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There's no chance that this is blocked by data protection laws. This is looks exactly like the kind of case where data can be collected and processed without co

by jsnell 3y ago

There's no chance that this is blocked by data protection laws. This is looks exactly like the kind of case where data can be collected and processed without consent, since it's needed to operate the service and meet the contractual obligations of paying the musicians the right amount. (And that doesn't mean that they could keep the data indefinitely or use it for other purposes without consent.)

troupo 3y ago
On top of that this data can be completely anonymised without compromising the data. All you need is an entry "a user listened to a song". This probably gets more hairy when it comes to a user's listening history and things like Spotify Wrapped, discover weekly etc., but this is one of those areas that fall under expectations from a service, legitimate interest etc.
- jsnell 3y ago
  I think this discussion was about switching a pooled model to one where a user's subscription payment is directly split according to that user's listens. That requires unaggregated and unanonymized listen data.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Ah true. This is solved (well, not solved, but handled) by not having a direct link between usage data and the user. So you store your data as <usage, proxy_id> which references <proxy_id, user_id> which references <user_id, user PII>. This way you can always easily break the connection to PII (if the user requests deletion) while keeping per user data. But true, it's not anonymized in this case.
  - vintermann 3y ago
    Even though they just need a total plays sum to pay out to artists, Spotify for sure stores every play by person. You can request your data from them and see for yourself - it's of course necessary for their recommendation services, and even just providing the listening history back to you is a service many people want badly (it is the whole point of services like last.fm!)
usrusr 3y ago
Heh, I don't even doubt the legality, I was talking purely about subjective expectations, about how it feels to us.

by jsnell 3y ago

troupo 3y ago

On top of that this data can be completely anonymised without compromising the data. All you need is an entry "a user listened to a song". This probably gets more hairy when it comes to a user's listening history and things like Spotify Wrapped, discover weekly etc., but this is one of those areas that fall under expectations from a service, legitimate interest etc.

jsnell 3y ago
I think this discussion was about switching a pooled model to one where a user's subscription payment is directly split according to that user's listens. That requires unaggregated and unanonymized listen data.
- troupo 3y ago
  Ah true. This is solved (well, not solved, but handled) by not having a direct link between usage data and the user. So you store your data as <usage, proxy_id> which references <proxy_id, user_id> which references <user_id, user PII>. This way you can always easily break the connection to PII (if the user requests deletion) while keeping per user data. But true, it's not anonymized in this case.
- vintermann 3y ago
  Even though they just need a total plays sum to pay out to artists, Spotify for sure stores every play by person. You can request your data from them and see for yourself - it's of course necessary for their recommendation services, and even just providing the listening history back to you is a service many people want badly (it is the whole point of services like last.fm!)

usrusr 3y ago

Heh, I don't even doubt the legality, I was talking purely about subjective expectations, about how it feels to us.