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Spotify Is Now Selling Your Information To Advertisers (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Engadget: Spotify is now opening its data to targeted advertising. "Everything from your age and gender, to the music genres you like to listen to will be available to various third-party companies," reports Engadget. "Spotify is calling it programmatic ad buying (Warning: source may be paywalled) and has already enabled it." The nearly 70 million people that currently use Spotify's free, ad-supported streaming service across 59 countries will be affected. The ads will be audio-based and stretch between 15-30 seconds in length. The advertisers who buy ad spots will be able to look for specific users by viewing their song picks to find the best matches for the products they're selling. Two weeks ago, China has released its first ever set of digital ad regulations that seems to all but ban ad blocking.
I figured they were doing this all along, and just now got around to announcing it. Telemetry is how all modern web businesses make money. How else would all of these services be "free"?
These headlines are so assuming. Your this. Your that. I am not a customer of Spotify, so they are not. I hope.
They also sell your username if someone higher on the social ladder wants the one you're using.
Hey, maybe that's how they can finally monetize Slashdot. I'll put up $5 for "CmdrTaco"