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Spotify Privacy Summary
Streaming
high Risk
Spotify is a global streaming platform for music, podcasts, and audiobooks that personalizes content, recommendations, and advertising for listeners worldwide.
Quick Summary
- What They Collect: Account, payment, device, location, listening history, profile and cookie data (behavioral). - How They Use & Share It: To operate service, personalize content/ads, share with providers, advertisers, licensors. - Your Rights: Access, rectify, delete, object, portability, withdraw consent; privacy contact and account deletion processes.
Why You Should Care About Spotify's Privacy Practices
- Spotify collects high-risk behavioral data (listening history, searches) used for profiling and targeted ads, affecting privacy and recommendation outcomes. - Extensive profiling and ad-targeting can influence what you see and hear, with potential for sensitive inferences and micro-targeting. - Data is shared broadly (advertisers, service providers, app stores) and transferred internationally, increasing exposure and jurisdictional complexity. - Broad user-content license and mandatory arbitration limit remedies and can allow wide reuse of your public content; consider content and account settings carefully.
Privacy Highlights
What They Collect
- Account information (email, username, password)
- User content and files (playlists, uploads, profile content, feedback)
- Demographic information (age, language, country/region)
- Feedback data (support requests, community posts)
- Payment information (billing, payment method details)
How They Share Data
- Business affiliates and corporate group companies
- Service providers (hosting, analytics, payment processors)
- Third-party partners (content distributors, app store providers)
- Advertising partners and ad networks
Data Retention
Policy indicates data is kept as long as necessary for service provision, legal compliance, fraud prevention, and internal analytics; aggregated/anonymized data may be retained indefinitely (privacy policy excerpt about cookies and data uses) .
Your Rights
- Access data
- Rectify data
- Erase or limit processing
- Object to processing
Detailed Analysis
Concerning Practices
- Shares data with many third parties including advertisers and service providers
- Collects extensive personal and behavioral data (listening history, device, location, payments)
- Broad license to use and sublicense user content (royalty-free, transferable, worldwide)
- Uses data for profiling and ad-targeting (personalization and advertising)
- International transfers of data across jurisdictions
- Legal terms include mandatory arbitration and class action waiver
- Limited explicit retention limits in available excerpts (potential long retention)
- User control sometimes limited to platform settings and support processes
Personal Data Types
Account information (email, username, password)User content and files (playlists, uploads, profile content, feedback)Demographic information (age, language, country/region)Feedback data (support requests, community posts)Payment information (billing, payment method details)Profile information (display name, avatar, public profile)Sales and marketing data (ad interaction, subscription status)Support data (customer support logs, troubleshooting info)Browser information (user agent, cookies)Geolocation information (IP-derived location, device location signals)Service usage information (listening history, searches, playlists, interactions)Website usage data (cookies, page views, analytics)Information from other users (followers, shared playlists, messages)Publicly available information (public profiles, third-party platform info)
Tracking Methods
Essential cookiesAnalytics cookiesAdvertising cookiesSocial media cookiesPixel tagsWeb beaconsLocal storage
Third Parties
Business affiliates and corporate group companiesService providers (hosting, analytics, payment processors)Third-party partners (content distributors, app store providers)Advertising partners and ad networksGovernment authoritiesLaw enforcement
User Controls
Access dataRectify dataErase or limit processingObject to processingData portabilityWithdraw consentOpt-out of marketingDelete account
Frequently Asked Questions About Spotify
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Legal Disclaimer
This analysis is provided for informational purposes only and should not be used as legal advice. Consult with legal professionals for matters requiring legal guidance.