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nvilcins | 4 years 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.

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.

discuss

capableweb|4 years 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|4 years 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|4 years 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.

atraac|4 years 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|4 years 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.

BatteryMountain|4 years 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.

nvilcins|4 years 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.

itronitron|4 years 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.

cube00|4 years 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.

RandomRandy|4 years 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.

schmorptron|4 years 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.

matheusmoreira|4 years 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|4 years 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...

bennyp101|4 years 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