Spotify has announced that it will restrict developers’ access to certain features of its web API, such as song and artist recommendations. The new measure, announced on its official developer blog, aims to address a series of security issues and curb the misuse of its platform, according to the company. Although not explicitly mentioned, this restriction seems to be focused on preventing user data from being used to create artificial intelligence applications.
“As part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges that many companies face today, we are making changes to our public APIs,” a Spotify spokesperson explained to TechCrunch. Among the revoked features are tools that allowed analyzing users’ listening habits, such as song and artist recommendations or audio analysis data that describe characteristics like “danceability” or its “energy.”
The developer community has not hesitated to react to this measure. In the Spotify forums, some expressed their discontent at losing access to these tools, which they used for various purposes, not necessarily related to AI. “With transformer models, there is probably a risk that models will be trained to emulate Spotify’s,” said one user. “I hope that is not the reason, but if it is, I am disappointed.” Another pointed out that this decision is not about security, but about the “data used to train AI models.”
Spotify has been working on its own artificial intelligence models for years. Its CEO, Daniel Ek, has stated that AI will be “huge for creativity” in music. In this context, the company has launched products such as an AI-powered DJ and customized playlists with this technology.
The changes will only affect developers with limited access to the API, while official partners and those with approved extensions will continue to access the restricted features.
