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Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
- close04 8y agoWhat qualifies as adblocking? Would connecting to the WiFi of someone using PiHole constitute adblocking and get you account banned?
- darod 8y agoI wonder if this also applies to people who edit their hosts file.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoProbably, since most ad blocker detection can't tell the difference, and the difference is irrelevant to an ad vendor anyways.
- Laforet 8y agoThis is going to end badly. What if the ISP or corporate network have their own domain blacklists?
- holtalanm 8y agoI was thinking that, as well. Some ISPs blacklist known bad actor ad services, don't they?
- mrkstu 8y agoI block advertising as a category at our corporate proxy (it saves about 20% of potential web traffic and about 85% of the vectors of infection,)! People definitely aren’t going to be happy if they start losing their accounts for listening at work...
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoYeah, corporate filters blocking a number of ad domains is quite common, and a lot of people listen to Spotify at work. This is probably going to go very badly.
- joombaga 8y agoTheir users would not be in violation of the TOS. > The following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever: ... > 10. circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service; https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/end-user-agreement/ https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/end-user-agreement/ The user in this case would not be responsible for the blocking.
- vaylian 8y agoI am looking forward to the day when the ad provider has an outage and spotify detects that 100% of their users do not load ads. Or when popular antiviruses start blocking suspicious website contents.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoHonestly, this would be an amazing way to take out Spotify. Denial of Service at the ad provider, cripple the user base, advertise your service with a "don't get spoti-screwed"
- darod 8y ago"circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service;" I guess that answers that one.
- woodrowbarlow 8y agoso anyone who contributes to a general-purpose adblocker like ublock origin is in violation of spoitfy's ToS? what if someone has a paid account but is also (for example) the author of pihole? that's over-reaching.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- narrator 8y agoRelevant South Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z696bTiP8Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z696bTiP8Ro
- moonshinefe 8y agoRidding the world of non-US viewers too apparently. ("Not available in your country")
- sidyapa 8y agoThis is a good move. Even though ads are annoying and frustrating at most times it is not anybody's birth-right to use a product/service for free and block their sources of revenue. If they have a pay-to-remove-ads option, use it.
- chapium 8y agoI see the user as free to modify their client. On the same note spotify is not obliged to serve 3rd party or out of spec clients.
- danijelb 8y agoAbsolutely, they have right not to serve any customer they don't want to serve. But do they have a right of tracking your actions? How would you react if there was an employee of any broadcast TV station peeking through your window to see if you're avoiding ads on their channel, and if they determine you avoid the ads, install a broadcast signal jammer near your house? I don't like the increasingly intrusive behaviors from big tech companies, and this case with free Spotify is a good example. If they can't provide a free service without privacy intrusions, they shouldn't offer it. Radios and broadcast TV survive on ad-based model without privacy intrusions.
- ox_cable 8y agoWhile I'm sure I'm in the minority, I absolutely do have the birthright to control what content appears on my device. If they want to prevent ads from being blocked, blocking me from using their service is 100% fine by me.
- moate 8y agoBut that's not the same. You have the right to control your content, but that's not what's happening here. Presumably in this example you want to use Spotify (otherwise the whole conversation is moot) but they don't want to you circumvent how their service works. You're not the one controlling this situation, Spotify is. Your statement sounds very akin to "fine, kick me out of this party I was clearly enjoying, I don't want to associate with these kind of people anyway..." which feels disingenuous. I think you really just don't care that much about using spotify, which is a perfectly cromulent opinion.
- isostatic 8y agoI assume this only applies to the free version of spotify
- slouch 8y agoThey have a web player linked from the bottom of their home page, and ad blockers work while using it.
- stronglikedan 8y agoAre you sure that's for paid accounts? I'm using it right now on a browser with no ad blocker and I don't get ads.
- slouch 8y agoI don't understand your question. If you pay, they don't serve you ads, no?
- stronglikedan 8y agoOP was asking if it was limited to the free version, and your answer seemed to imply that the web player served ads for all versions, since it didn't specify the account type. If that wasn't the implication, then my question is no longer valid.
- HenryBemis 8y ago"on the free version of Spotify" I block ads on everything, and everyway I can, but I do pay for my subscription. It makes sense to block freeloaders, especially when they need to PAY some for the song one listened. It is reasonable that they get some revenue in one form or another. On this one, I believe people should be protesting over the nature of format of ads, not the existence of ads altogether.
- excalibur 8y ago+1. This only seems to be applicable to free accounts, but that doesn't mean that's the way it's written. Anyone want to bite the bullet and read the legalese?
- jasonlfunk 8y agoApparently the new TOS says that they may do it, not they they will do it.
- krn 8y agoWhat about the Brave browser[1], which works at the application level? Or Blokada[2], which works at the OS level? Or Pi-Hole[3], which works at the network level? [1] https://brave.com https://brave.com [2] https://blokada.org https://blokada.org [3] https://pi-hole.net https://pi-hole.net
- sinstein 8y agoAs someone mentioned in another comment, I don't think they will care about how the ads are being blocked. As long as you are bypassing ads, you are in breach of their TOS.
- YayamiOmate 8y agoYea, but there is no way to distinct why ads don't reach the target, and as it's worded, they can't block service for technical difficulties but for intentional behaviour. I haven't seen even if they specified whether it must be the account user or not. E.g. your network host or isp can do it. So that seems interesting, unless they can do it on a whim anyways and dont have to prove anything. Though they could just say, "no free service if we cant serve ads".
- bootlooped 8y ago> they can't block service for technical difficulties but for intentional behaviour They can block service for whatever reason they want.
- Ajedi32 8y agoSo if someone connects to a public Wi-Fi network with a Pi-Hole installed, they'll get banned?
- wjdp 8y agoI run Pi-Hole on my home network, while I pay for premium I guess I'm OK. But will anyone who uses this network with Free get banned?
- dessant 8y agoThey allow advertisers to run JS on your device, and ads are a trendy way to deliver malware. People are using ad blockers not just to hide annoyances and to improve performance, but to protect themselves from bad actors. https://spotifyforbrands.com/en-US/ad-experiences/ https://spotifyforbrands.com/en-US/ad-experiences/ > JavaScript or iFrame Tags: All third-party tags and tracking URLs need to be in https format. I was on the fence about this because there is a legitimate need to bring in revenue from free users, but they should stick to audio, video and image ads.
- nathanaldensr 8y ago"We can push anything we want to your device but don't you dare try to block it. That's a Terms of Service Violation." Well, it was nice knowing you Spotify.
- kryogen1c 8y agoYeah not to be glib, but that would be a deal breaker for me too.
- yreg 8y agoWell, it's a free service. They have no reason to care about users, who block ads and don't intend to ever become paying customers.
- fartcannon 8y agoIt's purely hubris. They clearly don't understand the nature of the beast.
- umanwizard 8y agoA non-paying customer who doesn't listen to ads has absolutely zero value to Spotify. Why shouldn't they block them?
- 00deadbeef 8y agoI pay on credit card so they can expect a chargeback if they pull this shit on me
- pilsetnieks 8y agoI don't think it applies to paid accounts.
- sinstein 8y agoYeah, paid subscribers don't have to deal with ads anyway I guess?
- CraneWorm 8y agofor now
- 00deadbeef 8y agoHopefully not, but the updated terms aren't that clear
- stronglikedan 8y agoIf you pay, then you don't get ads anyway.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- SirensOfTitan 8y agoSounds like a reasonable move. Spotify delivers so much value that I couldn’t imagine not paying for it (or enduring ads). I listened to something like 25 straight days of music last year.
- JustSomeNobody 8y agoWow. I ... I couldn't tell you who was in the top 10 in any genre right now. I may have listened to 25 minutes of music last year. I came here just because the title drew me in.
- themoat 8y agoThey actually added a new feature on Spotify where you can listen to songs that aren't currently in the top 40. You might enjoy that.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find someone talking any sense. Is it really the case that most of HN are listening to Spotify all day every day and blocking the ads? Why not just pay for it!?
- swift532 8y agoPersonally, I am not paying for it because it's not officially available in my country for whatever reason. I realize there's rights issues etc., but if someone won't take my money, I feel no guilt whatsoever doing whatever I want with their product.
- sotojuan 8y agoSeems to me a lot of hackers/tech people get off getting around paying for stuff, even if they make well over six figures.
- WilliamEdward 8y ago
- nixpulvis 8y agoConsidering how services like Spotify and Apple Music incourage extra data usage, and randomally delete music as they see fit, I'm finding myself thinking more and more of these services as discovery tools (akin to radio) and less like media players (they aren't). One day very soon I'll be playing all my music in something else entirely again. While it's impossible to brush off the value of streaming services like Spotify, it's a huge step backwards on many levels. We must demand better.
- pluc 8y agoWe had better in MP3s but the industry didn't like it. Personally, if you don't own the content I don't think you can whine when it goes away.
- justtopost 8y agoThe point here is we thought we owned access. That occasionally was revoked without notice, or recourse.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago> The point here is we thought we owned access. We did? It's a subscription service. Of course you don't own access.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoYou can still buy and download MP3s of pretty much anything through Amazon Prime Music.
- briandear 8y agoYou can do that with iTunes as well.
- davemp 8y agoIt feels weird to say but the zune marketplace was the best music platform so far. Who knows if it would have stayed that way if it ever got a decent market share though.
- MorrisofOrange 8y agoBut can they block me muting the ads?
- ModernMech 8y agoDont give them any ideas. Next they will require you to say the advertised brand name 5 times in order to get back to the content.
- dcbadacd 8y agoI think Sony has that patent, don't they?
- ModernMech 8y agoYeah, this is the one I had in mind: http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-terrifying/ http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-terri...
- justtopost 8y agoPlease drink verification can.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- slouch 8y agoWhat if a random file from a directory of my favorite movie clips plays instead?
- sigmar 8y agoI use an app to mute my android device's volume when "advertisement" appears in the "now playing" notification. For the past 4-6 weeks I've noticed Spotify will sometimes 'fail' to accurately update the "now playing" notification. I brushed it off as a bug, but this ToS makes me wonder if they are collecting device volume (which they can definitely do in android) and perhaps testing to see if I'm using the notifications to auto-mute? [puts on tinfoil hat]
- redsky17 8y agoThe only reason I use an ad-blocker with Spotify in the first place is that they have an abundance of NSFW ads that play. I'm not really comfortable with Trojan advertisements while I'm sitting in the office plugging away. It's definitely their right to deny service if people are freeloading... but there could be other people like me who wouldn't use an ad blocker in the first place (on Spotify, at least) if the ads weren't such garbage.
- bad_user 8y agoThen why don’t you pay for a subscription? If you keep listening to Spotify, surely it brings you value. I know I’m getting value from it. I listen to music all day at work and personally I don’t have many services that I use so often.
- redsky17 8y agoSo the reason for that has more to do with my corporate firewall than anything. I do pay for subscription services that I enjoy more than Spotify (currently, Google Play Music and Tidal). However, I cannot have a phone at work, so I can't log into GPM (2FA requires the phone), and Tidal is blocked for other reasons. So that basically just leaves Spotify. I don't want to pay for a third subscription service that I only use for a few hours per day tops.
- tomschlick 8y ago> so I can't log into GPM (2FA requires the phone) Use one of your backup codes?
- redsky17 8y agoI could be mistaken, but it was my understanding that those backup codes are one-time-use only, and that using one basically burns it forever. My cookies get cleared every single time I close my browser, so I would have to continually log back in and keep burning more codes. If I'm wrong about this... that would be excellent.
- rnvhhynr 8y agoWith an ad blocker on your browser, you can skip all ads. If you're afraid of getting banned and losing your playlists, then create your playlists using one Spotify account, set them as collaborative, then import them from another Spotify account, and run them from there.
- antoineMoPa 8y agoI dont get why people use spotify instead of listening to free online radios from anywhere in the world. As a bonus, its like travelling. There are ads, but they target other people than you so its not even annoying (you will not be influenced to buy a car at a dealership in another country). Note that if you are the kind who likes targeted ads, this does not apply to you.
- stronglikedan 8y agoI use Spotify because I like their discovery service, large library, and the fact that they are simply the best client I've found for multi-device listening (going from office to car to headphone to home stereo seamlessly). I pay for Spotify because their service offers great value and ad ad-free, skip-free experience.
- rebane2001 8y agoI hate the Spotify client overall, but the multi-device integration stuff is done so well If I'm listening to music, I don't have to think what device I am doing it from, I can just grab my phone, laptop or tablet to navigate/change songs and it works just like magic
- jowsie 8y agoBecause Spotify lets me choose which song I want to listen to.
- fiveoak 8y agoAny kind of ads are annoying to me and well worth the couple of $/month alone, but I also like being able to skip songs I don't like and having in general a better set of songs that I actually enjoy
- penagwin 8y agoRadio stations at least around the midwest here in the US only seem to play ~20 different songs, and it gets really repetitive, really fast, just ask anybody working retail. Plus the genre's are rather limited, it's usually one or two pop stations (with 90% song overlap), one or two country, maybe NPR or something in a podcast format, etc. Meanwhile all of the ads. Personally I'm on the student plan, and for what I like the listen to it's a steal for 5$ (and free hulu?) Any of the alternatives, deezer, apple music, etc would likely work too, but I can't imagine only using fm radio stations.
- furicane 8y agoIt's fascinating how we, humans, are lazy. We're lazy to the point where we'd gladly allow services like Spotify to control our computers just so they can make sure their ad was delivered. We'll even justify it by "well, I really listen to a lot of music". All I want is to push a button and get some bearable-noise during my 8 hours at work. I don't know about the rest, but I really hate when someone makes a fool out of me. I'm a lazy person too, if a service that I like asked me bluntly "hey dude, wanna give us all your info and let us sniff your traffic so we can stick ads in, we're even gonna sell it" - I'd say - sure, you were honest enough, screw it - go ahead, I didn't have to navigate through a wall of text critting me for 9000000 to get that piece of info. But no. No one behaves like that. Long user agreements, service agreements, catchy call-to-actions on websites that promise wonderland filled with unicorns shitting M&M's and what not just so they get those few bucks out of me... Oh well, hello foobar2000 my old friend, seems like I'll un-lazy myself just to spite these prying assholes.
- bad_user 8y agoWhat’s fascinating to me is the length people go to in order to justify freeloading. If you don’t like the ads, Spotify has a subscription plan. In my country that’s €5 / month. Surely that’s less money spent than the effort it takes to pirate music for usage with foobar2000.
- minikites 8y agoSo you're rewarding them for bad behavior with your money. Think about what this does to their incentives.
- BoiledCabbage 8y agoThen don't use their service. Why is this made out to be difficult. If you want to take/consume their service then pay, for it via ads or subscription. If you don't like that they have an ad based model, and personally want to boycott their subscription service because of it then do so and buy your own music. It's not complicated. 'Not rewarding their behavior' is simple - don't use Spotify. Anything else is very transparent, after-the-fact justification of your desire for theft. "Hey I really like this bike share service, but I don't think it's safe, so I'm gonna steal the bike, improve the safety and then ride it whenever I want. I don't want to reward their behavior of renting bikes I feel aren't safe."
- vesak 8y agoNice alternative to Spotify is Apple Music. They recently opened up their API (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi) which has been used to create a nice web interface by https://musi.sh/ https://musi.sh/ Their suggestions AI is quite a bit behind Spotify's unfortunately. Dunno if that's by a lack of design or because of Apple's privacy stance -- probably the former.
- justin66 8y agoI wonder how long it'll be before using Apple's logo on their page blows up in their face.
- messe 8y agoThere's thousands of free internet radio stations, most of which have none or minimal advertising. I recommend people try them out.
- pwaivers 8y agoAny links or suggestions?
- corint 8y agohttp://radio.garden/ http://radio.garden/ It's what you get when you smush internet radio and a virtual globe together. I really enjoy exploring different parts of the world and listening to their music.
- slouch 8y agohttps://live365.com/ https://live365.com/
- messe 8y agoI recommend searching through the catalogue on http://www.radio-browser.info/gui/ http://www.radio-browser.info/gui/
- callahad 8y agohttps://SomaFM.com https://SomaFM.com was founded 19 years ago and is still going strong. They have a few dozen streams, most of which are electronic, but they also have quite enjoyable indie, jazz, folk, etc. options. Not to mention refreshingly unique seasonal streams around Christmastime. I'm also partial to Minnesota Public Radio's offerings (https://www.mpr.org/ https://www.mpr.org/): https://www.thecurrent.org/ https://www.thecurrent.org/ is great for contemporary music, along with their sub-stream Rock the Cradle (https://www.thecurrent.org/rock-the-cradle https://www.thecurrent.org/rock-the-cradle) which is a solid choice if you have kids in the house.
- sinstein 8y agoI basically see two schools of thought in the discussion: 1. People that believe ads are strictly a source of revenue. If you don't like them but want to use the service, pay for the service 2. People who believe that ads are more than a banner on the page, its permission for ad networks and services to run potentially malicious content on their computer
- umanwizard 8y agoEven if 2 is true, how does that change the point? "Either pay us for our content, or let our ad networks run whatever they want on your browser" sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Would you thing it was more ethical if Spotify just got rid of the free option completely?
- hiccuphippo 8y agoWhat if Spotify ran the ads from their own servers as to not give advertisers free reign on your data?
- umanwizard 8y agoWhat if? What's your point?
- solarkraft 8y agoThat took pretty long. I've been using a modified Spotify client that worked exceptionally well until it was shut down.
- minikites 8y agoIf the service Spotify uses to host/serve ads get hacked and delivers malware to my computer, they should be held responsible for the cost and time spent addressing the malware. If I actually brought this up with them, I assume I would be laughed out of their office. Spotify can't have it both ways.
- bmaupin 8y agoAnyone know if there's a host file blacklist for malicious domains only? Most of the ones I've seen block all ads. The first time I experienced a malicious ad in Spotify on my Linux machine, I started blocking them via my hosts file [1]. I was only hoping to block malicious sites but it ended up giving me a completely ad-free experience in Spotify. As a free user I accept that I will be exposed to ads in exchange for not paying for the service, but they seriously need to do a better job vetting for malicious ads. [1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- freeone3000 8y agoMalicious advertisements are served off of normal ad distribution networks, which is what gives them their power - they're being hosted using the normal process, not from anybody new or special. The server used for the malware is disposable and ephemeral. Vetting advertisements would interfere with the real-time auction process, so nobody does any more than is required.
- iwalton3 8y agoYou can use the malware domains blacklist [1]. It can be applied through uBlock Origin or as a hosts blacklist if you process the file. Although I personally treat ads as a malware vector and block them. Hopefully I don't get banned from Spotify as I'm a paying customer. If I do, I'll switch to another platform. [1] http://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/domains.txt http://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/domains.txt
- akerro 8y agoWill it also block my account when I have pi-hole/openwrt adblock? which blocks ads on DNS level
- kingosticks 8y agoThey also changed their terms regarding reverse engineering. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18978825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18978825
- dcbadacd 8y agoIsn't that unenforceable in the EU?
- kingosticks 8y agoParts of it certainly, but I am not sure about the "disclosed or communicated" part.
- SnowingXIV 8y agoLong time premium spotify user, but it seems they are more interested in their ad-tech than anything else. They introduce 0 new features or improvements and in fact actually remove things over time. It's amazing to see a product continue to get worse. Before you could send your friends a message within Spotify to send a song for them to listen while in the application and could even carry on a discussion. It was slick. It was amazing and worked very well. They totally gutted it and made no indication of bringing it back. Now we're stuck with this ridiculous arcane method of sending a link through a text message that now opens up in a browser (sometimes?) instead of the application itself. Too much work to maintain this beloved feature, better fire all the engineers working on it and hire people to prevent ad-blocking for the non-paying customers.
- zalebz 8y agosimilar for me, very long time premium subscriber and it is extremely annoying how seemingly all the "improvements" over the years have been nothing I cared about while features I actually found useful have been removed I stay a subscriber because of (1) the size of the catalog and (2) the 'discover weekly' constantly delivers me new songs/bands that I thoroughly enjoy and would never have discovered on my own
- HeadsUpHigh 8y agoSame here. I'm contemplating unsubing and my first thought was to look if there is a tool to download my discover weekly archive. I have an IFTT applet that adds the weekly playlist to an archive so I can listen to it later. Over 900 songs that I still haven't checked/catalogued.
- driverdan 8y agoRemember when subscribing to artists would give you alerts for when they released new content? It was a fantastic way of keeping up with new music. For me it was a killer feature. They replaced it with the terrible "Release Radar" playlist that shows a small sample of whatever this week's ML algo recommends. It's garbage.
- CraneWorm 8y agoI predict an arms race.
- move-on-by 8y agoIsn't the latest versions of Firefox blocking ads and trackers by default now? Is Spotify just going to block every Firefox user now? This seems extreme, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
- JohnTHaller 8y agoSimple solution is to allow paid accounts to run adblockers and block free account users who block ads without banning their accounts.
- cr1895 8y agoPaid accounts don't have ads.
- JohnTHaller 8y agoRight, but most folks have an adblocker just on all the time. So, the paid users shouldn't get penalized in any way if it happens to be on while browsing Spotify. I'd wager this is the case, but the article doesn't specify.
- phailhaus 8y agoThe amount of people here outraged that Spotify is preventing them from blocking ads on the free tier is astounding. Pay for the service if you don't want ads.
- misiti3780 8y ago+1 spotify literally costs (per month) < 2 venti lattes from your favorite cafe, and less than a beer at most bars in NYC and 1/2 of this thread is complaining
- danijelb 8y agoI'm one of those that are complaining, but at the same time I pay for Spotify, Netflix and HBO GO, and I didn't pirate almost anything for years. It's not about the cost, it's about their obsession with control. If they can't provide free service without privacy intrusion (monitoring what you do with the data they send to your network) they shouldn't provide a free service at all.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hacym 8y agoI think the outrage is more so that Spotify thinks it can tell you how your computer is operating. Other companies have found ways to circumvent adblockers, which is the route they should be taking here... Not telling users that their computers have to conform to some set of standards so that they can inject ads into your experience.
- delecti 8y agoYou can buy (rent, access, whatever) their product with one of two forms of payment: money or ads. If you don't like how their ads are delivered (admittedly fair) then pay, if you don't find either of those acceptable then you don't get their product. Disabling ads is requesting a completely free third option, which isn't something they choose to allow. I don't understand the entitlement you seem to feel to demand that third option.
- davb 8y agoI wonder if they'll penalise paying users who also happen to be running an ad blocker. I pay for a Spotify family subscription but also block advertising and analytics domains in the hosts file on each of my devices. Spotify queries Scorecard Research regularly in the background even when it's ostensibly not running (on Android).
- noja 8y agoFree accounts or all accounts? (is this a precursor to adverts for paid accounts?)
- starpucks 8y agoAre there ad blockers on iOS for Spotify ?
- broth 8y agoNot for Spotify directly. However, I do use Purify for iOS as a content blocker for Safari. It might work depending on if Spotify has any web views embedded in its app.
- elamje 8y agoBut Spotify is only $10 a month....Your time spent pirating vs. time saved on Spotify has to be worth something.
- hiccuphippo 8y agoMy time searching for and discovery albums is invaluable to me. Spotify removes that satisfaction.
- elamje 8y agoThat's a valid reason. I don't think that most people have the same view, and after people experience Spotify playlists like Discovery, it's hard to go back to the old way of finding music.
- shittyadmin 8y agoI find those spotify generated playlists are really bad. I think they try to prefer music that's cheaper for them to play or something. Definitely not a great discovery tool for me.
- shittyadmin 8y agoMost music is freely available on YouTube now and there's even desktop clients that just grab the audio stream from YouTube videos. Spotify in my experience often has less content than YouTube so I'd say it's probably worth negative time, sound about right?
- webninja 8y agoFor $15 bucks you can get 6 paid accounts for your friends and family and also get a free Google home mini too!
- mancerayder 8y agoThere are so many complaints about Amazon's power and reach, but does anyone else here see an in for Amazon Music? I've been a Spotify paying member for years, but even though it only affects free members it makes me raise my eyebrows.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cdubzzz 8y agoWe have been thinking, admittedly for a few months, about paying for a Spotify subscription and this sort of makes me lean more against -- particularly as a Pi-hole user (though it doesn't block Spotify's audio ads). I wish Bandcamp would start a radio-style service. I have tried in the past to use it that way but it always tends to fall out of my mind because I can't just hit play and let it run.
- moonshinefe 8y agoI hate ads and they are often brain melting / malicious / resource hogging anyway. I also cannot afford to pay $5-10 for dozens of separate services a month at the moment. Guess I'll be listening to other sites if they ban me. You win Spotify.
- include 8y agoI just want the content I paid for.
- cletus 8y agoGood. Spotify has a pretty cheap paid option that removes all of that. To those who justify wanting the paid service for nothing by saying Spotify won't "take responsibility" or "assume liability" for their ads or those ads "might deliver malware" or are "intrusive" as a weak rationalization, you present a false dichotomy. There are at least three options: 1. Pay for the service 2. Suffer through the ads 3. Don't use the service This thread is an object lesson in why basically every large service on the Internet is ad-supported. When people aren't willing to pay for 1-2 coffees for a month of unlimited music streaming are you really surprised that companies have no choice to use an advertising revenue model?
- devy 8y agoI am on a paid account and I use ad blockers religiously. Will Spotify still terminate my account?!
- DangerousPie 8y agoI'm in the same boat as you and I very much doubt it.
- thisisweirdok 8y agoNo because you're paying them more than ads generate
- kingosticks 8y agoNot by as much a I'd have thought: > Premium Gross Margin was 27.3% in Q4, up from 26.1% in Q3, and up 200 bps Y/Y. Ad-Supported Gross Margin was 22.1% in Q4, up from 18.6% in Q3, and up 350 bps Y/Y. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190206005298/en/?utm_source=Memberful&utm_campaign=11b188e53b-weekly_article_2019_02_07_free&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d4c7fece27-11b188e53b-111064245 https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190206005298/en/?ut...
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y agoProbably not?!
- djohnston 8y agoSpotify: Provide service that costs labor, resources, licensing, etc. Spotify: Use ads for non-paying users to help cover the costs Freeloading Users: Use third party software to sidestep this source of revenue, essentially getting the product for free. Spotify: Ban these users. Freeloading Users: shocked_pikachu.jpg
- Nullabillity 8y ago> costs labor Neglegible marginal impact. Nevermind that most of this manpower seems to be wasted on adtech and bullshit redesigns. Their service sure hasn't improved recently. > resources This was completely self-inflicted. They used to run a p2p network, they chose to shut that down. That's fine, but they can't blame that on their users. > licensing Spotify's licensing budget is a fixed percentage of their revenue. A user that doesn't bring in any revenue won't increase their licensing costs. I guess artists could opt out if they thought their licensing slice was too small, but that's effectively career suicide. Just look at Prince.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- owenversteeg 8y ago> I guess artists could opt out if they thought their licensing slice was too small, but that's effectively career suicide. Just look at Prince. What do you mean? Prince only took his music off spotify for about a year before he died. Was there a very obvious effect on his career in this time?
- Nullabillity 8y ago> What do you mean? Prince only took his music off spotify for about a year before he died. Prince took a pretty hard stance against online music, in all of its forms, from the beginning. > Was there a very obvious effect on his career in this time? I have never listened to any of his songs, accidentally or intentionally. I have never heard anyone talk about his songs. The only time I have ever seen him mentioned online was when he died. Anecdotal of course, but that's pretty impressive for a supposed superstar.
- jochs 8y agoI'm surprised at the amount of entitlement hiding behind "I'm worried about the security concerns of allowing 3rd party JS to run on my device." If you don't want that happening, use one of the many alternatives and take the usability hit. Pandora, online portals for actual radio stations (like BBC Radio 1), and Youtube all work, but maybe don't have as great of a user experience as Spotify (or another paid streaming service). And let's be honest, the small minority of people here who evangelize "Spotify is evil" to friends/family is not going to have a meaningful impact on their user numbers.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kylehotchkiss 8y agoI still miss Rdio :( Apple Music's playlists are great though! But iTunes is such a hot mess. I love how if you double click a song name in the right place, it gives you an interface to change the name of the song, album and artist.
- Simulacra 8y agoAnother good reason to not use Spotify.
- arkades 8y agoEvery time someone says, "ugh, I'd pay for FB just to remove the ads" ... well, here you are. This is spotify's action to protect its revenue for its ad-supported free offering. You can pay to be rid of it. Absolutely no one is strong-arming you into this.
- GhostVII 8y agoI think more companies with a free and paid teir should start doing this. The answer to ads shouldn't be an ad blocker, it should be to pay for the service. The big problems we have to solve with this is making it easier and safer to pay for online services, and giving more services a paid and a free tier.
- tiuPapa 8y agoI use uBlock Origin and I still receive ads on Spotify. Am I in the clear or not? (I would pay for it but Spotify keeps delaying Indian launch)
- kgwxd 8y agoI got this email notice today and my first thought was "why do I still have a Spotify account?" then I remembered I was unable to get rid of it when I tried a few years ago. I found you can delete it here[1]: Account -> I want to close my account permanently. Then there are a bunch of confirmations, including an email. https://support.spotify.com/us/contact-spotify-support/ https://support.spotify.com/us/contact-spotify-support/
- phn 8y agoI get where they are coming from, but I've never seen this kind of strategy work. If someone wants to keep listening to their songs for free they will find a way to do it, possibly with a different vendor. There's also the possibility this is just talk to keep the advertisers happy.
- polskibus 8y agoWhat if I have firewall that blocks some IPs and it just so happens that they belong to the ad servers? Will it count as circumvention?
- ProAm 8y agobanhammer
- Nursie 8y agoI like spotify, I pay for a family subscription which gives us an account each for my partner and I, plus a bunch of spare accounts for things like Sonos and Alexa to use. Never hear an ad because I pay for the service. If they did start shooting ads at me, I'd cancel in a flash, same goes for Netflix etc.
- davidhyde 8y agoWhy doesn't spotify just stop playing the music if it "detects" ad blocking? It sounds like they don't know how to detect ad blockers and are resorting to fear tactics like this instead.
- morpheuskafka 8y agoThey have threatened to do this on Android for a long time[1], unfortunately, this affects alternate clients as well as piracy. [1] https://www.neowin.net/news/spotify-disables-modified-apps-may-suspend-accounts-of-repeat-offenders/ https://www.neowin.net/news/spotify-disables-modified-apps-m...
- g45y45 8y agoIt is my prerogative to decide which media files my browser consumes. It is my right to enforce security protections in my browser instance. All those that say 'good spotify is blocking the freeloaders' -- this is not the point. They are requiring you to consume specific media which you do not wish. Advertising is coercive, and Spotify is applying violence (threats) to enforce their business model. Not my problem. Not that I would pay any of this trash anyway.
- heinrichhartman 8y agoThe question this boils down to ultimately is: Who owns the consumption platform (device/OS/Browser)? If the user owns the platform, it's the responsibility of the service provider to deliver HTML. Nothing more. The user may display the content in any way he/she like. Store it for later consumption. Extract information, etc. This is how the web was initially envisaged. Browser extensions which allow you to inject JS/CSS are still a relict of this era. If the service provider owns the platform, all the user may do is consume the content in its provided form (inc. Ads) or leave it. This is where the web is currently headed. With company controlled mobile platforms (iOS) the control over the platform is already completely out of the hand of the user. Consolidation of the Browser technology is another step in this direction. If the regulator does not step in, this paradigm shift will go on, and we will see more and more lock-down of the web.
- dawnerd 8y agoI’m just concerned as a paying customer. I blanket block all known ads and tracking scripts network wide via pihole. Are they going to ban me too because their precious tracking is blocked and their automated system thinks I’m the same as a free user blocking it? Solution that’s less hostile would be to just axe free accounts altogether.
- lucb1e 8y agoThis is your friendly reminder to make backups of things you don't want to lose. This happened to me when Grooveshark quit, so now I have a small script that pulls all song metadata from my Spotify account. I can always still buy music, switch services, etc., but I can't get my collection back if they see my account mistakenly as blocking ads (I'm a paying customer but you never know). Same with Telegram (or your favorite chat service) by the way. Almost nobody backs that up. Especially if you're not paying and they can read your plaintexts (and find something potentially unwanted in there), be sure to make regular backups.
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoI don't have an adblocker per se, but I do have a great deal of ad domains rerouted to localhost in my hosts files (not intended for Spotify but for the web in general). This occasionally causes issues with Spotify, like the playlist not continuing because an ad can't be loaded properly, but I still do get some ads (which I don't really mind). I wonder if this will affect my account or not.
- laretluval 8y agoNext step is smarter ad blockers. Where is this arms race headed?
- yakubin 8y agoAnd what if I pay for the service AND have an ad blocker installed? Are they going to suspend my account?
- ngngngng 8y agoMost of the discussion here is making this far too one-sided. I reserve the right to control how content is delivered to my devices by blocking ads, and spotify reserves the right to block my account for doing so. Both of those practices are completely fair in my opinion. I have no problem with this (also I pay for spotify)
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoNo one is allowed to guarantee that an ad shows up on a screen I own. They can TRY to show an ad on my screen, and I might let them. But the conditions of use of any type of free service they emit out into nature emphatically does not include being allowed to control what appears on my screen. Nope. Never. I am perfectly allowed to consume their free service AND ALSO control what I allow to appear on the screen that I own. It’s my screen.
- whyfy 8y agoAnd Spotify can control their service how they please, next.
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoAs a point of fact, they cannot, because their goal with "controlling their service" is to control what is displayed on someone else's personal property as a condition of listening to the free data stream they decided to emit.. and so Spotify (or anyone else) is not capable of making that a reality. They could change their service to try to block users who protect their personal property from having certain harmful pieces of information (like ads) mixed in with otherwise freely available data sources. But it would just be a silly failure, since lots of people already circumvent that type of thing easily and legally with technology all the time. The only thing they could actually do is to entirely shut down their emitted free stream of data all together, both content and ads alike. Of course they are free to do that if they want. Nobody suggested they have to emit a free stream of data.. only that if they choose to then people will just keep consuming it without allowing ads to appear, and the ads will keep being legally and successfully blocked regardless of any type of ban that Spotify tries to implement.
- bigbaguette 8y agoon a side note, that's going to be 2 million less users in their ML feeds (1.3 percent of the user base)
- ProNeo 8y agoWhere's the point when you can simply create new accounts? You do not even need to verify new accounts, so you could simply push some garbage email.
- bigbaguette 8y agoyou'd loose your liked songs library, playlists... the whole profile that makes the suggestion system work okay-ish.
- iamaziz 8y agoI never liked Spotify anyways!
- chucksmash 8y agoUnfortunately their web player has issues with recognizing some paid accounts. I have a grandfathered $5/mo no ads account. My corporate firewall settings prevent me from using the desktop Spotify client. The web player still plays ads for me when I'm signed in to my account. When I raised this issue with Spotify support, they were friendly and professional but the answer boiled down to "use the desktop client, the frontend sees your legacy paid account as a free one and we're not going to update our code to handle it." I use an adblocker on Spotify to get the ads-free experience I pay the company for.
- PopeDotNinja 8y agoCould you set up an SSH tunnel and use the client through that?
- Kye 8y agoTime to stop using it, I guess. Their ads blast my head off with double the volume and make the whole thing unusable. ~$120/year to remove ads is a lot of money just so I can listen to the odd pop song someone mentions that isn't on YouTube. I don't listen to much big label music. "Big label music in one place" is basically Spotify's value proposition. $120 buys a lot on Bandcamp.
- mancerayder 8y agoThat's really not enough. There should be some kill signal, so that the operator on the other end is electrocuted, and/or their equipment is destroyed if they violate the Terms and Conditions. For example: . Ad blocker usage . Preventing telemetry / data funneling by using DNS blackholing or port blocking . Anything else specified in the Terms and Conditions* * - Which the user clicked Yes / OK / The Checkbox willingly, entering into a contract. They didn't have to, right? Up to, and including physical harm and death. How are companies supposed to make any money? Doesn't everyone know the entire Internet would be non-existent without the ad-supported model? Don't be selfish. Submit!
- aklemm 8y agoMonthly paid service for all the music I can possibly want is such a good deal vs. the old days of collecting CDs. This is one specific area where the Internet as absolutely delivered on it's potential.
- gboudrias 8y agoSo... they just became profitable, and now they're about to spite a lot of users for about 10% of their revenue? I hope this day haunts them. I can't believe how many people are discussing this as if ads are the utmost legitimate moneymaker. Ads are parasitic by their very nature, their purpose is to forcibly occupy some mind real-estate. Nobody wants to see ads, yet a large industry exists based on making people see them anyway. I'm happy when I learn that more and more people are using adblock, and I hope companies that rely on ads to survive disappear. Spotify has chosen to put itself in that camp. I think it's foolishly short-sighted, and I hope time proves me right. The alternative is a future where the ads win... who really wants that?
- webninja 8y agoThey have an ad-free service option available
- MattyS 8y agoI have no idea what the ads on Spotify are like now as I haven't used it in over 3 years but it was pretty annoying where you're listening to heavy metal and then an ad for a pop band comes on. And are they still doing that crap where a free account can't pick any specific songs?
- ryandrake 8y agoI wonder how this works with things like Pi-hole. I block ads at the DNS level for my whole house with dnsmasq. Any guest who connects to my WiFi AP gets this benefit through their DHCP configuration. Will Spotify ban their accounts for using the service while visiting me?
- chadlavi 8y agoI also wonder about this. I'm a paying Spotify member who uses DNS-level ad blocking. Without a clear explanation of how they detect as blocking or if this applies to paid members, I can't tell if things I'm doing for web safety will get me banned from a service I was never trying to block ads for in the first place.
- tzakrajs 8y agoPeople here on HN are confused and believe that breaching a TOS is some sort of moral peril. Calm down. It’s business and no one is going to jail because they blocked an advertisement. Society at large doesn’t think piracy is even worth punishing, so why and when did we become obsequious for RIAA or MPAA?
- alexbanks 8y agoAdios Spotify.
- amatecha 8y agoI assume paid subscribers aren't affected by that rule? I have a pretty comprehensive /etc/hosts file that blocks a lot of ad networks (particularly ones known to traffic particularly onerous ads and/or malicious code). There's no way I'm nuking that because Spotify has this new rule. But I don't see ads in Spotify anyways due to having a paid subscription. I assume this new "rule" will never affect me. Guess I better make a local backup of my library/playlists just in case? :P But.. to be honest, can we just have Rdio back? It was vastly superior and when it went under, Spotify was literally not even capable of importing my Rdio library (because Spotify actually limits how many songs you can add to your library, with a ridiculously low limit of _10,000_ songs). Users have been requesting an increase to this since 2014 or earlier, with of course zero changes to this amount. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Increase-maximum-Songs-allowed-in-Your-Music/idi-p/733759 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-Incre... (notice it has _451 pages_ of comments)
- bregma 8y agoThis is the music industry. Spotify should be happy playing music for me in exchange for exposure.
- dddddaviddddd 8y agohttps://andymacdonald.bandcamp.com/track/exposure-dollars https://andymacdonald.bandcamp.com/track/exposure-dollars
- xbkingx 8y agoAre they still going to take all sorts of telemetry and 'share' (read:sell) it to third parties if I pay for the service? Yes? Okay, then I'll continue to support the most dastardly peglegs to ever sail the seven seas. I value my personal data at twice the value of their service, so technically I'm paying more than my fair share by not collecting on it. I'm saving THEM money - they would owe me the cost of their service if I didn't block ads. And just like Spotify, I don't have an opt-out option, so I don't take it personally if they cease to provide service. I mean, technically, I DO require a 3 month notice and reserve the right to collect a $50,000 early termination fee, but I'm a nice guy. It's funny how automated systems that are impossible to oversee operate. It's almost as if it shouldn't be allowed, but, hey, they have my info and could have contacted me. You get my data or my money, not both. There was a time when I would be fine with data collection - when it actually improved the product - but now that it's another revenue stream to sell all that off to random third parties I have no control over, sorry, no dice. I have zero qualms with people not wanting advertising thrown at them 24/7 while their life is continuously data mined. Advertising is mental pollution. It's not even junk food, since it offers no sustenance. It's predatory. People need to stop pretending it's an inconsequential option to throw it on a mediocre product no one would actually buy. If someone told me the apps/programs I paid for bumped their prices up by 10x, I would still buy them. If I installed your app and chose the ad-riddled version, it's because I barely care that it exists or didn't want to bother with sifting through 10,000 clones. This is what we get for the mobile app race-to-the-bottom. Mentally, "$0.99 vs free" is much closer to "$20 vs free", than "$20 vs $40". But, now we're stuck. No one's going to up their price to something reasonable, and if stores eliminate the free tier, then the ads will just migrate to the lowest priced tier. I 100% expect that ads will require camera permissions and force you to look at them within 10 years, maybe 5. Are people still going to be singing the startup-saving praise of ads when Pepsi is permanently burned into their retinas? "I mean, you're already looking at your phone, and you get this neat flashlight button!"
- kpcyrd 8y agoJust to be sure, this is only for free accounts, right? Having a paid account suspended because a friend runs a pi hole would be pretty annoying.
- cjaybo 8y agoI'm wondering the same thing. I've paid for a premium account, and run a pi-hole on my home network. The way I interpret the language in the terms of service (IANAL) is that the act of blocking an ad is forbidden, but not the running of the ad-blocker itself. Since a premium accounts are not delivered ads in the first place, I would hope that this means paying users will be unaffected. I am very interested to hear a more qualified interpretation of the situation.
- cannabis_sam 8y agoIt’s laughable how much of a fraud ”intelletual property” has become. Smile everybody! We’re gonna be in a 30th century encylopiedia article about the stupidity of the 21th century..
- RileyJames 8y agoI pay for Spotify, and I’m about ready to drop it. Offline play is the primary feature I pay for, and it’s SUCKS!!! They simply DONT allow you to search an index of the songs that are saved to the device. The major bug is, a song is generally only found via the index you saved it in. Ie: if you save a song in a playlist, you can’t find it by searching for the artist. If you save 3 albums by an artist, but not the artist, you try and view the artist, nothing appears. On top of that, Spotify is the slowest flakiest app regarding internet connection. It regularly says “offline” or “can’t connect” when every other app works just fine. On top of that, twice while upgrading the app it has deleted my ENTIRE saved library.
- ArrayList 8y agoI just hit Mute as soon as an ad comes on, and unmute when the ads are done... joke's on you, Spotify.
- arthurofbabylon 8y agoIt blows my mind that an advertiser would present their product on Spotify’s ad network. The audience selects for people unwilling to spend even very little money on high-quality goods. (In my social circles, avid consumers subscribe to Spotify by default. Several even subscribe to both Spotify and Apple Music.)
- Taylor_OD 8y agoBoo. Anti consumer practices like this are a slippery slope.
- User23 8y agoWell, bye
- tareqak 8y agoI wonder how Spotify's revenue sharing agreement between themselves, record labels, and independent music producers compars with Spotify's ad agreements between themselves and people buying ads.
- tradesmanhelix 8y ago> All types of ad blockers, bots and fraudulent streaming activities are not permitted. I feel like the bigger issue here is Spotify's conflating the use of "ad blockers" with other (clearly illegal) activities like "fraudulent streaming". If you don't allow ad blockers on your service, fine. But lumping them in the same sentence with criminal activities...seems like a very slippery slope. Hey Spotify: Instead of just throwing gasoline on the fire, why don't you spend some of that venture capital to address the underlying issues here, namely: Why are people running ad blockers in the first place? Are they concerned about privacy or malvertising? Are your ads obnoxious? The only reason we're in this boat is because the modern internet is pretty darn unusable without an ad blocker - consumers are sending a clear message with their use of ad blockers. Wake up and do something to help fix the problem. As it stands, all you've done is throw down the gauntlet. Now, ad blockers will probably just get more sophisticated to work around your detection systems, and round and round we'll go. As for me, I'm done. I've deleted my Spotify account and will spend my time/money supporting other services that are trying to improve the advertising situation on the internet instead of telling users to suck it up, turn off their ad blocker, and support a crappy ad ecosystem that's especially predatory toward our less-technical friends and family members. And hey - if you want to see an example of how to do internet advertising right, check out https://carbonads.net https://carbonads.net. There's no reason Spotify couldn't pioneer the audio equivalent of what the awesome folks at Carbon have done. Props (and a whitelist in my ad blocker) to them.
- geggam 8y agoYet FM radio is still free and no one can tell if you turn the radio down during ads
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cmurf 8y agoI notice a ton of stuff is being piholed when I'm listening to Pandora, even though I still hear ads.
- jshowa3 8y agoI don't agree with blocking users with ad block. Just embed ads in stream, it makes so much more sense. This is just an excuse so Spotify can run ad spam on their clients. I'll stick with Google Play. 100 times better. Only play a few embedded stream ads (like Pandora).
- m3kw9 8y agoMakes sense, given they pretty much depend on either ads or pay to remove ads to survive
- rjplatte 8y agoCool. For all those hating on grifters, I don't think anyone's in the moral right or wrong here. Spotify is trying to monetize a free service, some people don't like that. This won't affect Spotify's profits meaningfully, and the grifters will always grift.
- itslennysfault 8y agoInteresting. I wonder if this includes paid customers. 'cause I pay for Spotify, but run ad / tracker block on my network. If they suspend or terminate me they'll be losing a paying customer.
- Havoc 8y agoI can deal with paying for stuff. I can deal with "you are the product being sold" services. I can't deal with being both simultaneously. Companies that attempt that combo can kindly shove a cactus somewhere. Maybe this is just a bad article, but to me the no ad-blockers sounds like a blanket ban not just free users.
- wicket 8y agoI use a Firefox extension to protect me from CSRF attacks and tracking networks. It basically blocks all content from domains which do not not pertain to the page that I am reading. A side-effect of this is that it blocks most ads. The extension is frequently mistaken by many websites to be an ad blocker. I've no problem with ads per se, I realise that they are often important for funding a website. What I have a problem with is that the overwhelming majority of ads on the internet come from networks that are used for tracking. I don't think I'm alone. I wonder what percentage people use ad blockers primarily for privacy purposes. In a perfect world, websites would implement their own way of displaying ads that doesn't rely on ad networks. This would make ads much harder to block, websites could potentially take 100% of the ad revenue, privacy advocates would be much happier and there would be less incentive for anyone to develop or use ad blockers.
- epidemian 8y agoI'm having a hard time understanding the rationale of this being "Good." It's not like forcing people to watch or listen to the ads will make them click the ads, or like the products sold in those ads. In fact, i'd suspect forcing someone who prefers not to see ads to see them anyway will most likely make them dislike the advertised products, or the service that runs those ads, so it'd be a net loss. It that not the case? If it is, then what's point of doing this? (Note: i pay for Spotify. I like the service, and i think providing "extra" features like being able to play exactly the songs you want, or download them is a better way of promoting the paid version than running annoying ads.)
- coenhyde 8y agoI recently cancelled my Spotify subscription because of their low quality audio. But i was reverting to it for music i couldn't find on Tidal. I guess I'm going to have to nuke it entirely now. I'm assuming they are going to consider my use of outbound traffic restrictions on the Spotify app "ad blocking". Spotify makes all kind of ridiculous outbound requests for ad services, and many of those requests are over plain text http. Given that Spotify is a webkit app, that's a nice little attack vector Spotify is providing. Not to mention malicious ads often make their way into the ad networks. So i just block anything other than 443 to *.spotify.com domains. Just deleted the app. I'll use Youtube instead.
- randie63 8y agoYouTube ? Audio Quality ? Anyway, I also dislike that my premium subscription is only 320kbit vorbis. I can hear a difference between that and a lossless flac on my 2016 OnePlus 3 and 15$ KZ ZSN Headphones. Obviously even bigger difference on my desktop DAC and over ear monitors. I guess I have to build an offline lib and sync it with syncthing and use Spotify like soundlcoud only to discover new stuff
- codykochmann 8y agoThere goes the accounts of anyone working in a place that blocks ads for their entire wifi network for anti-malware purposes.
- codykochmann 8y agoThere goes the account of anyone who works in a place that blocks ads across ther entire wifi network for anti-malware purposes.
- dbg31415 8y agoI used Spotify for a few years (with an ad blocker at the DNS-level) and never heard a single ad. I was constantly blown away by how great the service was, and free! Then I was on a road trip and heard the ads on my phone because I wasn't using my at-home DNS. The ads were so annoying, came on after ever 3-4th song. Ad blockers were really effective on Spotify. I've been a paying member for a few years now. Curious if they will block paid users too.
- userbinator 8y agoTo the other (currently) highly-positioned comment here who proposes "just pay for it or don't use it": How do they know if you close your eyes or look away? How do they know if you plug your ears? How do they know you are actually paying attention to the ads and not just ignoring them? Are those actions, none other than the human free will, not essentially a form of adblocking? My biggest concern with the "just pay for it or don't use it" attitude is not how much it costs. That's irrelevant. It's the idea that it's wrong to not "consume" ads somehow, or that it's acceptable for companies to use increasingly intrusive techniques to monitor users for "compliance" of this consumption. Not a Spotify user, so I have no skin (or ears...) in this game. But now I'm even more unlikely to become one.
- dirtylowprofile 8y agoSpotify has a really crap mobile app both iOS and macOS.
- anarchy8 8y agoThis is an arms race that Spotify will loose.
- tareqak 8y agoWhat if a paid account is using an ad blocker? Does the account holder get banned then?
- shocks 8y agoUsing an ad-blocker to listen to Spotify for free because you "don't believe in their malware serving practices!" is sort of like being vegan but eating meat anyway. If you really can't accept Spotify on some fundamental level you shouldn't be using Spotify. All these people up in arms about ad-blockers on Spotify are just trying to justify being cheap.
- jordache 8y agoha watch their total subscriber count drop
- x15 8y agoIt will be interesting to see how this goes. If the users are serious about the right to choose for themselves. If they dislike adverts. Spotify may experience some business shrinkage. That could signal a reversal of one catastrophic aspect of the current Internet.
- midnightdiesel 8y agoAh, the imminent decline of Spotify. I’ve been wondering what was taking so long to get that going.
- lajtul 8y agoSo, I block Spotify ads by adding entries in the hosts file on Linux, Mac, and Windows... will Spotify still ban me since I'm not using an ad blocker or a modified app?
- xtat 8y agolol bye spotify
- djsumdog 8y agoI have never used one of these subscription services because I hate renting my music. I buy my music. I frequently buy CDs in bars and rip them. I know when I buy a CD from an indie artist, they usually only paid $1 ~ $2 for that CD and get the full amount I pay them minus that. Bandcamp is seocnd best, because they only take 15% (compared to over 30% from Amazon/Apple/Google). Buy your music people! You can get 250GB microSD cards. Back when the limit was 128GB, sure I couldn't get all my music on my phone (I just had A-V .. W - Z just had to wait), but now I have all of it on there and probably won't max out until larger cards are affordable.
- jimnotgym 8y agoIf enough of us set out to click every ad we saw I think we could make a really interesting change to the internet...
- toyg 8y ago1.3% of the userbase is hardly a major problem, imho; it’s just another cost of doing business. Spotify must be trying to bury some other bad news to their investors.
- the_arun 8y agoIsn’t spotify family plan expensive? Netflix & Amazon prime - both are < $15 per month for HD family plan. But spotify just for music is $15. Is it fair?