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Spotify will play ads based on your playlists

Your age, gender and song picks will determine the commercials you hear.

Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

If you're a Spotify user, your friends and family aren't the only ones who are able to check out your playlists. The popular streaming service is now the latest platform that is opening its data to targeted, programmatic advertising. Everything from your age and gender, to the music genres you like to listen to will be targetable by participating third-party companies

Spotify has already enabled the targeted ads across its platform. Advertisers will have access to the 70 million people that use Spotify's free, ad-supported streaming across 59 countries. These buyers will be able to look for user groups who might be the best matches for the products they're selling. For example, a clothing company might want to target males with smooth jazz playlists located in London aged 18-25.

The ads will be 15- and 30-second audio spots. Though they might be more relevant to you than before, they're still another friendly reminder that your information is a commodity in this digital age.

Update: A previous version of this story asserted user data was being sold, this is not the case.