Video ads way too loud

[cons7]

Listening to my music at a reasonable volume and then all of a sudden a video ad will come blaring on, seemingly at least twice as loud as my actual music volume. Loud enough to ****ing literally hurt my ears. This needs to fixed immediately. This latest update is just a mess. The lead developer and anyone who OK'd the update should be fired. The update should be rolled back until someone competent, and who also values user experience, is put in charge.

[lskeys777]

"audio track" of course.....

[ilmostro]

Not just hurt my ears - blew up a tweeter on my B&W Speakers. Legal action in the pipeline.

[luthierone · Accepted solution]

This problem was amplified (no pun intented ha) by the fact that I often listen to a genre of very quiet music like classical guitar, lute, vihuela, etc.  I've jumped out of my chair several times at work when an ad has come on after the quiet and soothing music.  It makes my blood boil every time!  I found a chrome extension (I listen to the web player) that can automatically set the volume lower on the ads in spotify.  I'm not sure I can post a link to it or not but you can easily enough search for the extension.  Here's what the extension's developer says about it:

Too loud Spotify ads? This extension help you!
You can control Spotify ads volume.

IMPORTANT! Only works with online spotify player!" 

 So far it works a treat and has made the listening experience enjoyable again.  I think spotify owes the developer of this extension some dinero haha.

[user-removed]

Thats why i dont buy it. I have nothing against ads in any reasonable form but by this solution i feel cheated and forced to buy premium, so im out, thanks spotify team, great work on that 😉

[frogleg]

emailed to complain about the volume of the ads literally causing multiple seizures a day for me and they just responded with "thanks!" and a link to this thread so... the only thing left that i can do is respond here i guess??

the ads really are too loud and i wish i was surprised that this is an old issue that still hasn't been taken care of

[ilmostro]

 I just don't use Spotify now - if they can not be arsed to listen to their users , I can't be arsed to listen to them! 

[jmb2112]

Agreed.  In my case I'm sitting here working with relaxing music playing via Spotify on my PS4... then BLAM an ad plays that is at least twice the volume of the music itself.  Completely nullifies my use of the application.  Naturally there's no other choice re: a streaming music app on the PS4 (at least to my knowledge).

I would purchase a premium subscription only for use on my PS4 since I work at home most days, however this demonstration of negligence regarding a long-standing, horrendous issue means that I will definitely not be giving Spotify my money.  Too bad, really.

[sy-yxu_asqa6h]

This is not a solution. Maximizing spotify volume does not equalize the difference between ads and music. This answer is super common though, and it's obvious spotify posts these answers to make it look like this is a user issue and not an intentionally annoying element of their free service.

[dissidentPnguin]

This doesn't work any more. Some ads are still played more than 12 dB (arounf 4 times louder) than music (heavy metal, so not exactly quiet!)

[sharp-spark]

Apparently they fixed this in February.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Implemented-Ideas/Turn-down-the-volume-of-loud-ads/idi-p/61057

But encourage people to report rogue ads there, so hopefully they are monitoring it...

[candicerose]

Date: August 16, 2018

Videos are wayyy too loud. I ride a motorcycle with ear buds everyday. When the video ads come on, it hurts my ears because its so loud! Sometimes I'm scrambling to find the cord and yank it out of my ear while im on the freeway and i cant stop to take them out. Spotify, please fix this issue. Sometimes it scares me while im riding, its really not a good idea Spotify. I cant just turn down the volume while I'm using both hands on my motorcycle. 

[lskeys777]

I'VE FOUND A SOLUTION!!!


DON'T USE SPOTIFY - THEY RIP-OFF THE ARTISTS ANYWAY


Use one of the many streaming radio services - at least the artists get paid for the radio broadcast part and radio has been around for many years and already know how to engineer commercials so they don't blow your head off.


BTW - that that voice over girl that has always done spotify adds needs to fire her under experienced, obvious boyfriend audio engineer who constantly OVER compresses her voice to the point of pain. She needs to go and whoever is behind the ads needs to go with her. They don't deserve to be working in any broadcast capacity ever. If I could start a black list they all would be at the top!

[user-removed]

Check out the FCC's rules about volume control in advertising, legally required to keep volume regulated to the medium being used.  They can cause hearing lose to people using this tatic to get you to purchase their premium content.  Should come with a warning before an Ad plays about hearing loss. 

https://www.fcc.gov/media/policy/loud-commercials

[Jeremy · Accepted solution]

Hey there folks,

Thank you for your posts in this thread.

We recommend that you head over to this thread that we actively use to report such cases.

Take care!