Spotify is no longer allowing developers who build external apps using the platform’s Web API access to various features within the platform, including song and artist recommendations.
The company announced this in a blog post for developers. Spotify seems to be imposing restrictions on third-party developers to prevent them from building AI apps with data from Spotify listeners.
“As part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges facing many companies today, we are making changes to our public APIs,” a Spotify spokesperson said in an email to TechCrunch.
Preventing API abuse
According to TechCrunch, the changes aim to restrict certain developers that Spotify believes are abusing the API, for example, by collecting data from the platform (scrapping). Spotify revokes access to features that may reveal information about users’ listening habits. Examples include artists and songs that are often listened to by different groups.
This data could be used to create competitive AI music recommendation models, something Spotify itself has been working on in recent years.
No access to Audio Analysis
In addition to song and artist recommendations, developers also lose access to Spotify’s Audio Analysis, which describes the structure and rhythm of a track. Access to Audio Features, which describe characteristics of a song such as “danceability,” energy, and acoustics, has also been withdrawn. Developers can also no longer use playlists algorithmically constructed by Spotify.
On Spotify’s community forum, several people have expressed outrage at the withdrawal of these features. Indeed, some developers used these features to create AI music recommendation services. However, others have built apps that have nothing to do with AI recommendations. And they’re now losing access anyway.
Training AI models
“With the advent of transformer models, there is probably a risk of people training new models to mimic Spotify’s model(s),” one developer said on the forum. “I really hope that’s not why they’re discontinuing this, but if it is, I’m just disappointed.”
“Let’s face it, this is not about security or user privacy; this is about data being used to train AI models,” said another developer.
Spotify has been building AI music models for years, and CEO Daniel Ek has previously indicated that he thinks AI will play a big role in music creativity. Spotify has released several AI products based on these models in recent years, including an AI DJ last year. It recently rolled out AI playlists to more users in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.
No advance warning
These changes will only affect developers with limited API access, not official Spotify partners. Developers who previously applied for an extension will still be able to use the API endpoints. However, Spotify seems to have not warned developers about these changes.
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