We ve seen it before — changing your privacy policy means having to say you re sorry. That s what Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has done this morning in a blog post.
Two days ago, the leading music-streaming service updated its privacy policy to say that it would be accessing more information and data on users phones — and said if you don t agree with the terms of this Privacy Policy, then please don t use the Service. Today, Ek said all of this is optional. (Read: Please don t abandon the service.)
Let me be crystal clear here: If you don t want to share this kind of information, you don t have to, Ek wrote.
The backpedaling/clarification comes after some people freaked out about the changes, including Minecraft creator Markus Notch Persson, who told his 2.4 million Twitter followers that he canceled his account, right after the following tweet:
. Hello. As a consumer, I ve always loved your service. You re the reason I stopped pirating music. Please consider not being evil.
In his blog post, Ek detailed the types of information Spotify is seeking to access (photos, location, voice, contacts); described why (personalization, social sharing, etc.) and stressed that the company wouldn t access any of it without users explicit permission. He added that Spotify would be updating its privacy policy again to better reflect what we have explained above.
For those keeping track at home: Spotify says it has more than 75 million users, more than 20 million of them paying subscribers. Apple Music says it has signed up 11 million users a month after its launch, although a report this week (which the company disputes) said nearly half of users have already stopped using the service. Pandora s most recent numbers, according to its latest earnings report: 79 million users. It didn t provide the number of paid users.
Photo: Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify, announces updates to the music-streaming service on May 20, 2015 in New York City. The latest updates include the ability to stream video content, podcasts and radio programs as well as original songs for the application. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
