The changes have sparked outrage in Spotify's community forum, with developers arguing that the move is not about security or user privacy, but about protecting data used for training AI models. The restrictions will only affect developers with more limited API access than official Spotify partners. Those who have previously applied for an extension will still be able to use these API endpoints. However, it appears that Spotify did not warn developers about these impending changes.
Key takeaways:
- Spotify is limiting third-party developers' access to several features within its Web API, including song and artist recommendations, in an effort to address security challenges and prevent misuse of its API.
- The changes are designed to prevent developers from scraping data from Spotify's platform and using it to build competitive AI music recommendation models, a field in which Spotify has been actively developing in recent years.
- Developers are also losing access to Spotify's Audio Analysis and Audio Features, as well as its algorithmically-created playlists. This has sparked outrage in Spotify's community forum, with developers arguing that the move is not about security or user privacy, but about protecting Spotify's data for training AI models.
- The changes will only affect developers with more limited API access than official Spotify partners. Those who have previously applied for an extension will still be able to use these API endpoints, but it appears that Spotify did not warn developers about these changes in advance.