Spotify has reportedly been granted a patent which would allow the company to record users’ speech and background noise. The move is driven by the potential data they can collect.
According to Music Business Worldwide, Spotify filed for the patent back in 2018 and just recently on Tuesday, 12th January it was approved.
The patent explains that the technology would potentially work out the “intonation, stress, rhythm, and the likes of units of speech” from its users’ voices.
It would also use speech recognition to uncover more data. By listening to audio signals, the technology would be able to uncover key context to our listening habits, like: our age, gender, accents, and how many people are in the room, or, whether or not we’re alone.
Spotify is saying the idea of the technology is to ask less of the user. They reckon the current model of basing the user’s tastes off of their age, gender, and existing data is tedious.
“In particular, the user is required to tediously input answers to multiple queries in order for the system to identify the user’s tastes,” they say in the patent.
A Spotify spokesperson told Pitchfork, “Spotify has filed patent applications for hundreds of inventions, and we regularly file new applications.
“Some of these patents become part of future products, while others don’t. Our ambition is to create the best audio experience out there, but we don’t have any news to share at this time.”
Spooky.
