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?
1. It's not just 1 type of ad. In Little Snitch, I have permitted Spotify to connect to 281 different domain names, most of which are ad-related. That's a lot of companies being allowed to run JS in whatever webview Spotify uses to display ads. I don't listen much on my computer anymore.
2. They keep advertising deals to me - $0.99 for a month, or $9 for 3 months, that I can't subscribe to because they don't let people in Quebec sign up for them, (something related to the consumer protection laws here). These ads are audio, in-app visuals, and even E-mails. This leaves a horrible taste in my mouth, and I've let them know several times, but they never change it. That, combined with the fact that I feel like the $10/month subscription is a tad expensive, make me very reluctant to subscribe again, (I was a subscriber through my mobile phone plane for a long time). At $5/month I'd subscribe instantly. $7-8 I'd probably still do it. $9-10 I can buy 10-12 CDs per year that I own in perpetuity.
I feel like if they did the ads right, (in-house, with non-insulting geotargeting), or offered a subscription price closer to one latté per month, I would have a lot less animosity and be more supportive of this move.
> 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?
No. But I get the sense you're trying to express moral indignation at such users, and I don't see the logic behind that. "I like $site_owner therefore I whitelist $arbirary_third_parties whose behavior cannot be controlled nor even really measured by $site_owner" isn't a workable/scalable lesson to try to teach users.
To be clear, I also don't see any reasonable argument to be morally indignant about Spotify blocking the blockers. This is the web as it currently exists.
I mean, if they show you a notification that you should really sign-up for a paid subscription or disable your adblocker, this does not really seem a big deal for me and all right for Spotify. However, if they terminate your account because you happened to use Spotify for a while on a system with adblocking enabled (does being on a Pi-Hole network count?), I am wondering if they won't just drive a lot of potential customers to Apple Music & Co, which is the last thing they need right now... I mean, if they would terminate my account like this, I definitely would not come crouching back to them asking for mercy to be allowed to sign-up for a paid subscription. I mean, I do have some dignity left.
(I usually use Spotify using their apps, so without ad-blocking, but I cannot guarantee that I haven't been using their web player from time to time, too, and of course my browser has an enabled ad-blocker. I don't pay for Spotify because I buy my MP3s and use Spotify primarily to discover new songs.)
Where do you buy coffee that one coffee costs $10?! (or even $5?) I still don't think it's a lot of money, but not quite so trivial.
> 1. Pay for the service
> 2. Suffer through the ads
> 3. Don't use the service
Those are the customer's options. What about Spotify's?
1. Offer the service as paid-only, no free with ads option.
2. Offer a paid version and a free version, but some people use ad blockers.
3. Offer a paid version and a free version, block ad blockers and expose your customers to malware.
The last is the only one that has "expose your customers to malware" in it, so maybe they should pick one of the other two. Because if all the customers chose either paying or not using, that's the same anyway, and if they didn't, they're actively harming the remainder.
The reason why every large service on the Internet is ad-supported is that it does not need to follow advertisement laws. They don't even need to follow computer crime laws. If society would start enforce such laws onto online services we would see a major shift away from ad-supported services.
Now that a service is offering subscriptions, people still don't want to pay for it, and the goalposts are shifted further.
My answer was two-fold - never use Spotify, and always use an ad-blocker.
There's a reason for that. Most people don't care enough about ads to bother installing an adblocker. It's intrusive, disruptive ads that drive them to do that. It wouldn't have come to this if site owners had taken responsibility for the content of their advertising.
And, unfortunately, most people don't bother to change their adblocker's default settings (and raise holy hell if the default settings allow non-intrusive ads), so the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. Bad actors ruin the funding model for everyone.
How did we ever get to the point where letting anyone slap any ads they want over your content seemed like a good idea? Imagine a newspaper or a TV channel running porn ads and saying "sorry, we don't control the content of our ads." They'd be crucified.
I am surprised that they continue to believe that they should have any revenue "[W]hen people aren't willing to pay for 1-2 coffees for a month of unlimited music streaming."
It's like realising people do not want to pay for what you are selling and then, instead of owning up to the fact you therefore have no viable business, you turn around and vengefully sell those same people out, keeping them around by reducing price to 0. There is no business regarding that service. You find a new customer (advertisers) and sell something else (ads). Then you portray the original "service" as your business.
No matter how popular this has become, it is still a sham.
Selling ads is a different service with a different customer. It is not the same business.
There are probably some Internet service companies that do manage to sustain themselves on paid subscriptions. Perhaps they are few and far between.
Pretending that a successful ad sales business is the same thing as a successful Internet-based paid subscription service is disengenous.
I've never used Spotify, but if its free, supported by ads option means serving web-based stuff, then it might want to look into getting rid of that and serving audio ads every few songs instead. Ad Blockers wouldn't be a problem in that scenario, and Podcasters have long shown that the what essentially amounts to radio ads are a perfectly valid way to monetize audio content.
Note also that in the case of Spotify, Apple Music, etc., most people will only need to subscribe to one of those services to cover pretty much all of their music streaming needs.
With, say, newspapers and magazines they can try to make the argument that to meet their needs they would need to subscribe to a bunch of different papers and magazines and that would get prohibitively expensive very fast.
You can even try that argument somewhat with video streaming services. There are enough exclusive deals between movie producers and movie streaming services that picking one service only means you likely miss out on a lot of movies you want.
But with music that argument just does not work.
That said... Go with #3 everyone. Spotify is horrible for artists.
It's my device. I understand Spotify's motivation to want compensation for their great service, but shouldn't I be able to run my software, on my device, on my terms? I understand this argument doesn't solve anything, and puts Spotify in a bad situation.
But...how long until someone creates a solution to scrub the audio of ads in real-time? With a beginning delay for the listening buffer, of course. This isn't trivial, but it sure is repeatable.
I wish I had something better. I don't know; this quickly feels like digital [media] in the early 2000's all over again.
It also very often does this if connection is bad which is super weird considering all the songs are supposed to be downloaded for offline consumption.
I still wanted to listen to music though, so I found ways.
I really don’t think that was so terrible, and neither do I think the few million people that block ads are.
For the record, I pay $20 or so for Google Play Music for the family plan, despite being single. (Or at least I do until they shut it down, leaving me with no option for mostly streaming plus artists that aren't on any streaming service such as Tool or Neil Cicierega.)
You seem to take sides with business, but never forget the old adage: the customer is always right.
Seriously, I would have continued to pay them, if I could have used the same software I originally got with it.
Of course I am also the sole user who ever paid for groveshark premium, and none of the current efforts are even a tiny bit remotely close to its interface, much less its music selection.
I'm still debating on if I want to spend $10.00 a month on something I may not use often enough to justify it? For now, in the spirit of everything, and to not be blocked, I turned off my ad-blocker. I can deal with it for now.
One thing I think about that is analogous is the fact that every month I donate $5.00 to my local NPR station - but I haven't listened to it in months! But - those are tax deductible (or at least once were? I'm not sure how it works now this tax year), and I do like the station, but I can only take so much of it at a time.
Maybe if Spotify weren't a paid service, and instead were "listener supported" with tax deductible donations - I could more readily get behind it...?
Ten dollars a month isn't that much, sure - it's something I need to think about more (it would be nice if there were an easy way to track when you use Spotify and for how long; that could help me too).
10 dollars is not a trivial amount of money, and its WAY above most people's pre-spotify music budget. If you don't spend that money, you have an extra $120 bucks at the end of the year.
Thus, there really are only two options here when it comes to the free tier on Spotify: "Endure our ad experience or no 'free' service for you." However, there is a 3rd option here when it comes to the free tier: Spotify fixes the currently-terrible ad experience on its service.
I'd be 100% fine with ads on Spotify if they were bespoke like the ads I see from https://carbonads.net. Their ads are relevant, tasteful, and unobtrusive. Oddly, I end up paying more attention to Carbon ads than I've ever paid to a Spotify ad.
Sadly, Spotify is only offering consumers two options without any hint that they've even considered that they themselves could do something to address the issues underlying their customers' use of ad blockers.
>Spotify has a pretty cheap paid option that removes all of that.
Five dollars a month for the rest of my life is not "cheap".
Frugal people look at the total cost of a loan, not just the monthly payment.
Lol it's $10 per month. Who pays $10 for a coffee?
Where is that price from? What if I live in a poor country and price of 2 cup of coffee is $0.40?
I have the right to selectively choose what code runs on my computer, including code designed to grab ads and display/present them.
I also have the right to selectively choose what requests and traffic to allow in and out of my network.
Spotify has the right to do the same, including to deny to send me any traffic from their service for any reasons.
I also have a right to not like it if spotify does that, and everybody else has a right to not care if I do or don't.
Ad agencies are bad actors. Not intentionally but because they have zero incentive to really police what garbage goes out across their systems. I block them on the client. I block them at the DNS level. I block them at the firewall.
I've dealt with the worst case scenario, no thanks. Previously I'd sub to spotify for a month when I was traveling and just deal with the ads that got though my standard setup when I wasn't. Now I just won't bother.
It’s my TV / my phone / my screen. Me. MINE. If someone else emits some information they make freely available, that in no way entails they have any say whatsoever about what I permit to be visible on MY screen.
How about if marketers want me looking at their ads, they can stop pouring millions of dollars into research about how to spy on me through those ads against my will.
Plus the genre's are rather limited, it's usually one or two pop stations (with 90% song overlap), one or two country, maybe NPR or something in a podcast format, etc. Meanwhile all of the ads.
Personally I'm on the student plan, and for what I like the listen to it's a steal for 5$ (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.
It's a globe you can move around and tune into radio stations all around the world just like you're talking about.
It was once highly upvoted on HN.
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.
It's not because I don't want to pay for the content, I'd happily pay 2-3x under the right circumstances. It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation, and manipulative cross-sell tactics.
Whatever arguments were made about piracy detracting from sales are laughable now. The copyright and ad lobbies are detracting from those sales, piracy is just a symptom of the cancer that they are.
Sonarr + Couchpotato + Plex + Subsonic is somehow a more consumer-friendly experience than their 'legitimate' counterparts. The fact that the premium subscription cost for those services is more than netflix+spotify, and yet people are willing to pay that much for their piracy, that should be pretty telling to any industry analyst.
Well, it was nice knowing you Spotify.
This is why I started blocking ads at the network level last year, after resisting blocking them at all for so long before that. A number of popular sites (imgur.com being the worst offender, but certainly not the only one) hosting adverts that attempted drive-by downloads, tried to access cameras or microphones (luckily caught by permissions blocks elsewhere), played obnoxious loud audio, played high-res bandwidth chewing video, opened pop-ups or pop-unders, and so forth.
Serve the adverts from your own domains and agree to take responsibility for any damage done by code/other served from your domains, and we can talk. Otherwise: no ads. Ban me from your site or application for that if you wish.
We are talking about people who use ad-blockers to get a “premium” experience while using free, unpaid accounts.
Basically leeches undermining everyone else.
I see no issue with Spotify terminating these accounts. Even as someone using an ad-blocker. Because I pay for the freaking service I use.
I wonder if the ad industry is onboard with HTTPS yet? In 2013 when I was last looking at ads as an attack vector, none did, and many executed JS, or gave privileged access to system APIs on device via JS, which meant that it was fairly trivial to intercept ad delivery, return malicious JS, open a "reverse JS shell" and poke about the filesystem in the app, open new screens, etc, all remotely.
I reported this as a vulnerability in several apps, telling them that HTTPS was an important aspect of preventing this, and was told that ad networks were against HTTPS and therefore they had to find alternative mitigations.
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.
They don't randomly delete things. They remove content due to licensing expiring. Thank our backwards media licensing system for that.
Personally, if you don't own the content I don't think you can whine when it goes away.
Now with Apple Music you don’t have the option to choose between WiFi/Cellular for downloaded music but Spotify doesn’t have that problem.
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.
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
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.
It's not like I'm offended at there being an ad for an adult store or anything, but it's just really offputting? I guess? to hear about some buy one get one on adult toys or whatever while I'm eating.
I don’t listen to Spanish music, and I don’t speak Spanish. Multiple times when I had my free Spotify it would randomly decide that I would get all of my ads in Spanish that week. No idea why. My first thought was that my account had been hacked and someone changed my language - but nope, Spotify just doesn’t know my demographic.
I have since upgraded to premium.
I definitely won't get the only product they advertise to me. I already have Google Play Music, and just use(d) Spotify occasionally for discovery and when people link to playlists.
I suppose nobody is advertising to Australia then.
Why not? I don't understand the problem with a condom ad.
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.
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.
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.
Why not just pay for it!?
Personally, I pay for Spotify and use it constantly to listen to everything from game and movie soundtracks (and covers), rock and metal bands, EDM, indie, pop, and more obscure instrumental music.
I understand if you mostly listen to a few bands from the era you grew up in, or don't listen to music too often at all, it might make more sense to keep a paid music collection and use Spotify less frequently (and justify using the free version), but if I paid for all of the music I listen to individually, it would easily rack up to something like 10 times (or more) the amount my yearly Spotify does. IMO, if you aren't a "power user," use a different streaming service or buy your music individually.
I think privacy is what the majority of people who use these blockers are trying to get. I know that is the reason I use ad blockers at least. I do have a right to privacy, and the amount of information advertisers can learn about me though meta data is a serious violation of that privacy. Unfortunately with targeted advertising, then line between ads and tracking has disappeared, they are one and the same. And yes, I am aware that a lot of advertisers allow you to disable targeted ads- however they still collect the same amount of information, they just claim not to use it for their ad choices.
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.
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
Users: Blocks known malware vector.
Spotify and 'the usual' HN crowd: shocked_pikachu.jpg
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I am very interested to hear a more qualified interpretation of the situation.
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
Would you thing it was more ethical if Spotify just got rid of the free option completely?
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)
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. 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.
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.
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.
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-Incre... (notice it has _451 pages_ of comments)
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.
. 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!
~$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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
(In my social circles, avid consumers subscribe to Spotify by default. Several even subscribe to both Spotify and Apple Music.)
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?
There's also the possibility this is just talk to keep the advertisers happy.
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.)
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.
Smile everybody! We’re gonna be in a 30th century encylopiedia article about the stupidity of the 21th century..
I've been a paying member for a few years now.
Curious if they will block paid users too.
All these people up in arms about ad-blockers on Spotify are just trying to justify being cheap.
[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/spotify-disables-modified-apps-m...
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.
If they did start shooting ads at me, I'd cancel in a flash, same goes for Netflix etc.
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.
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.
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.
Spotify must be trying to bury some other bad news to their investors.
Where is this arms race headed?
