> Needless to say, such accurate recommendations of music, which even close personal friends have trouble doing, is based on building as complete of a psychological profile of the user as possible.

And then an innovative "security contractor" or "data research agency" makes a backroom deal with Spotify and copies their database of complete psychological profiles. Win-win?

I definitely agree that certain products create value from tracking, and those should be the exception, as long as everyone involved is ok with it. I don’t really use the recommendations in Spotify, but I don’t think there is a way to use the service in an anonymous/tracking free way (not that it bothers me). I don’t think maintaining a private /purchased collection should be the only alternative to full tracking.

GDPR isn't about removing all tracking, it's about empowering users and allowing them to decide for themselves how their data is used.

If someone wants to avail themselves of Spotify's recommendations they have to opt in by sharing their data. So they make an active, informed, decision about what data Spotify gets to use. They also have legal recourse if it turns out Spotify is misusing the data (selling it to record labels, let's say).

We have had an analogous law here in Sweden for ages: if you apply for a permit you're allowed to set up security cameras pretty much anywhere on your property but you have to put up signs informing people that they're being filmed. This is so people can opt into surveillance. 99% of the time it's no big deal that you're being filmed, but it's never secret.

That's a good thing.

At some level, I think one should have privacy concerns with baby monitors ... did your baby choose to opt-in?

(Three kids here, and no, we never used a baby monitor...)

I hope the sarcasm is flying over my head here...