Author: Sam Trendall
Publisher: Public Technology
Publication Year: 2022
Summary: The following article details a probe by the United Kingdom’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI), a government unit dedicated to promoting ethical use of data and artificial intelligence (AI) models, into music streaming services such as Spotify’s recommendation algorithms. Users of streaming apps are recommended certain songs and artists based on their listening history, but the CDEI wants to research if these recommendations are biased towards artists in certain communities, such as ones defined by race, gender, age, or other factors. Artists often complain about limited revenue from streaming services despite providing all of their content, and if certain artists are being marginalized by these recommendation algorithms, that would stand to make things even worse.