Jheronimus Academy of Data Science
Eindhoven University of Technology

Informed consent form for participants

This document gives you information about the study “Music Genre Exploration”. Before the study begins, it is important that you learn about the procedure followed in this study and that you give your informed consent for voluntary participation. Please read this document carefully.

1. Aim and benefit of the study

You will use our personalized music genre exploration tool to create playlists to explore a music genre and to allow us to provide you with a new recommendation list based on research ideas from students in a course on recommender systems. The aim of this study is to evaluate new recommendation approaches and to help students understand recommender system technologies. This study is performed by Yu Liang, under the supervision of Martijn Willemsen of the Human-Technology Interaction group of Eindhoven University of Technology and Jheronimus Academy of Data Science.

2. Procedure

The study consists of 2 sessions (of 5-7 minutes each). In the first session you will use our genre exploration tool and will be asked about your experience with music in a short survey. You need to log in with your Spotify account (note: you can only participate with an active Spotify account, free or paid) for this study. In the second session you will receive (via email) a recommendation list and a short questionnaire.

3. Risks

The study does not involve any risks, detrimental side effects, or cause discomfort.

4. Duration

The instructions and use of the tool will take approximately 5-10 minutes. The second session will take about 5-10 minutes.

5. Participants

You were selected by invitation from students in the course.

6. Voluntary

Your participation is completely voluntary. You can refuse to participate without giving any reasons and you can stop your participation at any time during the study. You can also withdraw your permission to use your data up to 24 hours after each session or after the end of the whole study. None of this will have any negative consequences for you whatsoever.

7. Compensation

There is no compensation for participating. However, you will be able to store the playlist you generate with the exploration tool to enjoy later in your spotify player.

8. Confidentiality

All research conducted at the Human-Technology Interaction Group adheres to the Code of Ethics of the NIP (Nederlands Instituut voor Psychologen – Dutch Institute for Psychologists), and this study has been approved by the Ethical Review Board of the department.

In this study personal data (your Spotify top listened tracks and artists and your email) and experimental data (e.g., your responses to the questionnaires and interactions with the application) will be recorded, analyzed, and stored. During the study you interact with a webapp and your data will be stored on a secured server of Heroku, a GDPR compliant cloud service. (https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/gdpr). After the study data will be stored on a secured server of HTI (see below).

You need to log in with your Spotify account in order to join this study. During the Spotify login, three permissions will be asked to access your Spotify data. Our tool will ask for permissions to (1) view your Spotify account data (including your name, username, profile picture, how many followers you have on Spotify and your public playlists), (2) view your activity on Spotify (your top listened artists and tracks), and (3) take playlist relevant actions in Spotify on your behalf (create, edit, and follow private playlists). These permissions will only be granted to us during your usage of the tool. We need these to enable Spotify login and for playlist savings during your usage of the tool, but we will never record, analyze, and store any of your Spotify account data. We will only store your top listened tracks and artists on Spotify (up to 150 artists and tracks), but not store your Spotify ID or username. You will provide your email in the first session so we can contact you and provide you with a personalized recommendation in the second session. After that session the email will be deleted.

The goal of collecting, analyzing, and storing this data is to answer the research questions of the student projects and potentially publish the results in the scientific literature. To protect your privacy, all data that can be used to personally identify you will be stored on an encrypted server of the Human Technology Interaction group for at least 10 years that is only accessible by selected HTI staff members. No information that can be used to personally identify you will be shared with others.

The data collected in this study might also be of relevance for future research projects within the Human Technology Interaction group as well as for other researchers. The aim of those studies might be unrelated to the goals of this study. The collected data will therefore also be made available in a public online data repository. The coded data collected in this study will (to the best of our knowledge and ability) not contain information that can identify you. It will include all answers you provide during the study.

At the bottom of this consent form, you can indicate whether or not you agree with the use of your data for future research within the Human Technology Interaction group and in an public online data repository. If you are not willing to share your data in this way, you can still participate in this study. Your data will be used only in the student research project and potential scientific publications but not shared with other researchers.

No video or audio recordings are made that could identify you.

9. Further information

If you want more information about this study, you can contact Yu Liang (contact email: y.liang1@tue.nl).

If you have any complaints about this study, please contact the supervisor, Martijn Willemsen (M.C.Willemsen@tue.nl). You can report irregularities related to scientific integrity to confidential advisors of the TU/e.

10. Certificate of Consent

I -

give permission to make my anonymized recorded data available to others in HTI research group and in a public online data repository, and allow others to use this data for future research projects unrelated to this stud