After some noisy Internet backlash over its new privacy policy, Spotify responded to critics who claimed the music-streaming company was gathering too much information.
"We are in the middle of rolling out new terms and conditions and privacy policy and they’ve caused a lot of confusion about what kind of information we access and what we do with it," Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote on Friday morning. "We apologize for that."
On Thursday, Wired published an article about Spotify's "eerie new privacy policy" that claimed the policy used vague language to ask for for user photos, GPS data and information about activity on other apps.
That sparked complaints about Spotify's privacy policy on social media. Some, like "Minecraft" creator Markus Persson, publicly quit the service. He later got into a public argument with Ek on Twitter.
On Friday, Spotify specified that it would only collect GPS data for Spotify Running, its feature that matches music to how fast a user is running. It also said it would only access images that users decided to share for things like playlist covers and profile pictures.
Related:Hey Mr. DJ: Spotify To Make Weekly Playlists Personalized For You
"In our new privacy policy, we indicated that we may ask your permission to access new types of information, including photos, mobile device location, voice controls, and your contacts," Ek wrote. "Let me be crystal clear here: If you don’t want to share this kind of information, you don’t have to."
Ek said that Spotify would release an updated, more clear privacy policy in the "coming weeks."
