Heart FM – Spotify to Measure a Different Kind of Beat

Like the epic intro to some Tolkien-esque fantasy film, it seems that the music industry looks set to be thrown into chaos – with broken hearts at the centre of a monumental music streaming battle. The announcement of the Dr. Dre endorsed rival to Spotify’s streaming monopoly has rallied the troops and set the PR war machine to work – with a number of interesting, and sometimes speculative announcements from the service’s marketing department designed to keep consumers on-side.

Erik Stattin / CC BY-SA

The latest of these announcements hopes to take those broken hearts and recommend a suitably sentimental love-song to remedy the pain. That is, Spotify have announced that, in the near future they hope to be able to monitor users heart-beats to provide a recommendation system based on mood and/or likelihood of cardiac arrest. It seems that Dr Dre’s Beats has got Spotify’s pulse racing.

Smartphone for Smart Recommendations

This latest idea from Spotify will use device to device communication from companies such as Deutsche Telekom to monitor things like pulse, temperature, sleep patterns and body motion. The aim is to build a picture of individual users that enables the service to recommend music, linked not only to listening habits, but also to mood and disposition from sensors within your smartphone.

The data will be collected from your smartphone and then sent wirelessly to your Spotify account – although details on exactly how this will work are still very much unclear. It is a safe bet though that, with the meteoric rise and “one box to rule them all” philosophy of the smartphone, these features will appear sooner rather than later. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for the latest announcements from an increasingly worried Spotify.