[All Platforms] No Ads in Podcasts for Spotify Premium users

[Montesi]

I pay for my subscription. Every month for years now. The main reason I am a paid-for subscriber with Spotify is so I don't have to hear ads. As I have shifted my podcast listening from other providers to Spotify to bypass ads, both from the platform as well as integrated into the content.

I expect not to hear ads on Spotify. I understand there are ads woven into the actual content of the podcast itself, but for as big of a company and the amount of leverage Spotify has, I expect to not hear ads so long as I am paying for the service.

I reached out to Spotify and got this lazy, generic answer from Joy in Spotify Customer Support: “if you're hearing ads on podcasts using this Premium account. It's possible that the podcaster integrated that ads to their podcast content”. Thanks for breaking your back on that response.

I KNOW what the ads I’m hearing are. And I understand they can’t ask podcasters to export two versions, one with integrated ads and one without. What I expect from Spotify is to either implement metadata that tags the beginning and ending of ad segments and bypass them for us, Premium subscribers, or require podcasters to give metadata timecodes that Spotify can identify to bypass them AUTOMATICALLY.

Just to be clear, even if these identifiers are put into the content, I don’t want to have to pull my phone out to hit any sort of “skip ads” button. This is literally the ONLY reason users have Premium. So get rid of the ads. It’s actually very simple. And let’s not get started on how archaic it is to continually hit the “15sec forward” button to bypass the ads, first over shooting, then undershooting the duration of the integrated ad, only to have to make peace with hearing the last ten seconds of the ad. At that point it’s not servicing either party in the transaction.

It’s 2020. You are a huge company with a lot of leverage and a huge developer budget. I honestly can’t believe I’m even having to write this suggestion.

tl:dr - Spotify, I am a Premium member. You made a promise to me that if I became a Premium member, I wouldn’t hear ads. I’m hearing ads on podcasts. Integrated or not, I don’t care. You have the technology and power to fix it. So fix it. And make it automatic. It’s 2020.

[Kdramalove208]

I'd like to offer some more facts for everyone to think about. Podcast's are completely different from ad free music. All podcast's everywhere, even with a paid subscription still have the podcast creator's ad placement that they control on their own show. They can put it in at random times throughout the the show. The podcaster's also want to be paid for their work. No one want to do work and not get paid. This is their livelihood and they have family's and need an income to live too. Then why would anyone create podcasts or provide a music service if they did it for free. Nothing is free. Nothing anywhere. Even if it's free to you, someone has already paid for it somewhere before you got it. Ads are a staple for any type of media since radio and TV became available to households. Commercials, banners etc. Money is how the world works. Spotify would need to have an entire new department with PAID employees to go through the thousands of podcasts and edit out every part of the show that has random ads placed. This costs a huge amount of money. If you want the current subscription rate to increase by a huge dollar amount say, $16.99 goes up to $35.99 a month to pay for Spotify to get paid employees to work in taking out the few ads that they place at the beginning of a podcast, that you can actually just forward through on your own without listening. It's not that hard. At least there IS a fast forward option on podcasts to do this. I would rather pay a cheaper subscription to listen to music than pay a huge amount that I could not afford for both music and podcasts to be ad free. I think the service and all the effort of what these platforms give us is fantastic. BTW, I absolutely despise ads. I hate them!! Paying a fixed cost (that hopefully won't keep increasing) for ad free music is a luxury for me. I listen to the music more than podcasts but I also listen to the podcasts. It's not a big deal to have someone talking about an ad that is already a talk show. It's more tolerable than disruptive talking ads in between my songs or music. That grates on my nerves.

[tifa8572]

Absolute nonsense.
If you’re a podcast producer by all means insert ads to generate revenue. I don’t think anyone has an issue with that.
However, if Spotify stream those podcasts, they should be ad free otherwise the producers are in effect receiving a second payment from Spotify.
This of course is at the expense of those who pay for Spotify Premium and for an ad free subscription.
As for the difficulty of editing ads out of podcasts, I can understand that, but it doesn’t have to be done retrospectively!
It doesn’t matter which way you look at this, it’s incredibly sharp practice by Spotify (who I will shortly be leaving) and greed on the podcasters behalf.
Sadly I’ve now stopped listening to Spotify podcasts and now use the ad free BBC offerings.

[Cienea]

Greetings

As the other before me, i am getting adds on podcast despite having a running Premium subscription.

They are not present on the PC version of Spotify, wich let me believe they are ads added by Spotify before the Podcast itself.

Is this normal ?

[Canadianmilk]

Just so you are aware, Spotify does have the ability to take out ads. There is an option for podcast creators to opt into ads on Spotify. Podcasts who opt out of ads often will read their own ads, at the correct time, with the same tone of voice and volume they were using for the podcast.

Podcasts doing their own ad reads is not what people are upset about. People are upset over Spotify claiming it has no control over ads, when in reality it is placing its own ads separately into the clip. These are ads that are local to your area, and are current (limited time sales in your area can be advertised to you). These are obviously not read out by the podcast creators, and often are a seperate clip embedded with its own label "advertisement from Toyota/McDonald's."

This amounts to Spotify not only lying by saying they have no control, but also taking money from advertisements as well as from premium subscribers. What premium subscribers want is to have the ad free experience they pay for. Spotify is constantly increasing their prices, lying to say they can't make profits otherwise, despite showing record profits of billions.

It's important to keep companies like this accountable. They do not care about you. They will not change until they are legally forced to. Record profits are not sustainable, and should NOT be the main goal of a company.

Spotify, you need to fix this.

[vbigfish]

My particular problem is ads appearing in an audio book, that happens to be a podcast, though it's difficult to tell. These ads wake me up.

But most people here are complaining that their ad-free service has ads. An ad-free service should not have ads. Simple. Its a lie! 

Spotify could re-name their ads-free service as 'almost ads-free', or 'ads-free except for podcasts', you know, not sell a service that isn't what is says it is.

[Lime_Papi]

I don't see anyone here complaining about a podcaster reading out their own ad as part of their podcast audio file. It's up to a podcaster to decide if this is what they want to do with THEIR podcast episode, and if some listeners don't like it, they can choose to not subscribe to that podcast. On YouTube you have creators reading out ads as part of their video. It can be annoying but I am fine with it, because I respect that creators can choose to make more money this way. Note that I do not pay for YT.

The issue is with Spotify inserting their own ads during my listening to a podcast. I don't know what happened on screen because I was listening only whilst doing some things around the house, but suddenly the podcast audio was stopped and I started hearing an ad from some kind of company (not sure what it was but it sounded like one of those gambling ads). Spotify advertises itself as an ad-free experience to paying customers so IMO as a paying customer, every kind of content they offer should be ad-free. Seems like Spotify want to just make even more money so they've decided that they can do this by placing ads on podcasts and change the wording of their advertising to 'ad-free music'... Seems kind of scammy to me, like selling a service to people as "unlimited drinks refill" and then later saying "only for soda pop, not for juice".

I don't know what you're trying to tell me with your long comment about Spotify having to hire people to take out ads, that's not at all what people here are talking about. Did you read any of the comments in this thread?

[Kdramalove208]

Yes. I agree with your comment. Audio books are not podcasts and they
should absolutely be ad free. I also read another saying that local ads are
appearing on podcasts as well. That is also wrong for Spotify to do. Very
wrong. That should never happen to an ad free service. However, my entire
point for my original comment was to help others understand that podcasts
are a different entity than music and audiobooks. The podcast authors use
their own voice to talk about their own sponsorship for their own program.
I just don't know how the podcaster could edit that out for free ad
services to let Spotify be ad free on podcasts. I don't know what type of
contracts or payments are involved with this between the companies. If
there is a way to do ad free podcasts it would be extra work for someone
that would need to get paid. Which is why I said nothing is free.This will
increase our monthly payment of Spotify subscription plans. When the
podcasters' ads with their own voice are not that hard to fast forward
through at the beginning or end of a podcast.

[Kdramalove208]

I'm on our side. I hate ads. Hate them!! If a company is being sneaky
about it, then that is not OK. By putting ads in audiobooks or local ads in
podcasts that are truly annoying, loud production made commercials. That's
very wrong.
I know how business works. Everyone wants to make a lot of money. Someone
is going to pay for ad free podcasts but it's not going to be them
(Spotify) that pay for it. They will make the users pay for it. The money
has to come from somewhere. Where?? From us. I don't want our
subscription rates to go sky high because podcasters insert their own voice
for their own sponsorships in their podcasts. They need to make money to
provide that service to you. Or Spotify can raise our subscription prices
to make that happen. I don't know what the contracts are between the
companies. So it's hard to say for sure if they can be completely adfree
podcasts but still remain with the same cost of our current subscription
services. I'm just saying someone has to do the work and get paid. They
aren't going to do it for free. We will pay for it.

[Jaime83]

This is not a solution is a take it or leave it. Podcast was always included without ads

[Slurpan]

I pay to not have to listen to adds. I listen to pods here on Spotify and you have added adds?? Why is louder usually contains music and quite often don't match what I'm listening to so it's really disruptive!! This is absurd! I have premium and that should be without adds!!