

Jay-Z Is Watching, and He Knows Your Friends - daegloe
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/arts/music/jay-z-is-watching-and-he-knows-your-friends.html

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aguynamedrich
I was checking the app out earlier and was curious to see what they're doing
and what kind of data they're collecting, and they're really doing nothing out
of the ordinary or worthy of distrust. They're using Flurry and Crittercism
like everyone else, reverse geocoding your location with Google Maps API, and
just serving up standard JSON data to power the app...again, just like every
other app on your phone. One of the things I found interesting is that they're
not using any kind of security model to protect the location of the media
files online. If you clear the app data or start from a fresh download and
trace the calls with a proxy like Charles or Fiddler, the entire album data is
served up including full url's to the audio files on AWS. I don't know the
etiquette around here, so I'll leave out the actual url and data, etc., but
it's easiest enough to find for the crowd here.

I think it's brilliant. They're sending back events to the api when you stop
and start tracks, and they're sending all of the information that the phone
will give them - location, device/os info, storage/free space. This is
probably the most real usage data a major artist has ever received on how,
when and where their music is played by home listeners, and I wouldn't be
surprised if this sets a major trend. They can pick which singles to release
based on this data, decide where to spend the most money promoting concerts,
etc.

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revelation
Come on, its 2013, journalists can not seriously still mix up data collection
by the government with privacy issues in our new connected world. The one side
has 24/7 drones in the sky armed with lethal weapons and a satellite uplink to
they-won't-say-who, the other has data people have given them at their own
discretion.

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austenallred
This is an obvious attempt to lump two trending topics together, despite the
fact that they're not really related.

Jay Z forces you to spam your friends to see his lyrics. The NSA logs your
phone calls without your permission.

Big difference.

~~~
codyb
I would say "force" is a strong word in Jay-Z's case. Perhaps he compels you?

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DigitalSea
Wow. Quality journalistic piece right here only it's lacking the quality part.
It would appear that Jon Pareles is attempting to make an issue out of nothing
here even complaining that he was unable to get his free copy of the album
until an hour after he was supposed too (as he laments in the last paragraph).

My favourite part of the article was this line in the second paragraph: "It’s
an ugly piece of software." — I actually thought the app was pretty well-made.
The animations and use of typography and media were balanced well.

Jay-Z isn't an Android developer, he didn't make the app, Samsung did. As the
article points out he sold one million copies of the album to Samsung for
promotional use at $5 a piece. It was Samsung that built the app and chose
what permissions it required. To Jay-Z it was a simple transaction, all he had
to do was supply the goods for a price and allow Samsung to do the lifting.

Oh and there is a difference between a Government secretly collecting and
recording your information without your permission and an app giving you the
option of sharing your data. You don't just install the app and it
automatically allows and helps itself to the contents of your phone. Jon is
going to have a heart-attack when he realises a lot of other apps in the Play
Store demand similar permissions as well.

Sensationalism at its finest here.

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fyrabanks
"Yet now, it’s Jay-Z who’s lurking — in my phone." Honestly the worst piece of
journalism I've read in quite some time.

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sodafountan
Terrible article. Jay-Z himself had nothing to do with the actual application.
Somehow he and Samsung got together and decided to market his album through a
free to download app (Smart move in my opinion). Samsung developed the app and
it was in their best interest to make sure that it worked properly upon the
midnight release (it didn't).

It would be Samsung who's "watching", but then again I'm not quite sure why
this article links surveillance to spamming in the first place.

Typical media sensationalism.

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mcx
A better foil to what Jay-Z is doing is Daft Punk:
[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-27/daft-
punks-g...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-27/daft-punks-get-
lucky-how-to-build-the-song-of-the-summer#r=hp-sf)

Jay-Z's marketing campaign is aggressive (pushing users to post things on
social networks to unlock things) while Daft Punk is taking a more hands off
approach, letting their fans spread the word.

It will be interesting to see which one sells more.

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drivingmenuts
Jay-Z is a media star and therefore, he's going to say whatever is necessary
to keep his fans around, until he doesn't want to be a media star anymore.
However, he's also going to do what he needs to make money and if it's at odds
with what he says, well, most of his fans won't even notice.

It's not that they're stupid, nor is he. He wants to make money and stay in
the spotlight, his fans want music and fun, not a lot of deep political
thought for which they don't even have the background.

~~~
oofabz
I listen to Jay-Z, and I am disappointed that you think me and my fellow fans
are incapable of political thought. Many of his lyrics are political in nature
(e.g. "99 Problems"), and like many aging pop stars, he has a lot of older
listeners.

Hip hop has a long history of tackling political issues, and has been the most
political genre of music for the last thirty years. I assure you, the hip hop
community is, and has always been, concerned about government and corporate
overreach.

~~~
seivan
I am sorry to say, but you're (probably) an anomaly. He didn't mean you and
your fellow fans, he mean fans of "music" sensation in general.

~~~
eaurouge
_I am sorry to say, but you 're (probably) an anomaly._

I doubt that he is. Count me as another 'anomaly'. Of course, conscious rap is
an entire sub-genre of rap, and Jay-Z is not a conscious rapper. He rapped
about this (a bit) in Moment of Clarity [1].

1\. [http://rapgenius.com/9543](http://rapgenius.com/9543)

~~~
bricestacey
Something tells me Jay-Z's opinion has likely changed in the past 10 years. He
isn't rapping for teenagers anymore. He says just that in his interview with
Warren Buffet and Forbes.

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stephenhess
Samsung doesn't need all of this data because it already has it. Looks like
Jay-Z's people pushed this as a term in the giveaway to get more value out of
the deal. i.e. marketing to 1 million fans.

That said, there's nothing really nefarious here. Users accept a standard
dialogue to access the app that exchanges their data and contact info for
music. Making someone tweet for lyrics is kind of lame but it's still the
user's choice to do so.

~~~
gzavitz
I mean, there are other places to get the lyrics. I see it as a cool way of
saying thanks for tweeting. I'm sure a lot of the people who downloaded his
album were tweeting about it anyway.

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daenz
Maybe not Jay-Z's artistic statement, but I think it's an interesting artistic
idea for a performer to make his fans choose between their privacy and their
hunger for entertainment, in order to make a statement about the problem with
our privacy being that we're too willing to trade it away. If that was his
intention, I say "bravo."

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biggfoot
This is just bad product experience. They're gonna have a nightmare marketing
it the next time around.

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djt
Jay takes a 50% price cut for user information. If users are happy to pass
that along for free music 5 days before anyone else then that is the cost.

Most people aren't concerned by this, theyre used to it now. Not saying it's
right but its what is so.

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kimlelly
It's been known for some time that Jay-Z has precisely 99 problems.

However, so far, it appears to be unclear whether you, as a user, are among
them.

