Many of Spotify's recommendation features are no longer available to developers

Spotify said in a developer blog post on Wednesday that it will no longer grant developers using its Web API to create third-party apps access to a number of the music streaming service's features, including song and artist suggestions. The business seems to be prohibiting outside developers from accessing Spotify listener data to create AI products.

In a statement to TechCrunch, a Spotify representative stated, "We're making changes to our public APIs as part of our ongoing work to address the security challenges that many companies navigate today."

The purpose of the modifications is to restrict specific developers that it finds have been abusing its API, including by stealing information from its platform. The elements that Spotify is removing may provide insight about the listening preferences of its users, including the songs and artists that various listener groups frequently listen to. Spotify has been working on competing AI music recommendation algorithms in recent years, and these might be utilized to develop them.

Developers no longer have access to Spotify's Audio Analysis, which explains the rhythm and structure of a tune, in addition to the song and artist recommendations. Additionally, developers no longer had access to Audio Features, which make reference to a song's various attributes, such as its energy, "danceability," and acoustic status. Spotify also blocked developers from using its playlists that were generated by algorithms.

The music platform's decision to remove these capabilities infuriated a number of users in its community forum. Others were developing apps that had nothing to do with AI suggestions, but they will now lose access even though some developers were using these features to construct AI music recommendation services.

One developer in the forum stated, "There's probably a risk that people will train new models to emulate Spotify's model(s) with the advent of transformer models." "I'm just disappointed if that's the reason they're taking it down, but I really hope it's not."

Another developer stated, "Let's be real, this is about data being used for training AI models, not security or user privacy."

In recent years, Spotify has been developing AI music models, and Daniel Ek, the company's CEO, has stated that he believes AI will be "huge for creativity" in the music industry. A few AI products, including an AI DJ last year, have been developed by Spotify in recent years based on these models. More customers in the US, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand have also been able to access the company's AI playlists in recent months.

Only developers with less API access than official Spotify partners will be impacted by these changes. Although it doesn't seem like Spotify informed developers of these changes in advance, developers who have already applied for an extension will still be allowed to use these API endpoints.