Report: Spotify Wants To Tailor Playlists By Heart Rate And Movement

Report: Spotify Wants To Tailor Playlists By Heart Rate And Movement

If your workouts never quite gel with your soundtrack, help may soon be at hand. The Guardian is reporting that Spotify has plans to measure heart rate and motion to help you choose the perfect playlist for any situation.

The newspaper explains that Spotify is thinking of using sensors “on the listener’s body or in their smartphone to measure their heart rate and then use that to select appropriate music.” In fact, Donovan Sung , Spotify’s product manager for discovery and recommendations, told The Guardian that using motion, heart rate and temperature data, Spotify could even start to monitor sleep patterns and mood.

From there, the Guardian claims, Spotify might “automatically generate playlists based on activities such as workouts, driving, sleeping or late-night working, without user interaction.” That sounds simultaneously absolutely amazing and slightly creepy. Indeed, it’s the age-old truth in the digital age: giving up masses of personal data can wildly improve the quality of services you receive, just at the expense of, well, giving away all that personal data.

Arguably, it’s not the first time such an approach to marrying activity with music has been suggested, but as of yet none of the big names have embraced the idea. Currently, Spotify’s recommendation engine is partly powered by algorithms and partly by human editors — but clearly it can see a future in automating as much of the service as possible. We can’t wait to see if it turns from concept to reality. [The Guardian]

Picture: Shutterstock/Martin Novak


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