5 ms·

rdio.com stops playing music as soon as it tries & fails to play an audio ad. You can refresh the page to continue with the next song though. Since it seems to

by craigds 11y ago

rdio.com stops playing music as soon as it tries & fails to play an audio ad. You can refresh the page to continue with the next song though. Since it seems to play an ad after every song (?!) this basically prevents ublock users from using the free version of rdio.

yeukhon 11y ago
I don't know the algorithm, but how it figures out that the audio is an ad? Sounds like a page or a different url is used playing the ad?
- craigds 11y ago
  Yes. The ads have urls like http://cmodmedia201.live.streamtheworld.com/media/cm-audio/cm:d55b9957-1363-41ab-f094-97ddd3943134.mp3 http://cmodmedia201.live.streamtheworld.com/media/cm-audio/c... whereas the song content is served from a different host entirely (m.cdn2.rd.io). Presumably this is just because the ads are served from an external ad network, not rdio itself. You can see the ad request failing in Chrome dev tools, and the console tab shows "net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT".
pavel_lishin 11y ago
Hulu does something similar, but sometimes it shows ads, and sometimes it tells me that I need to disable ad-blocking software. I just refresh, and it usually works. I'm not willing to disable Ghostery and uBlock, though; 12 things blocked by Ghostery and 31 by uBlock - I don't need any of it, Hulu, thanks.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  I will never understand how that company makes money. If you can get users to pay you for your content, then don't try and sell your users time to someone else. Horrible value proposition and if you have to block that much stuff they likely sell your data as well, not to mention many premium clients are shittier than the pirate sites. Hulu value proposition: * Pay for content. * Still have to watch commercials. * Have data about my usage sold to highest bidder. * Video client that is not as good as putlocker (or whatever the cool kids are using these days) it is owned by nbc, disney and fox. they still don't get that you can sell content, sell ads, or sell nothing. Very little overlap.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It's like with Lenovo and SuperFish. Even if you have a perfectly good business model and satisfied customer, there's nothing stopping some greedy people to try and extract even more value from their customer.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    > they still don't get that you can sell content, sell ads, or sell nothing. But they can, and do. We pay for our Hulu subscription, and so do literally millions of others. They are toeing a very fine line, however - too many ads, and I'll ditch them and either use Netflix (which doesn't have the most recent TV shows), or pirate things. It's also pretty interesting that they're offering a new, more expensive, ad-free service. I wonder how long that one will stay ad-free.
kbenson 11y ago
> Since it seems to play an ad after every song (?!) this basically prevents ublock users from using the free version of rdio. I imagine it tries to play an ad if it hasn't successfully played one in a certain time period. Since you're blocking them, that's between every song. If you weren't blocking them, it would probably be less often.

by craigds 11y ago

yeukhon 11y ago

I don't know the algorithm, but how it figures out that the audio is an ad? Sounds like a page or a different url is used playing the ad?

craigds 11y ago
Yes. The ads have urls like http://cmodmedia201.live.streamtheworld.com/media/cm-audio/cm:d55b9957-1363-41ab-f094-97ddd3943134.mp3 http://cmodmedia201.live.streamtheworld.com/media/cm-audio/c... whereas the song content is served from a different host entirely (m.cdn2.rd.io). Presumably this is just because the ads are served from an external ad network, not rdio itself. You can see the ad request failing in Chrome dev tools, and the console tab shows "net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT".

pavel_lishin 11y ago

Hulu does something similar, but sometimes it shows ads, and sometimes it tells me that I need to disable ad-blocking software. I just refresh, and it usually works. I'm not willing to disable Ghostery and uBlock, though; 12 things blocked by Ghostery and 31 by uBlock - I don't need any of it, Hulu, thanks.

vonklaus 11y ago
I will never understand how that company makes money. If you can get users to pay you for your content, then don't try and sell your users time to someone else. Horrible value proposition and if you have to block that much stuff they likely sell your data as well, not to mention many premium clients are shittier than the pirate sites. Hulu value proposition: * Pay for content. * Still have to watch commercials. * Have data about my usage sold to highest bidder. * Video client that is not as good as putlocker (or whatever the cool kids are using these days) it is owned by nbc, disney and fox. they still don't get that you can sell content, sell ads, or sell nothing. Very little overlap.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It's like with Lenovo and SuperFish. Even if you have a perfectly good business model and satisfied customer, there's nothing stopping some greedy people to try and extract even more value from their customer.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  > they still don't get that you can sell content, sell ads, or sell nothing. But they can, and do. We pay for our Hulu subscription, and so do literally millions of others. They are toeing a very fine line, however - too many ads, and I'll ditch them and either use Netflix (which doesn't have the most recent TV shows), or pirate things. It's also pretty interesting that they're offering a new, more expensive, ad-free service. I wonder how long that one will stay ad-free.

kbenson 11y ago

> Since it seems to play an ad after every song (?!) this basically prevents ublock users from using the free version of rdio. I imagine it tries to play an ad if it hasn't successfully played one in a certain time period. Since you're blocking them, that's between every song. If you weren't blocking them, it would probably be less often.