We’ve been seeing Spotify make it for almost a year now acquisition after acquisition and product update after product update to gain a foothold in the ad targeting space. Now the company is embarking on a new dataset for this purpose: your vote.
This update was somewhat of a footnote to the new Spotify voice commands first spotted on Wednesday by GSMArenaWhile the company didn’t make an official announcement about the new feature, some iOS and Android Spotifyers started noticing prompts to enable a new voice search feature in the app. S.Similar to the way you could say ‘Hey Google’ or ‘Hey Alexa’ for your smart home devices, the new Spotify feature asks users to say: “Hey Spotify,” as a way to activate it.
Although I didn’t personally receive a notification, I found I could also enable this feature by hitting the ‘settings’ button in my Spotify app and enabling ‘Voice Interactions’.
It’s worth noting that Spotify has tested this wake word feature in its mobile app about a year now. In 2019, the company even began testing a similar tool for people who might drive, called – not even kidding – the ‘Car thing
After downloading the update, one of the first things I noticed was that this update is much friendlier to certain artists than others. Tell Spotify to play the Beatles or Pink Floyd, for example, or newly baptized Grammy winner Dua Lipa, and you get what you ask for. That’s not always the case with more obscure artists or with artists with names that are difficult to pronounce. As an example, no matter how many times I’ve tried to get Spotify to play an album by experimental noise-rock duo Xiu Xiu (pronounced ‘shoo shoo, “For the folks at home), Spotify didn’t stop playing the 70s funk hit”Shoe Shoe shine
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Another nugget I noticed was that Spotify pointed it out to me when enabling this feature a page explaining exactly how my voice data would be collected, stored, and used.
The first thing Spotify mentions on this page is that by enabling these controls, you not only get the “Hey Spotify ‘ feature as well as others – possibly even “interacting with some ads” with your voice. In fact, voice-activated ads are an idea that Spotify has been working on for about two years: B.ack in May 2019 the company has one limited edition of ads for certain Spotify podcasts – if users say a certain magic word, it would prompt them to listen to the last episode of that show.
Since then, it appears that the company has only just rolled out a major voice-driven ad campaign last summer, but relatively quiet on the project since then. R.olling out of this new “Hey Spotify ‘ campaign could be a way to quietly get more users to post these types of voice-activated ads on their devices, albeit in a semi-stealthy way. In the same vein, Spotify also notes in its policy that your voice data will be used to provide you with more ‘relevant’, ie targeted advertising.
On the other hand, Spotify makes it crystal clear that there is only one some voice data used for this purpose. According to the policy, Spotify will not start receiving your voice data until you say the wake word (or press the record button) until “Spotify has processed your question or request”. Your phone will also “always let you know when Spotify receives your voice input,” the company added, “For example with a visual indicator or an audible tone.”