Dear Mr. Ek [Co-founder & CEO, Spotify],

We write to you as a group of concerned musicians and human rights organizations... who are deeply alarmed by Spotify’s recently approved speech-recognition patent.

Spotify claims that the technology can detect, among other things, “emotional state, gender, age, or accent” to recommend music. This recommendation technology is dangerous, a violation of privacy and other human rights, and should not be implemented by Spotify or any other company...

Our major concerns with the technology are:

• Emotion manipulation...
• Discrimination...
• Privacy violations...
• Data security...
• Exacerbate inequality in the music industry

[O]n April 2, 2021, Access Now sent a letter to Spotify calling on the company to abandon the technology in the patent... On April 15, 2021, Spotify replied to Access Now’s letter, stating that the company “has never implemented the technology... and we have no plans to do so.”

While we are pleased to hear that Spotify has no current plans to deploy the technology, it begs the question: why are you exploring its use? We call on your company to make a public commitment to never use, license, sell, or monetize the recommendation technology...

We ask you to publicly respond to our request by May 18, 2021...