The ‘Panama Playlists’ Reveal the Spotify Profiles of Public Figures ⇥ theverge.com

Elizabeth Lopatto, the Verge:

Have you ever wondered what bops powerful figures are listening to on Spotify? You’d be amazed what you can get with a profile search — but just in case you want them all in one place, there’s the Panama Playlists, a newly published collection of data on the musical listening habits of politicians, journalists, and tech figures, as curated by an anonymous figure.

Silly name aside, I am glad to finally have a privacy-related concern that is not actually so bad. Yes, some people confirmed to Lopatto that they were unaware they were sharing their playlists publicly, but at least it is not private data per se. And it gives us a relatively non-creepy peek into the lives of the rich and famous. For example, Marc Benioff has a terrible “High Energy Party” playlists into which he has dumped whole albums with seeming disregard to vibe consistency or quality — it is simply a massive amount of songs from the Black Eyed Peas, Metallica, and Beatles tribute bands, plus one lonely song by the Doors. The art of the playlist is dead.