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Even though I had been a (long time, non-family subscription) premium user of Spotify, they started playing ads during podcasts (music was fine). How is that a

Even though I had been a (long time, non-family subscription) premium user of Spotify, they started playing ads during podcasts (music was fine). How is that a "premium" service? Canceled the sub. Tangent: Now that I occasionally play music on Spotify I get ads in the form "We know you were a premium user before, how is life with the free service now?". I find that somewhat creepy and disturbing.

bennyp101 5y ago
Interestingly, I paid for premium pretty much since it started until about a year ago but it seems that with a pihole and or Ad block, there are no adverts anyway … so yea I can still listen and no adverts
atraac 5y ago
> Even though I had been a (long time, non-family subscription) premium user of Spotify, they started playing ads during podcasts (music was fine). How is that a "premium" service? Canceled the sub. This is interesting to me because besides ads that are hardcoded into the podcast by creators, I have never heard an ad in Spotify premium, not a single time for years I've been using it. Not sure if country of origin has something to do with it, but I'm from Poland.
- laputan_machine 5y ago
  Yes, it will be the hardcoded ads in the podcast, but I think the point still remains. Edit: Apparently Spotify also does dynamic ads too! Greedy... At that point, why not just use another service instead of Spotify for podcasts? E.g. Pocket Casts. If you pay for the Spotify subscription I'd expect _all_ ads to be removed.
  - netcan 5y ago
    >> why not just use another service instead of Spotify for podcasts? So... Spotify have been buying popular podcasts outrights and signing exclusivity deals. Those are only on spotify now.
    - laputan_machine 5y ago
      You misunderstand. My point is "I empathise and am not surprised that people choose to unsubscribe and go elsewhere if people are being given adverts in podcasts" Assume the best, not the worst in peoples arguments, please. Cheers.
      - netcan 5y ago
        Maybe I don't understand still. I wasn't disagreeing with your point. I was adding to it. I agree that if spotify annoy listeners with ads, they'll go elsewhere. Podcasts, unlike music, are (were?) a mostly free media... as in both beer and liberty. Hence... Spotify has been pursuing exclusives ans a solution to the "why should people listen to our ads" problem.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        jessaustin 5y ago
        I haven't listened to Rogan since his RSS feed died. I'm a fan, and I don't mind that he "got the bag", but I'm not going to take part in this attempt to kill podcasting.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - rvnx 5y ago
    There is also a similar issue with YouTube at two levels: 1) Sometimes the Premium mode of YouTube doesn't work, and you still get the ads (this looks like a cache bug or something like that where the Premium setting is not activated). YouTube doesn't believe it's real, though I managed to screenshot it. 2) You pay for YouTube premium, but you still get in-video embedded ads that creators encode in the stream, like LinusTechTips. In a way this is not fair, as the promise to stop seeing ads is not kept. YouTube could enforce their policy to force the content creators to mark their sponsored videos segment and automatically skip them if you have Premium.
    - demindiro 5y ago
      You can use SponsorBlock[1] to automatically skip sponsors. As for the ads: you could install uBlock Origin and not have to deal with ads in any case. [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      YouTube doesn't believe it's real, though I managed to screenshot it. I seem to recall reading that advertisers can outbid premium in the ad auction, in which case you will still see ads. Can anyone confirm?
    - gaius_baltar 5y ago
      Just another reason to not use YouTube Premium. The whole thing just makes the problem worse by still allowing ads and requiring you to log in using an account that is also tied to your real world identity (for payment processing). You just end up giving more data points to Google to track and don't get rid of all ads.
  - procinct 5y ago
    They aren’t the hard coded ones. These ones are dynamic ones. It only happens when listening to podcasts, never music. Fortunately you can skip them but it is annoying. The reason you might not use pocket casts is because the podcast could be exclusive to Spotify for example. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/spotify-premium-podcast-adverts-b1791160.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/sp...
  - gruez 5y ago
    >I'd expect _all_ ads to be removed spotify can't do that unless they own the rights to the podcast, otherwise they might run afowl of copyright laws. I believe their intent is to have one place for podcasts (both their own premium ones and freely accessible public ones).
  - citizenkeen 5y ago
    That's ridiculous. I'd expect all ads added by Spotify to be gone. They can't control the underlying content. I pay for YouTube premium, but the ads the creators put in their videos are still there. When I watch a streamer on Twitch, they'll advertise. Then, the streamer will upload the video to YouTube. Who is responsible for getting rid of the ad?
    - whatch 5y ago
      > They can't control the underlying content. This is the only place where I would like to see more control from platforms. And I believe they can. Youtube already requires to label video containing paid promotion. They can require to label exact time interval so that it can be auto-skipped (without sponsorblock). Instead they release one shitty "feature" after another.
    - laputan_machine 5y ago
      How is it ridiculous? The selling point of paying for a subscription service like Spotify is to remove ads, the free service Spotify offer is otherwise almost identical. I would expect the creator of the content to remove ads and the ToS to say "Do not upload content that contains advertisements". I find it fascinating that you're OK to pay for a product and then watch ads on top.
      - mimon 5y ago
        If the ads are being added by the content creator and you don't like that, the solution is to not watch that content creator, not blame a random streaming platform for supplying unadulterated content.
        plorkyeran 5y ago
        Spotify could require that content creators upload ad-free versions of their podcasts for premium users. This would probably require a significantly higher subscription fee to support much larger payments to the podcast creators.
  - atraac 5y ago
    If an advert is hardcoded by the author into the file they upload, how do you suppose Spotify should remove that? They don't have rights to do that but even if they could, they would need to programmatically detect when the ad starts, ends and cut it out from the file? Soft Skills Engineering does this for example, they record their own audio for the ad and play it like it's a part of the podcast, I don't mind that as it helps authors, but that has nothing to do with Spotify. I've heard about some dynamic adds Spotify supposedly adds, that are usually not related to the podcast itself, but I've never encountered a single one like that.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      I've heard about some dynamic adds Spotify supposedly adds, that are usually not related to the podcast itself, but I've never encountered a single one like that. You probably have heard them. Old episodes of a podcast with anachronistic ads for new products are one clue. I stopped listening to podcasts on Spotify because of the ads remaining with premium.
      - sleepymoose 5y ago
        I've had spotify premium for years and almost solely listen to podcasts. The only ads I have ever heard are sponsored ads spots within the podcast itself (that you can fast forward through), never spotify ads. Is that what you're talking about? Because if so, it sounds like you need to be subscribing straight to your favorite podcasts if they offer a membership for an ad-free podcast feed. Expecting spotify to remove sponsor spots is kinda ridiculous.
        nitrogen 5y ago
        The only ads I have ever heard are sponsored ads spots within the podcast itself (that you can fast forward through), never spotify ads. Is that what you're talking about? They try hard to make it sound like a sponsor spot. If the voice changes, that's another clue, but sometimes the advertiser will pay the host to read a new ad. First search result: https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/spotify-podcast-dynamic-streaming-ad-insertion-measurement-1203459830/ https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/spotify-podcast-dynami...
  - Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
    > Why not just use another service instead of Spotify for podcasts?. User Convenience. You just have one app for your music and your podcasts. From a podcast creators point of view Spotify has a large userbase for your listeners to fid you on. Looking at the stats for a couple of podcats I help in the backend of, we tend to get more people listening on Spotify then we do on any of the other platforms. > If you pay for the Spotify subscription I'd expect _all_ ads to be removed. Spotify doesn't share the subscription with most podcasts (Obv exception being Joe Rogan, but thats an exclusivity deal, I'm not sure if it even went "Ad Free" after the Spotify deal as I've not listened to it in years). The vast majority of podcasts on Spotify are from podcast creators submitting their RSS feed to Spotify because it has a decent userbase. This is the same for Apple Podcasts/Google Podcasts/Tunein/Stitcher/Etc. If Spotify removed the ads from podcasts to serve ad free versions to their paying subs without the permission of the content creators that would most likely be copyright infringement. If Spotify asked permission to remove such ads to avoid copyright issues, creators would want to be compensated for the drop in Ad Rev. Creators would have to report lower listener numbers to advertisers because paid Spotify listeners wouldn't get the ads being sold. If Spotify did this it would be easier for Spotify to just ask creators for an Ad-Free RSS feed for paying subs (which a lot of podcasters have to give to their own paying listeners). Edit: Spotify does have a "Spotify Podcast Ads" system, but thats just for content that is "Spotify Original and Exclusive titles" and not (atleast yet) open to podcasters who also distribute their content on other platforms.
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    No, there's non-hardcoded ads in the premium tier of Spotify, I've gotten them.
  - prmoustache 5y ago
    Nowadays the content is an or embed product placement itself so even if you don't see/hear an ad you are exposed to advertising content when watching/reading/listening to anything.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Wish someone would create a machine learning thing that deletes brands from video footage. Just filter all that noise right out.
cube00 5y ago
Even as a premium user with all notifications in the settings switched off, I still get popups for albums that I'm assuming artists have paid Spotify extra to push towards me.
capableweb 5y ago
> Even though I had been a (long time, non-family subscription) premium user of Spotify, they started playing ads during podcasts (music was fine). How is that a "premium" service? Canceled the sub. In the beginning of time (well, maybe not that far back), there was TV. Soon, TV had ads in them, but fear not, because you can pay extra each month and get access to premium channels that don't show ads, because you are paying extra. Soon after, they started showing ads as well. But then came the streaming services, promising Ad-free lands if you just subscribed to their service. And people did, but soon thereafter, found that the streaming services also added ads when you decided what you wanted to watch. Amazon Prime is a prime example of this.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  Ted Turner started cable without ads, which is why you paid for it. That lasted about 5 minutes. I suspect the whole "no ads" thing was a bug bandied as a feature, because Turner couldn't GET advertisers on the new platform when it started.
- mvdwoord 5y ago
  In the beginning of time (well, maybe not that far back), there was TV, TV had ads in them. Then there was bittorrent, and life was good.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Ignoring the fact that those two events were like 60 years apart :) But sometimes it takes a while before life gets good I guess.
  - darkwater 5y ago
    Where you have to navigate forums or websites pestered with ads, scam ads and plain malicious ads. Yeah, uBlock Origin I know but still...
    - sekh60 5y ago
      Radarr, Lidarr, Sonarr and LazyLibrarian got you covered. Get on a few private sites for torrents or usenet and never visit them again.
BatteryMountain 5y ago
Funny you mention this! I noticed about a month ago and will also not renew later this year because of this. I don't want podcasts on my MUSIC player to begin with, never mind them playing a single ad on a premium subscription. On principle it is wrong, so shame on them. I will not renew because of this, simple as that.
itronitron 5y ago
Reminds me of using Hulu's free service with commercials, then buying a Roku to get Hulu's 'premium service' which confusingly had fewer shows available. Returned the Roku and haven't used Hulu in years.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
They will always add advertising to paid services. Not doing so is leaving money on the table. Eventually some executive is gonna realize that and do it. Actually paying for stuff just makes us even more valuable to them.
- notwhereyouare 5y ago
  I would argue that they (spotify) already attempted it once before with drake. He was releasing a new album and they put his face on EVERY playlist, even if he wasn't involved. https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/03/spotify-users-push-back-at-the-over-the-top-drake-promotion/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/03/spotify-users-push-back-at...
schmorptron 5y ago
They also serve you ads by promoting music that they get paid to promote - or where the artists agree to even less royalties in order to be promoted more. Which, for a service I paid for specifically for the great music discovery just destroyed the reason for using it. I'm on apple music now despite not owning a single apple device.
nvilcins 5y ago
(Just to clarify a question raised in the child comments) Those were Spotify ads promoting other podcasts, not sponsors promoted in the podcast itself.
RandomRandy 5y ago
I have the same issue with podcasts. Spotify bakes in ads that are in my native language, not english like the podcast I am listening to.

bennyp101 5y ago

Interestingly, I paid for premium pretty much since it started until about a year ago but it seems that with a pihole and or Ad block, there are no adverts anyway … so yea I can still listen and no adverts

atraac 5y ago

> Even though I had been a (long time, non-family subscription) premium user of Spotify, they started playing ads during podcasts (music was fine). How is that a "premium" service? Canceled the sub. This is interesting to me because besides ads that are hardcoded into the podcast by creators, I have never heard an ad in Spotify premium, not a single time for years I've been using it. Not sure if country of origin has something to do with it, but I'm from Poland.

laputan_machine 5y ago
Yes, it will be the hardcoded ads in the podcast, but I think the point still remains. Edit: Apparently Spotify also does dynamic ads too! Greedy... At that point, why not just use another service instead of Spotify for podcasts? E.g. Pocket Casts. If you pay for the Spotify subscription I'd expect _all_ ads to be removed.
- netcan 5y ago
  >> why not just use another service instead of Spotify for podcasts? So... Spotify have been buying popular podcasts outrights and signing exclusivity deals. Those are only on spotify now.
  - laputan_machine 5y ago
    You misunderstand. My point is "I empathise and am not surprised that people choose to unsubscribe and go elsewhere if people are being given adverts in podcasts" Assume the best, not the worst in peoples arguments, please. Cheers.
    - netcan 5y ago
      Maybe I don't understand still. I wasn't disagreeing with your point. I was adding to it. I agree that if spotify annoy listeners with ads, they'll go elsewhere. Podcasts, unlike music, are (were?) a mostly free media... as in both beer and liberty. Hence... Spotify has been pursuing exclusives ans a solution to the "why should people listen to our ads" problem.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - jessaustin 5y ago
        I haven't listened to Rogan since his RSS feed died. I'm a fan, and I don't mind that he "got the bag", but I'm not going to take part in this attempt to kill podcasting.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- rvnx 5y ago
  There is also a similar issue with YouTube at two levels: 1) Sometimes the Premium mode of YouTube doesn't work, and you still get the ads (this looks like a cache bug or something like that where the Premium setting is not activated). YouTube doesn't believe it's real, though I managed to screenshot it. 2) You pay for YouTube premium, but you still get in-video embedded ads that creators encode in the stream, like LinusTechTips. In a way this is not fair, as the promise to stop seeing ads is not kept. YouTube could enforce their policy to force the content creators to mark their sponsored videos segment and automatically skip them if you have Premium.
  - demindiro 5y ago
    You can use SponsorBlock[1] to automatically skip sponsors. As for the ads: you could install uBlock Origin and not have to deal with ads in any case. [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    YouTube doesn't believe it's real, though I managed to screenshot it. I seem to recall reading that advertisers can outbid premium in the ad auction, in which case you will still see ads. Can anyone confirm?
  - gaius_baltar 5y ago
    Just another reason to not use YouTube Premium. The whole thing just makes the problem worse by still allowing ads and requiring you to log in using an account that is also tied to your real world identity (for payment processing). You just end up giving more data points to Google to track and don't get rid of all ads.
- procinct 5y ago
  They aren’t the hard coded ones. These ones are dynamic ones. It only happens when listening to podcasts, never music. Fortunately you can skip them but it is annoying. The reason you might not use pocket casts is because the podcast could be exclusive to Spotify for example. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/spotify-premium-podcast-adverts-b1791160.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/sp...
- gruez 5y ago
  >I'd expect _all_ ads to be removed spotify can't do that unless they own the rights to the podcast, otherwise they might run afowl of copyright laws. I believe their intent is to have one place for podcasts (both their own premium ones and freely accessible public ones).
- citizenkeen 5y ago
  That's ridiculous. I'd expect all ads added by Spotify to be gone. They can't control the underlying content. I pay for YouTube premium, but the ads the creators put in their videos are still there. When I watch a streamer on Twitch, they'll advertise. Then, the streamer will upload the video to YouTube. Who is responsible for getting rid of the ad?
  - whatch 5y ago
    > They can't control the underlying content. This is the only place where I would like to see more control from platforms. And I believe they can. Youtube already requires to label video containing paid promotion. They can require to label exact time interval so that it can be auto-skipped (without sponsorblock). Instead they release one shitty "feature" after another.
  - laputan_machine 5y ago
    How is it ridiculous? The selling point of paying for a subscription service like Spotify is to remove ads, the free service Spotify offer is otherwise almost identical. I would expect the creator of the content to remove ads and the ToS to say "Do not upload content that contains advertisements". I find it fascinating that you're OK to pay for a product and then watch ads on top.
    - mimon 5y ago
      If the ads are being added by the content creator and you don't like that, the solution is to not watch that content creator, not blame a random streaming platform for supplying unadulterated content.
      - plorkyeran 5y ago
        Spotify could require that content creators upload ad-free versions of their podcasts for premium users. This would probably require a significantly higher subscription fee to support much larger payments to the podcast creators.
- atraac 5y ago
  If an advert is hardcoded by the author into the file they upload, how do you suppose Spotify should remove that? They don't have rights to do that but even if they could, they would need to programmatically detect when the ad starts, ends and cut it out from the file? Soft Skills Engineering does this for example, they record their own audio for the ad and play it like it's a part of the podcast, I don't mind that as it helps authors, but that has nothing to do with Spotify. I've heard about some dynamic adds Spotify supposedly adds, that are usually not related to the podcast itself, but I've never encountered a single one like that.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    I've heard about some dynamic adds Spotify supposedly adds, that are usually not related to the podcast itself, but I've never encountered a single one like that. You probably have heard them. Old episodes of a podcast with anachronistic ads for new products are one clue. I stopped listening to podcasts on Spotify because of the ads remaining with premium.
    - sleepymoose 5y ago
      I've had spotify premium for years and almost solely listen to podcasts. The only ads I have ever heard are sponsored ads spots within the podcast itself (that you can fast forward through), never spotify ads. Is that what you're talking about? Because if so, it sounds like you need to be subscribing straight to your favorite podcasts if they offer a membership for an ad-free podcast feed. Expecting spotify to remove sponsor spots is kinda ridiculous.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        The only ads I have ever heard are sponsored ads spots within the podcast itself (that you can fast forward through), never spotify ads. Is that what you're talking about? They try hard to make it sound like a sponsor spot. If the voice changes, that's another clue, but sometimes the advertiser will pay the host to read a new ad. First search result: https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/spotify-podcast-dynamic-streaming-ad-insertion-measurement-1203459830/ https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/spotify-podcast-dynami...
- Crosseye_Jack 5y ago
  > Why not just use another service instead of Spotify for podcasts?. User Convenience. You just have one app for your music and your podcasts. From a podcast creators point of view Spotify has a large userbase for your listeners to fid you on. Looking at the stats for a couple of podcats I help in the backend of, we tend to get more people listening on Spotify then we do on any of the other platforms. > If you pay for the Spotify subscription I'd expect _all_ ads to be removed. Spotify doesn't share the subscription with most podcasts (Obv exception being Joe Rogan, but thats an exclusivity deal, I'm not sure if it even went "Ad Free" after the Spotify deal as I've not listened to it in years). The vast majority of podcasts on Spotify are from podcast creators submitting their RSS feed to Spotify because it has a decent userbase. This is the same for Apple Podcasts/Google Podcasts/Tunein/Stitcher/Etc. If Spotify removed the ads from podcasts to serve ad free versions to their paying subs without the permission of the content creators that would most likely be copyright infringement. If Spotify asked permission to remove such ads to avoid copyright issues, creators would want to be compensated for the drop in Ad Rev. Creators would have to report lower listener numbers to advertisers because paid Spotify listeners wouldn't get the ads being sold. If Spotify did this it would be easier for Spotify to just ask creators for an Ad-Free RSS feed for paying subs (which a lot of podcasters have to give to their own paying listeners). Edit: Spotify does have a "Spotify Podcast Ads" system, but thats just for content that is "Spotify Original and Exclusive titles" and not (atleast yet) open to podcasters who also distribute their content on other platforms.
- danlugo92 5y ago
  No, there's non-hardcoded ads in the premium tier of Spotify, I've gotten them.
- prmoustache 5y ago
  Nowadays the content is an or embed product placement itself so even if you don't see/hear an ad you are exposed to advertising content when watching/reading/listening to anything.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Wish someone would create a machine learning thing that deletes brands from video footage. Just filter all that noise right out.

cube00 5y ago

Even as a premium user with all notifications in the settings switched off, I still get popups for albums that I'm assuming artists have paid Spotify extra to push towards me.

capableweb 5y ago

> Even though I had been a (long time, non-family subscription) premium user of Spotify, they started playing ads during podcasts (music was fine). How is that a "premium" service? Canceled the sub. In the beginning of time (well, maybe not that far back), there was TV. Soon, TV had ads in them, but fear not, because you can pay extra each month and get access to premium channels that don't show ads, because you are paying extra. Soon after, they started showing ads as well. But then came the streaming services, promising Ad-free lands if you just subscribed to their service. And people did, but soon thereafter, found that the streaming services also added ads when you decided what you wanted to watch. Amazon Prime is a prime example of this.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
Ted Turner started cable without ads, which is why you paid for it. That lasted about 5 minutes. I suspect the whole "no ads" thing was a bug bandied as a feature, because Turner couldn't GET advertisers on the new platform when it started.
mvdwoord 5y ago
In the beginning of time (well, maybe not that far back), there was TV, TV had ads in them. Then there was bittorrent, and life was good.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Ignoring the fact that those two events were like 60 years apart :) But sometimes it takes a while before life gets good I guess.
- darkwater 5y ago
  Where you have to navigate forums or websites pestered with ads, scam ads and plain malicious ads. Yeah, uBlock Origin I know but still...
  - sekh60 5y ago
    Radarr, Lidarr, Sonarr and LazyLibrarian got you covered. Get on a few private sites for torrents or usenet and never visit them again.

BatteryMountain 5y ago

Funny you mention this! I noticed about a month ago and will also not renew later this year because of this. I don't want podcasts on my MUSIC player to begin with, never mind them playing a single ad on a premium subscription. On principle it is wrong, so shame on them. I will not renew because of this, simple as that.

itronitron 5y ago

Reminds me of using Hulu's free service with commercials, then buying a Roku to get Hulu's 'premium service' which confusingly had fewer shows available. Returned the Roku and haven't used Hulu in years.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

They will always add advertising to paid services. Not doing so is leaving money on the table. Eventually some executive is gonna realize that and do it. Actually paying for stuff just makes us even more valuable to them.

notwhereyouare 5y ago
I would argue that they (spotify) already attempted it once before with drake. He was releasing a new album and they put his face on EVERY playlist, even if he wasn't involved. https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/03/spotify-users-push-back-at-the-over-the-top-drake-promotion/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/03/spotify-users-push-back-at...

schmorptron 5y ago

They also serve you ads by promoting music that they get paid to promote - or where the artists agree to even less royalties in order to be promoted more. Which, for a service I paid for specifically for the great music discovery just destroyed the reason for using it. I'm on apple music now despite not owning a single apple device.

nvilcins 5y ago

(Just to clarify a question raised in the child comments) Those were Spotify ads promoting other podcasts, not sponsors promoted in the podcast itself.

RandomRandy 5y ago

I have the same issue with podcasts. Spotify bakes in ads that are in my native language, not english like the podcast I am listening to.