Spotify, the Swedish music streaming app has started offering a new service to its users dubbed “Tastebuds” which allows them to spy on what their friends or family members are listening.
Therefore, the feature allows users to keep a track of the playlists which their friends are listening and will recommend the playlists based on the choice of friends.
In general, Tastebuds allows most played songs and playlists of users to be matched with those which they follow and will be rendered to them again based on some filters such as age, gender, location, and likes.
What the company claims is that the feature will only allow users to stay up to date with future releases. But doesn’t take the blame that it is allowing its users to spy on their friends.
Security researcher Jane Manchun Wong was the guy who spotted the yet to be released a feature called Tastebuds in Spotify which claims to be an app dedicated to connecting musical taste of users with their respective friends.
Note 1- Tastebuds emerged as a music app founded in 2012 and was acquired Spotify almost 3 years ago. From then on the app has been going through the severe testing phase and might see light in early 2020 as a Spotify backed app which connects with musical tastes of friends.
Note 2- The app will only scan the playlists of friends only when it obtains the full consent of its user. So, all you privacy advocates……just chill! Says the Spotify company.
Note 3– The company claims that it has over 248 million monthly active users in its database, including 113 million paid subscribers.
