8 ms·

Tell HN: Spotify Premium is full of Ads

79 points by ushakov 4y ago

Have you listened to German Rap yet? Why don't you upgrade to Spotify Duo? You're a top fan of Chainsmokers (am I?). Listen to this random playlist that we added to your Library without your consent Is this really the "Ad-free" listening experience I'm paying for? Or are these not ads? Reference for all above: https://imgur.com/a/OA7UM6w

boesboes 4y ago
Yeah, I think they a-b test that shit. I got ads like that too, but non of my friends get it. Plenty of ppl complaining on their support forum, get referred to the suggestions box where they close the suggestions for lack of intrest... I stopped using spotify over this bs.
kpierce 4y ago
Are you mad about the content or the way it was shown (interfering)? I get these things every couple weeks it's usually pretty targeted/relevant. If it's not incredibly relevant to me it's usually culturally pretty important. Personally I think spotify is the best content provider to give me good recommendations. Compared to netflix, youtube and other media source they dont show the same 10 items mixed into other topics. The unfortunate thing about the insane amount of tests that spotify runs to make their platform more engaging is some people will have bad experiences.
- nerdawson 4y ago
  I don't mind recommendations but the popup crosses a line. It's a first-party ad; no doubt Spotify get paid to promote certain music. If you're paying for an ad free experience, I can understand why it'd be frustrating.
  - fwn 4y ago
    I think a good rule of thumb is that if a recommendation format can not be deactivated it's probably an ad.
- ushakov 4y ago
  these don't seem like genuine recommendations, they are promotional (ads) and each of them is totally unrelevant: 1. I don't care about German rap, full miss 2. I don't have anybody to share a Spotify Duo subscription with (that's depressing, I know) 3. I've heard of Chainsmokers, but I don't care how your music taste matches with these guys above all of that, I'm paying for my premium subscription for 6 years now
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  Even if the popup is extremely relevant to me it will have two problems: 1. if I am opening the app I probably have a destination in mind, and a surprise popup isnt what I was thinking about. 2. After I decline the popup whatever content it was trying to hawk at me, no matter how appealing, is now lost to the aether. Who got value from that? Not me, not spotify, not the content owner. Discover Weekly and Release Radar are really good, so good that I cant seem to stay with any competitor for very long. I'm not sure why popups are seen as a good idea by anyone. Why cant it just put he promo content in those? They know I use them. It's kinda like how any software eventually tries to emulate email. Every marketing department eventually turns into a spammer, no matter how well intentioned they were in the beginning.
jbrins1 4y ago
One could argue these modals would be considered promotional / recommendation of content rather than an advertisement. That aside, the Spotify ToS states "In any part of the Spotify Service, the Content that you access, including its selection and placement, may be influenced by commercial considerations, including Spotify's agreements with third parties." which I suspect covers recommendations.
- speeder 4y ago
  The "it is not ad, it is recommendation" thing is just pissing me off even more. A lot of companies now pulling that stunt. For example I bought a TV that has a good OLED panel. That TV outright had shown me popups while I am using it, "recommending" I install specific apps or watch new season of a specific TV show. And it is "recommendations" because on the EULA I said I don't agree with ads.
  - austinjp 4y ago
    Jeez that's hideous. A tip I've picked up from HN: buy a monitor to use for visual media instead of a "TV". Set-top boxes and PVRs should plug straight in. I've not actually done this yet, but when my old TV dies I'll either live without, or follow this tip.
    - speeder 4y ago
      Problem is they charge through the nose for these. I looked into it, the price was just ridiculous and unrealistic.
felixnm 4y ago
I have Spotify Premium and I'm okay with any promotions/recommendations as long as I don't get interrupted with actual ads in between 2-3 songs on my playlists.
- ushakov 4y ago
  i'm not okay with any promotions/recommendations as long as I'm paying for Premium
  - wyclif 4y ago
    Correct. Is any Spotify user seriously going to maintain that "Premium" does not mean "no ads"?
    - eminence32 4y ago
      Honestly, the only thing I care about is audio interruptions to my music. If a record label wants to pay spotify to place a text widget on my screen that says "check out this new album", I am OK with that because it's very ignorable. That is, what I'm paying for is "no audio interruptions".
  - rschachte 4y ago
    Definitely don’t sign up for Hulu then. Even worse
  - kixiQu 4y ago
    You're not okay with recommendations? That's 80% of why many of us use Spotify in the first place.
    - ushakov 4y ago
      if that's what Spotify considers a recommendation, then I don't want any
      - gaws 4y ago
nkohari 4y ago
Can you turn these off on mobile? You can on the desktop. It'll still suggest things, but not in an obtrusive manner.
nix0n 4y ago
There are "Notifications" settings buried in the app which might help.
- ushakov 4y ago
  just checked my Notifications settings in the app everything is "Off"
oneplane 4y ago
This is one of the weird differences between say, the Apple Music client and the Spotify client where the Music one has essentially the 'player' and 'library' parts separate from the 'store' and 'recommendations' part. In Spotify it's all just mixed together making for a bit of a weird YouTube-ish experience.
AtNightWeCode 4y ago
You can turn off most notifications in settings.
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  I have all notifciations toggled off and still receive these marketing popups.
eli 4y ago
Seems pretty obvious that record labels can give Spotify money to promote specific tracks into people's Discovery Mode and other playlists. Aka Payola. https://www.unionofmusicians.org/justice-at-spotify-demands https://www.unionofmusicians.org/justice-at-spotify-demands
- thefourthchime 4y ago
  Spotify ended up just remaking the old music industry where the musicians get screwed from licensing music, only more so now.
antiverse 4y ago
I've cancelled my Spotify premium sub years ago because in truth they've always had ads: the Dashboard always had artists that I had zero interest in listening to, that were not part of or related in any way to the music in my library, and that big labels wanted to push my way. There was no way to turn this off, so after a month or so I just cancelled my sub. So, Google-account-cancellation phobias aside, I went to Youtube Music where I still am. No bullshit.
gbtw 4y ago
Your also missing the ads in podcast content too. Its the curse that youtube now has as well. You pay for advert free content yet its embedded in the content anyway.
- deadmutex 4y ago
  Atleast you can easily skip the ones embedded by the creators.
- CraigJPerry 4y ago
  SmartTubeNext (ShieldTV, FireTv, any android tv), SponsorBlock (ios, firefox, chrome, etc.) - basically whatever client that makes use of https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ It’s a crowd sourced database of timecodes for videos on YouTube that categorises segments so you can choose what to skip. These clients also block pre-roll ad’s as well as in-stream ad’s.
- treesknees 4y ago
  In the past I've had some success with the SponsorBlock extension [1] available for Chrome, Firefox, iOS/Android, etc. It's a crowd-sourced list of videos and timestamps of sponsor shoutouts, and it will skip the video ahead past the ad for you. It implements some methods to keep your privacy so you're not just uploading a list of every watched video to their servers. It's not perfect, being crowd-sourced it won't have brand-new videos in its database. It would be interesting to see if some ML/algorithm could buffer your video and detect the ad and skip it. [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
  - lajosbacs 4y ago
    I disagree -- it is perfect. On a channel with 100k+ subscribers, the segments to be skipped appear almost instantly after the video is posted. A bonus is that it skips repetitive content, not necessarily just ads.
    - treesknees 4y ago
      By its design it cannot be perfect. You are getting lucky that someone else with SponsorBlock watched the video before you and recorded the timestamp in the database.
markus_zhang 4y ago
I never bothered to subscribe when their free version is not usable. If I want some music I buy CD and convert them to mp3.
JamesBaxter 4y ago
Stuff like Spotify trying to ram their podcast platform down my throat is pretty obnoxious. I wish I could turn off podcasts. It looks especially bad when some of the podcasts are unofficial audiobooks releasing for instance a person reading a chapter of Harry Potter every day.
dusted 4y ago
back in '95 I decided to not use spotify or apple music or any of that stuff and just store my music locally, never looked back..
- iso1631 4y ago
  In 1995, 4 years before Napster, you decided not to use spotify?
  - intelVISA 4y ago
    a true visionary if I've seen one
  - tpmx 4y ago
    Word marking aside: In '97 I joined this ubergeeky little company for what initially was thought to be a summer job. They had something homebrew they called a jukebox that they had gotten running around '94/'95, consisting of a distributed client/server system where you could queue songs from a shared library of MPEG layer 2 audio files that would be played back on a Sun Sparcstation, iirc. In short: It's not that crazy of a timeline. They were just ~2 years ahead of the curve, by '97 local MP3 playback was mainstream on Windows-based PCs at my university.
  - dusted 4y ago
    Exactly, 1995, there was in fact no spotify, so I simply decided not to use it, granted it was an easy decision since it was not there, but that's beside the point. Thing is, the solution that I did chose to use is still working perfectly today and I see absolutely no better alternative in the likes of spotify.
jabroni_salad 4y ago
These wouldnt be so bad if they weren't fullscreen modals that interfere with your usage. My phone tries to give spotify a play command when it connects to my car's bluetooth but sometimes it just isnt gonna play anything until I drink the verification can. On a good day I do not even need to take my phone out of my pocket.
s3r3nity 4y ago
Yeah this trend by Spotify / Amazon Music / YouTube Music is why I switched to Apple Music a while back, and never regretted my decision. Podcasts are in a completely different app, and don't intersect with my music search & discovery experience.
spidersouris 4y ago
I don't have all this even though I'm subscribed to Spotify Premium and I use the mobile app. Since when did you start seeing those? May it be that it only appears in some regions? I live in Europe FWIW.
- davesmylie 4y ago
  I've also never seen / heard a single ad or promo - NZ based
rcarr 4y ago
The worst one for me was when I was listening to a podcast in the bath and adverts started playing at random intervals. Very, very close to dropping premium. Can't see me having it by the time 2023 rolls around.
- scarface_74 4y ago
  Please for the love of God start using a real podcast player and not the Podcast in name only monstrosity that is built into Spotify. There are much better podcast players for both iOS and Android.
  - RealStickman_ 4y ago
    Open Source ones too, built on good, decentralised feeds.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    It was a Joe Rogan episode so there was no other way unfortunately.
res0nat0r 4y ago
I've had Spotify for 10+ years and have no ads. The link you're pasting looks like random popups suggesting similar artists or bands you've listened to in the past notifying you of stuff you may like. This doesn't seem like it should be considered an ad.
- ushakov 4y ago
  > random popups that's the whole point, I wasn't seeking any suggestions on top of that, the artists "suggested" were not relevant at all
  - res0nat0r 4y ago
    It says right in the popup they're suggesting artists based on who you've listened to, so it is relevant based on the number crunching they've done from millions of listeners and billions of datapoints.
    - austinjp 4y ago
      To be frank, that's indicative of a gulf between what the user wants from the product, and how the provider views the user. User: This item isn't relevant for me. Provider: Yes it is. See the problem? :)
- laserbeam 4y ago
  That is the op's argument. That he considers those ads. I generally found those popups reasonable, usually they were new releases from artists that I follow. And they happened 3-5 times a year. That's actually cool in my books. I know there are some other banner ads to playlists in the desktop app. If memory serves me you can actually disable those in settings. I know I haven't seen a banner like that in months if not years.
  - res0nat0r 4y ago
    Meh. I think this happens to me and I get one once every 4 months or so, either way seems like just non issue to complain about, especially when it rarely even happens.
iso1631 4y ago
I subscribed to appletv again for For All Mankind season 3. Really anoyed by not one, but two, adverts before each episode (one for something else, one for a podcast) I'll be cancelling after the final episode next week because of these adverts.
thefz 4y ago
Never ever had even one single ad, on Android and on Windows, and this is why I have been paying for years. Sometimes it bothers me to turn on Bluetooth and that's it.
shreyshnaccount 4y ago
I use a cracked Spotify apk. no ads.
- shreyshnaccount 4y ago
  and probably a very bad privacy practice but whatever I do on my phone is the business of Google, my Chinese overlords and the guy who made the Spotify cracked apk don't tell me what to do
CraigJPerry 4y ago
Plex is pretty decent these days, the official plexamp client has carplay integration, a decent ui and offline playback.
gherkinnn 4y ago
I wouldn’t call them ads at all. The Spotify Duo notification comes up whenever handoff between two devices doesn’t work. I assume Spotify thinks I’m sharing an account or something. Quite unlike YT serving YT premium ads right after an ad break. The “new release” notifications have always been spot on for me. Possible that some artists pay to be extra prominent. Unless their recommendation engine is misbehaving again.
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  >Possible that some artists pay to be extra prominent. So it's paid-for advertising?
- gigel82 4y ago
  potato - potato Some people say Microsoft doesn't have ads in Windows. Which is technically correct based on your reasoning - they only promote their own products and services (haven't seen a "meet singles in your area" ad in the Windows Start menu yet).
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    They put random games full of IAPs on the search bar, so I wouldn't say it's that comparable.
  - risyachka 4y ago
    Not the same. Their recommendation engine is part of core offering. When system tries to learn what you like more to offer similar music - this is by all means not an ad. A car seat is not an ad for seats.
- ushakov 4y ago
  these are not notifications for artists I genuinely care about these are popup advertisements to nag me into listening to music I don't care about only so that record labels can make more money
azemetre 4y ago
Not the same issue but my Spotify experience has seriously degraded where I'll be leaving next month. Songs constantly stop, freeze, and refuse to play. Clearing the cache kinda works, for about 2 hours then the issue persists. IDK if it's an update clashing on iOS with Spotify, but all it does is reinforce the idea of thrusting updates on users is an extremely poor UX. Especially when my flow slightly breaks with every update.
toastercat 4y ago
I used Spotify for a brief period of time when I was away from home and my local music library. While I do miss having an bottomless pit of music to explore, and also not having to manually download new releases, the experience paled in comparison to having local music files and using foobar2000. Call me antiquated, but to this day I still prefer using a native music player on my desktop, and something like Shuttle+ on my mobile device.
- EgoIsMyFriend 4y ago
  foobar was the best software i ever used for music in my experience. it makes sense to have local music files if you're going to listen to the same song 1000 times. i remember having hard time using my offline music files in spotify. horrible UI/UX compared to f2k.
dcist 4y ago
You need consent for Spotify to generate a customized playlist based on your listening habits? That's a little precious. Most people, including myself, enjoy this feature.
- dieselgate 4y ago
  I personally don’t like these customized playlists but make no claim to whether I’m in the minority/majority. It’d be great if one could toggle the feature but it’s at most an annoyance
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deepsun 4y ago
  My Spotify shows me on the top the following podcasts: - GUYS, WE FUCKED (something about relationships) - Very eye catching image of a dude (I heard he's popular podcaster, no wonder with such image) - something from audible #1 series (obviously an ad). I don't listen to podcasts, and certainly never listened to a single podcast on Spotify, so not sure it's personalized.
kraftman 4y ago
I've never seen any of these on mobile or desktop, and I use spotify a lot. Is it a setting? The most annoying thing they've done for me on mobile is blend 'your library' with songs and artists ive recently listened to.
deleted 4y ago
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Overtonwindow 4y ago
Ads? I go out of my way to avoid ads completely. As soon as I hear the hint of an advertisement I mute. I refuse to even consider advertisements.
andrewflnr 4y ago
> Or are these not ads? You can pick whatever definitions work for you, but it's reasonable to define those as not-ads, to say that "ads" are audio that interrupts your music. I don't love the other things you talk about, but I can listen to a pretty wide variety of music without interruption, offline, and the other BS bothers me very little and not too often. For 2022 that's pretty good.
- TheChaplain 4y ago
  "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." Yes, those are advertisements.
  - andrewflnr 4y ago
    Circular logic. You're already assuming your broader definition of quacking like an ad in your "quacks like a duck" speech.
loudmax 4y ago
Part of the problem is that the fact that you have the money and inclination to pay for Premium makes you that much more attractive to advertisers. That goes for just about any medium, not just Spotify.
deleted 4y ago
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austinjp 4y ago
How far away are we from an open-source AI that can detect ad-like content in an audio/video stream and mute/blank it?
immnn 4y ago
I know what you mean. However, I can’t tell whether recommendations are ads or just very bad recommendations. But there are plenty alternatives, so you just should switch services. I went for Tidal, which also supports better bandwidth (HiFi and Master) and Apple Podcasts. I’m actually very happy with both services. You will find tools online to migrate your Spotify playlists to Tidal and when it comes to higher bandwidth: trust me, you will hear the difference and when you did, you will not want to switch back to lousy 320kbps MP3s.

79 points by ushakov 4y ago

boesboes 4y ago

Yeah, I think they a-b test that shit. I got ads like that too, but non of my friends get it. Plenty of ppl complaining on their support forum, get referred to the suggestions box where they close the suggestions for lack of intrest... I stopped using spotify over this bs.

kpierce 4y ago

Are you mad about the content or the way it was shown (interfering)? I get these things every couple weeks it's usually pretty targeted/relevant. If it's not incredibly relevant to me it's usually culturally pretty important. Personally I think spotify is the best content provider to give me good recommendations. Compared to netflix, youtube and other media source they dont show the same 10 items mixed into other topics. The unfortunate thing about the insane amount of tests that spotify runs to make their platform more engaging is some people will have bad experiences.

nerdawson 4y ago
I don't mind recommendations but the popup crosses a line. It's a first-party ad; no doubt Spotify get paid to promote certain music. If you're paying for an ad free experience, I can understand why it'd be frustrating.
- fwn 4y ago
  I think a good rule of thumb is that if a recommendation format can not be deactivated it's probably an ad.
ushakov 4y ago
these don't seem like genuine recommendations, they are promotional (ads) and each of them is totally unrelevant: 1. I don't care about German rap, full miss 2. I don't have anybody to share a Spotify Duo subscription with (that's depressing, I know) 3. I've heard of Chainsmokers, but I don't care how your music taste matches with these guys above all of that, I'm paying for my premium subscription for 6 years now
jabroni_salad 4y ago
Even if the popup is extremely relevant to me it will have two problems: 1. if I am opening the app I probably have a destination in mind, and a surprise popup isnt what I was thinking about. 2. After I decline the popup whatever content it was trying to hawk at me, no matter how appealing, is now lost to the aether. Who got value from that? Not me, not spotify, not the content owner. Discover Weekly and Release Radar are really good, so good that I cant seem to stay with any competitor for very long. I'm not sure why popups are seen as a good idea by anyone. Why cant it just put he promo content in those? They know I use them. It's kinda like how any software eventually tries to emulate email. Every marketing department eventually turns into a spammer, no matter how well intentioned they were in the beginning.

jbrins1 4y ago

One could argue these modals would be considered promotional / recommendation of content rather than an advertisement. That aside, the Spotify ToS states "In any part of the Spotify Service, the Content that you access, including its selection and placement, may be influenced by commercial considerations, including Spotify's agreements with third parties." which I suspect covers recommendations.

speeder 4y ago
The "it is not ad, it is recommendation" thing is just pissing me off even more. A lot of companies now pulling that stunt. For example I bought a TV that has a good OLED panel. That TV outright had shown me popups while I am using it, "recommending" I install specific apps or watch new season of a specific TV show. And it is "recommendations" because on the EULA I said I don't agree with ads.
- austinjp 4y ago
  Jeez that's hideous. A tip I've picked up from HN: buy a monitor to use for visual media instead of a "TV". Set-top boxes and PVRs should plug straight in. I've not actually done this yet, but when my old TV dies I'll either live without, or follow this tip.
  - speeder 4y ago
    Problem is they charge through the nose for these. I looked into it, the price was just ridiculous and unrealistic.

felixnm 4y ago

I have Spotify Premium and I'm okay with any promotions/recommendations as long as I don't get interrupted with actual ads in between 2-3 songs on my playlists.

ushakov 4y ago
i'm not okay with any promotions/recommendations as long as I'm paying for Premium
- wyclif 4y ago
  Correct. Is any Spotify user seriously going to maintain that "Premium" does not mean "no ads"?
  - eminence32 4y ago
    Honestly, the only thing I care about is audio interruptions to my music. If a record label wants to pay spotify to place a text widget on my screen that says "check out this new album", I am OK with that because it's very ignorable. That is, what I'm paying for is "no audio interruptions".
- rschachte 4y ago
  Definitely don’t sign up for Hulu then. Even worse
- kixiQu 4y ago
  You're not okay with recommendations? That's 80% of why many of us use Spotify in the first place.
  - ushakov 4y ago
    if that's what Spotify considers a recommendation, then I don't want any
    - gaws 4y ago

nkohari 4y ago

Can you turn these off on mobile? You can on the desktop. It'll still suggest things, but not in an obtrusive manner.

nix0n 4y ago

There are "Notifications" settings buried in the app which might help.

ushakov 4y ago
just checked my Notifications settings in the app everything is "Off"

oneplane 4y ago

This is one of the weird differences between say, the Apple Music client and the Spotify client where the Music one has essentially the 'player' and 'library' parts separate from the 'store' and 'recommendations' part. In Spotify it's all just mixed together making for a bit of a weird YouTube-ish experience.

AtNightWeCode 4y ago

You can turn off most notifications in settings.

jabroni_salad 4y ago
I have all notifciations toggled off and still receive these marketing popups.

eli 4y ago

Seems pretty obvious that record labels can give Spotify money to promote specific tracks into people's Discovery Mode and other playlists. Aka Payola. https://www.unionofmusicians.org/justice-at-spotify-demands https://www.unionofmusicians.org/justice-at-spotify-demands

thefourthchime 4y ago
Spotify ended up just remaking the old music industry where the musicians get screwed from licensing music, only more so now.

antiverse 4y ago

I've cancelled my Spotify premium sub years ago because in truth they've always had ads: the Dashboard always had artists that I had zero interest in listening to, that were not part of or related in any way to the music in my library, and that big labels wanted to push my way. There was no way to turn this off, so after a month or so I just cancelled my sub. So, Google-account-cancellation phobias aside, I went to Youtube Music where I still am. No bullshit.

gbtw 4y ago

Your also missing the ads in podcast content too. Its the curse that youtube now has as well. You pay for advert free content yet its embedded in the content anyway.

deadmutex 4y ago
Atleast you can easily skip the ones embedded by the creators.
CraigJPerry 4y ago
SmartTubeNext (ShieldTV, FireTv, any android tv), SponsorBlock (ios, firefox, chrome, etc.) - basically whatever client that makes use of https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ It’s a crowd sourced database of timecodes for videos on YouTube that categorises segments so you can choose what to skip. These clients also block pre-roll ad’s as well as in-stream ad’s.
treesknees 4y ago
In the past I've had some success with the SponsorBlock extension [1] available for Chrome, Firefox, iOS/Android, etc. It's a crowd-sourced list of videos and timestamps of sponsor shoutouts, and it will skip the video ahead past the ad for you. It implements some methods to keep your privacy so you're not just uploading a list of every watched video to their servers. It's not perfect, being crowd-sourced it won't have brand-new videos in its database. It would be interesting to see if some ML/algorithm could buffer your video and detect the ad and skip it. [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/
- lajosbacs 4y ago
  I disagree -- it is perfect. On a channel with 100k+ subscribers, the segments to be skipped appear almost instantly after the video is posted. A bonus is that it skips repetitive content, not necessarily just ads.
  - treesknees 4y ago
    By its design it cannot be perfect. You are getting lucky that someone else with SponsorBlock watched the video before you and recorded the timestamp in the database.

markus_zhang 4y ago

I never bothered to subscribe when their free version is not usable. If I want some music I buy CD and convert them to mp3.

JamesBaxter 4y ago

Stuff like Spotify trying to ram their podcast platform down my throat is pretty obnoxious. I wish I could turn off podcasts. It looks especially bad when some of the podcasts are unofficial audiobooks releasing for instance a person reading a chapter of Harry Potter every day.

dusted 4y ago

back in '95 I decided to not use spotify or apple music or any of that stuff and just store my music locally, never looked back..

iso1631 4y ago
In 1995, 4 years before Napster, you decided not to use spotify?
- intelVISA 4y ago
  a true visionary if I've seen one
- tpmx 4y ago
  Word marking aside: In '97 I joined this ubergeeky little company for what initially was thought to be a summer job. They had something homebrew they called a jukebox that they had gotten running around '94/'95, consisting of a distributed client/server system where you could queue songs from a shared library of MPEG layer 2 audio files that would be played back on a Sun Sparcstation, iirc. In short: It's not that crazy of a timeline. They were just ~2 years ahead of the curve, by '97 local MP3 playback was mainstream on Windows-based PCs at my university.
- dusted 4y ago
  Exactly, 1995, there was in fact no spotify, so I simply decided not to use it, granted it was an easy decision since it was not there, but that's beside the point. Thing is, the solution that I did chose to use is still working perfectly today and I see absolutely no better alternative in the likes of spotify.

jabroni_salad 4y ago

These wouldnt be so bad if they weren't fullscreen modals that interfere with your usage. My phone tries to give spotify a play command when it connects to my car's bluetooth but sometimes it just isnt gonna play anything until I drink the verification can. On a good day I do not even need to take my phone out of my pocket.

s3r3nity 4y ago

Yeah this trend by Spotify / Amazon Music / YouTube Music is why I switched to Apple Music a while back, and never regretted my decision. Podcasts are in a completely different app, and don't intersect with my music search & discovery experience.

spidersouris 4y ago

I don't have all this even though I'm subscribed to Spotify Premium and I use the mobile app. Since when did you start seeing those? May it be that it only appears in some regions? I live in Europe FWIW.

davesmylie 4y ago
I've also never seen / heard a single ad or promo - NZ based

rcarr 4y ago

The worst one for me was when I was listening to a podcast in the bath and adverts started playing at random intervals. Very, very close to dropping premium. Can't see me having it by the time 2023 rolls around.

scarface_74 4y ago
Please for the love of God start using a real podcast player and not the Podcast in name only monstrosity that is built into Spotify. There are much better podcast players for both iOS and Android.
- RealStickman_ 4y ago
  Open Source ones too, built on good, decentralised feeds.
- rcarr 4y ago
  It was a Joe Rogan episode so there was no other way unfortunately.

res0nat0r 4y ago

I've had Spotify for 10+ years and have no ads. The link you're pasting looks like random popups suggesting similar artists or bands you've listened to in the past notifying you of stuff you may like. This doesn't seem like it should be considered an ad.

ushakov 4y ago
> random popups that's the whole point, I wasn't seeking any suggestions on top of that, the artists "suggested" were not relevant at all
- res0nat0r 4y ago
  It says right in the popup they're suggesting artists based on who you've listened to, so it is relevant based on the number crunching they've done from millions of listeners and billions of datapoints.
  - austinjp 4y ago
    To be frank, that's indicative of a gulf between what the user wants from the product, and how the provider views the user. User: This item isn't relevant for me. Provider: Yes it is. See the problem? :)
laserbeam 4y ago
That is the op's argument. That he considers those ads. I generally found those popups reasonable, usually they were new releases from artists that I follow. And they happened 3-5 times a year. That's actually cool in my books. I know there are some other banner ads to playlists in the desktop app. If memory serves me you can actually disable those in settings. I know I haven't seen a banner like that in months if not years.
- res0nat0r 4y ago
  Meh. I think this happens to me and I get one once every 4 months or so, either way seems like just non issue to complain about, especially when it rarely even happens.

iso1631 4y ago

I subscribed to appletv again for For All Mankind season 3. Really anoyed by not one, but two, adverts before each episode (one for something else, one for a podcast) I'll be cancelling after the final episode next week because of these adverts.

thefz 4y ago

Never ever had even one single ad, on Android and on Windows, and this is why I have been paying for years. Sometimes it bothers me to turn on Bluetooth and that's it.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago

I use a cracked Spotify apk. no ads.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago
and probably a very bad privacy practice but whatever I do on my phone is the business of Google, my Chinese overlords and the guy who made the Spotify cracked apk don't tell me what to do

CraigJPerry 4y ago

Plex is pretty decent these days, the official plexamp client has carplay integration, a decent ui and offline playback.

gherkinnn 4y ago

I wouldn’t call them ads at all. The Spotify Duo notification comes up whenever handoff between two devices doesn’t work. I assume Spotify thinks I’m sharing an account or something. Quite unlike YT serving YT premium ads right after an ad break. The “new release” notifications have always been spot on for me. Possible that some artists pay to be extra prominent. Unless their recommendation engine is misbehaving again.

TremendousJudge 4y ago
>Possible that some artists pay to be extra prominent. So it's paid-for advertising?
gigel82 4y ago
potato - potato Some people say Microsoft doesn't have ads in Windows. Which is technically correct based on your reasoning - they only promote their own products and services (haven't seen a "meet singles in your area" ad in the Windows Start menu yet).
- aaomidi 4y ago
  They put random games full of IAPs on the search bar, so I wouldn't say it's that comparable.
- risyachka 4y ago
  Not the same. Their recommendation engine is part of core offering. When system tries to learn what you like more to offer similar music - this is by all means not an ad. A car seat is not an ad for seats.
ushakov 4y ago
these are not notifications for artists I genuinely care about these are popup advertisements to nag me into listening to music I don't care about only so that record labels can make more money

azemetre 4y ago

Not the same issue but my Spotify experience has seriously degraded where I'll be leaving next month. Songs constantly stop, freeze, and refuse to play. Clearing the cache kinda works, for about 2 hours then the issue persists. IDK if it's an update clashing on iOS with Spotify, but all it does is reinforce the idea of thrusting updates on users is an extremely poor UX. Especially when my flow slightly breaks with every update.

toastercat 4y ago

I used Spotify for a brief period of time when I was away from home and my local music library. While I do miss having an bottomless pit of music to explore, and also not having to manually download new releases, the experience paled in comparison to having local music files and using foobar2000. Call me antiquated, but to this day I still prefer using a native music player on my desktop, and something like Shuttle+ on my mobile device.

EgoIsMyFriend 4y ago
foobar was the best software i ever used for music in my experience. it makes sense to have local music files if you're going to listen to the same song 1000 times. i remember having hard time using my offline music files in spotify. horrible UI/UX compared to f2k.

dcist 4y ago

You need consent for Spotify to generate a customized playlist based on your listening habits? That's a little precious. Most people, including myself, enjoy this feature.

dieselgate 4y ago
I personally don’t like these customized playlists but make no claim to whether I’m in the minority/majority. It’d be great if one could toggle the feature but it’s at most an annoyance
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deepsun 4y ago
My Spotify shows me on the top the following podcasts: - GUYS, WE FUCKED (something about relationships) - Very eye catching image of a dude (I heard he's popular podcaster, no wonder with such image) - something from audible #1 series (obviously an ad). I don't listen to podcasts, and certainly never listened to a single podcast on Spotify, so not sure it's personalized.

kraftman 4y ago

I've never seen any of these on mobile or desktop, and I use spotify a lot. Is it a setting? The most annoying thing they've done for me on mobile is blend 'your library' with songs and artists ive recently listened to.

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Overtonwindow 4y ago

Ads? I go out of my way to avoid ads completely. As soon as I hear the hint of an advertisement I mute. I refuse to even consider advertisements.

andrewflnr 4y ago

> Or are these not ads? You can pick whatever definitions work for you, but it's reasonable to define those as not-ads, to say that "ads" are audio that interrupts your music. I don't love the other things you talk about, but I can listen to a pretty wide variety of music without interruption, offline, and the other BS bothers me very little and not too often. For 2022 that's pretty good.

TheChaplain 4y ago
"If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." Yes, those are advertisements.
- andrewflnr 4y ago
  Circular logic. You're already assuming your broader definition of quacking like an ad in your "quacks like a duck" speech.

loudmax 4y ago

Part of the problem is that the fact that you have the money and inclination to pay for Premium makes you that much more attractive to advertisers. That goes for just about any medium, not just Spotify.

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austinjp 4y ago

How far away are we from an open-source AI that can detect ad-like content in an audio/video stream and mute/blank it?

immnn 4y ago

I know what you mean. However, I can’t tell whether recommendations are ads or just very bad recommendations. But there are plenty alternatives, so you just should switch services. I went for Tidal, which also supports better bandwidth (HiFi and Master) and Apple Podcasts. I’m actually very happy with both services. You will find tools online to migrate your Spotify playlists to Tidal and when it comes to higher bandwidth: trust me, you will hear the difference and when you did, you will not want to switch back to lousy 320kbps MP3s.