Spotify, for all its tech, isn't magically disruptive. The business model is similar to a radio station. It pays music publishers based on what songs its listeners' request.

(This is grossly oversimplified. Stick with me.)

Spotify buys a product wholesale and then sells it retail.

This is different from, say, the original Napster which paid nothing for its product and then gave it away for free.

Is there a way to provide value to consumers and extract revenue from them, without paying for music to be produced?

What if the next Spotify could take a free product and sell it to customers? Most musicians and studio staff won't work for free. But machines will.

Algorithm generated music. Feed an AI the top 10,000 rock and roll songs and then let it spit out an infinite stream of "original" music. Assuming a good-enough AI, would people buy a subscription to it? Possibly. Lots of people use music as background noise.

With enough reinforcement from listeners - ratings, dwell time, repeat requests - a company could create an insurmountable moat around their business. They would have the most aesthetically pleasing procedurally generated music.

Now, this ignores a lot of things about what people like about music! Plenty of people want to hear a specific band play a specific song - not even a decent cover band will do. But for those of us who just want the radio on in the background, it could be a compelling proposition.

There might be questions of copyright - especially if a model is trained on a catalogue of existing songs. People might reject the idea of paying for mechanically generated sounds.

AI isn't free. It costs money to design, train, and reinforce. But it is probably cheaper than getting humans to produce music.

It might not sound original, or amazing, or have any "humanity" behind it. But it'll be marginally cheaper and more convenient. No more having to hit the "next track" button when a band's "Jazz Odyssey" starts playing.

I'm not saying this is the future. I'm saying I expect someone to try this - or something similar - as a way to disrupt the music industry.

Although, judging by the current state of AI generated music, maybe not!

X ARCHIVE - @ThisisLJRich Insta - find me!

@LJRICH

This is what happens when you encourage an #AI Freddie Mercury to sing a version of Frozen's "Let It Go"... pic.x.com/JacDDJjPgJ

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I want to tap my phone against an NFC tag hidden in LP sleeve. Then I want my phone to automatically launch the Spotify app and for the app to display that album.

This should be simple, but I can't get it to work.

Get the album link

Spotify gives me an option to copy the album link, or Spotify URI.

Either:

• https://open.spotify.com/album/6QaVfG1pHYl1z15ZxkvVDW
• spotify:album:6QaVfG1pHYl1z15ZxkvVDW

So, I should be able to launch either of those and get my album, right? Wrong!

Thinking of linking

If I write the https link to an NFC chip, my Android phone opens it in the default browser. There is no option to launch the app from the browser. I've told Android that it should associate open.spotify.com links with the Spotify app, and to use the app to open them by default.

URIah Heap

If I write the spotify: link to an NFC chip, my Android phone opens the Spotify app! To the default Spotify page. It doesn't open the album.

Other things I've tried

• spotify://6QaVfG1pHYl1z15ZxkvVDW opens default app page
• Plain text records - displays the text, but no way to click on it.

And every other bloody combination I can think of!

I've asked in the Spotify community but no one has answered. I also tried asking on StackOverflow but no one knew the answer.

There is an Instructables project which gives some help but concludes that you need a separate app to manage the task flow. Similarly, there are tutorials for adding Spotify NDEF parsing to your own app. But both of these assume I want to install something else onto my phone. I don't. I just want Android to open the correct app to the correct screen.

What's causing this?

Spotify's Android manifest says it supports NDEF, but just using the Spotify scheme. The NDEF doesn't have any paths defined, whereas the http version does.

Maybe that means that Android doesn't pass the info?

If I click on an open.spotify.com link - in a browser or elsewhere - then the Spotify app opens to the correct page.

Perhaps that means that Android's NFC parser sees a URI and passes it directly to the browser, rather than via a system intent?

I dunno, I'm at the edges of my knowledge here.

Help?

Update! Spotify engineers have confirmed that the manifest is at fault. No ETA for a fix.

On the surface, they seem like the usual bland corporate attempts at chumming down - trying to cynically pass off advertising as friendship.

It's kinda funny, right?

Teresa López Ortega

@TLopezOrtega

At least a funny way to display the privacy we're allowing companies to violate: Spotify's New Global Ad Campaign adweek.it/2gRLL18

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Is that OK? It feels like it might not be OK.

Enby Boss System

@Fem_anark

This is a very disturbing + not okay ad campaign. I don't think Spotify should do this at all. Make jokes about what ppl listen to. Privacy? x.com/unsmokabie/sta…

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There's no doubt that some people find these adverts unsettling.

David Durant (He/him)

@cholten99

That doesn't stop the @Spotify adverts on the tube being deeply creepy and wrong mind

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The Uncanny Valley

As robots and computer generated imagery become more realistic, they hit an inflection point known as the "Uncanny Valley". Something which looks and behaves in an almost lifelike fashion is repulsive to many people.

... subtle flaws in appearance and movement can be more apparent and more eerie in very humanlike robots. MacDorman, K. F., & Ishiguro, H. (2006). The uncanny advantage of using androids in social and cognitive science research. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 297–337. doi:10.1075/is.7.3.03mac

You've probably noticed bad special-effects in a movie where people don't move quite as you expected them to, or been irritated by the phony intonation of a computer generated voice on the phone.

A good example of the uncanny valley is this almost-human-yet-really-creepy robot of the actor Scarlett Johansson.

It's is hard to identify what precisely makes the robot look so wrong. The pose is a little off, the skin tone is not quite right, the eyes are... I can't put my finger on it.

To experience the full terror, you can watch the video about the robot's construction. Warning you may find disturbing. Also it contains (robot) nudity which... I dunno... feels like it ought to be NSFW.

Feels Vs Reals

Let's take another quote from the original paper about the Uncanny Valley. Emphasis added:

... the eerie sensation associated with the uncanny valley may be peculiar to the violation of human-directed expectations MacDorman, K. F., & Ishiguro, H. (2006). The uncanny advantage of using androids in social and cognitive science research. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 297–337. doi:10.1075/is.7.3.03mac

That's the crux of the matter. Corporations aren't people. When they behave like people, it gets weird.

Holly Brockwell has written eloquently about the problems of Facebook's algorithm-driven "On This Day" feature. When Facebook says you might be interested in reliving old posts which bring you nothing but pain it feels like a personal attack.

It isn't, of course. It is a coldly mechanical procedure which is trying desperately to pass itself off as human. In doing so, it exposes just how far from human it is.

If your best friend sent you a birthday card making reference to a book you both loved as kids, that's adorable.

If Amazon strip-mines your chat history and suggests buying the same book, that's creepy.

Is Spotify being creepy?

Feelings are intrinsically valid. You can't tell me that watching a horror movie didn't scare me, or that listening to The Beatles doesn't make me happy.

Many people find these adverts creepy.

Let's assume that these are data-driven adverts based on real users (I suspect that they're purely creative).

Have people consented to having their data used in this way? Probably.

You did read the Terms & Conditions when you signed up, right?

You grant Spotify a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, fully paid, worldwide licence to use and distribute any of your User Content in connection with the Service through any medium

(Edited for brevity.)

But legal doesn't mean morally right. And that is why people are having a visceral reaction. There's something innately inhuman about about a large, powerful company mocking its customers.

Imagine if you are the Londoner who featured in this advert. Do you find it funny? Upsetting?

Zoe McCallum

@ZoeZoemccallum

Even more Orwellian & creepy - @Spotify logs your private pain & tells everyone on the tube what you did! #AdvertFail pic.x.com/vjxeavvvmz

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Does it make you paranoid if you see that poster in your local tube station? Is everyone laughing at you? Are you OK?

Be seeing you.

These notes show (which are mostly for my benefit) show you how to install it and configure your multimedia keyboard so the play/pause key controls the music on Spotify.

Download Spotify for Linux. It's available in 32bit or 64bit.

Double click on the .deb that has been downloaded and it should install. Nice and easy!

To get the multimedia keys working, we need to follow the instructions in this tutorial and the codes described at lnxscene.

Install xbindkeys.

sudo apt-get install xbindkeys

Create the default configuration file for xbindkeys.

xbindkeys --defaults > ~/.xbindkeysrc

Edit the configuration file for xbindkeys.

nano ~/.xbindkeysrc

Add these lines:

"dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.PlayPause"
XF86AudioPlay
"dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Stop"
XF86AudioStop

Run xbindkeys to see if it all works

xbindkeys

Now, when Spotify is running, pressing th eplay/pause key will make your music start or stop.

You will need to set xbindkeys to run automagically on startup.

On Ubuntu, System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications.

Done!

Unhandled page fault on read access to 0x00000068 at address 0x7bc34e57

After lots of fruitless digging around, I discovered that the issue is with the Facebook integration!

The fix is simple. Visit the Facebook Applications Page, remove Spotify.

I've noted this error on the WINE Site.

If you're a premium Spotify user, you can run their Linux Preview of Spotify