists through spotify.

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

#145

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,…

I want Spotify specifically to stay away from my emotional state, or if they are looking at me that way I will stay away from them.

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

#146

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,…

As a user, I agree that features which give users control and agency are preferable to increasingly opaque ML. But as business decisions go, this argument is terrible. The subset of users who bother to post new ideas to the community forum won't be large enough to affect Spotify's bottom line, and these users are almost certainly not representative of the average user (who probably doesn't realize the community feature exists).

Spotify isn't optimizing for placating the vocal minority of power users, they're trying to increase their paid subscription count. It would be great if we lived in a world where these were the same thing, but they clearly aren't.

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

#147
post #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 p…

> I don’t need an album shuffled by default, the artist picked the track listing for a reason

I don't get you. Isn't the shuffle button on or off based on the last time you changed it? If the shuffle is on, and you play an album, then you'll play it shuffled. I'd much rather that than Spotify trying to predict whether I want to play something shuffled or not, and auto-changing the button status.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value does mining emotions provide for the customer?

I think Spotify envisions a speaker which always plays exactly the right music at all times, reflecting the current mood and anticipating what's next, like a film score. That would indeed be incredible if it worked.

To me that sounds positively Orwellian. And extremely annoying.

And the part about "anticipating what's next" that reminds me of "What's expected of us" by Ted Chiang.

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

#149
post #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 p…

>> 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!

Out of topic a bit but this reminds me of the famous dictum, attributed to Charles V (H.R.E.): I speak in Latin to God, Italian to Women, French to my Men, and German to my Horse.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

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

#150
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://archive.md/rTcAg > Streaming music platform Spotify has won a patent enabling it to snoop on users’ speech and even background noise in order to gauge emotional state and location type to serve up the appropriate soundtrack. Not creepy at all! > Spotify has received a patent that will allow it to use speech recognition and sound analysis to assess a user’s demographic attributes, determine their emotional sta…

Thank you. This is so much worse than what I imagined. Still, my prediction in that this will, unfortunately, turn out to be a popular feature.

To be fair, there is plenty of batshit insane patents like that. The most famous example being US Patent 6506148: https://patents.justia.com/patent/6506148

As to what does that mean, whether the things described in the patent have actually been used or it isn't just a bunch of nonsense, I don't really know.

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