Turn down the volume of loud ads

[fractalblaze]

Prevent ads from being louder than the song that came before it. I know the point of the ads is to annoy us into paying up, but it can be very painful to turn on some relaxing tunes after school/work, turn up the volume a bit to hear the quieter details, and then have a surprise advertisement blaring some awful hiphop noise or a screaming spokesman blast 5 times louder than the song. Just normalize the volume of ads so that they aren't louder than the song they follow. Ads should be the same volume as the music.

This can be implemented by having an internal variable to measure the average volume within the song, and then set the ad's volume to that **bleep**. This way, classical concertos are recognized at the lower volume they are, and the next ad won't be 5 times louder than the loudest part of the song. Or just have a "advertisement volume equalizer" checkbox somewhere in the account settings. Or let us turn up the volume for just one particular quiet song within a playlist, so that everything else plays at normal volume.

To all fellow Free users, please take my survey on what you do when an ad is BLASTED at you- I'm sending the responses to the companies being promoted by obnoxious ads, to let them know that loud ads reflect badly on them when we rip off our headphones. Also, contact the companies whose ads are BLASTED at you, and ask them to tell Spotify not to blast their ads. Shari's Berries apologized to us, and a McDonalds rep said they only design ads. Keep it up! Contact the marketing department of these companies and politely ask them to demand a normal volume for their ad.

Update Sept 27, 2017: Thank you so much for taking my survey about how you react to loud ads - it has 1,571 responses! Here are the results - please show these to companies whose ads are blasted at you!

 How Spotify users react to loud ads

Answers to Other (Please specify)
10/14/2014 1:11 PM: I tear my headphones off, then lower volume on spotify, then press play (cause lowering volume to bareable pauses the ad), wait for it to finish then pause the song after the ad so I can turn the volume up again

10/1/2014 4:29 PM: I take my ear buds out, then stop listening to the service. I **bleep** my hearing.

9/26/2014 12:12 PM: Contact the company and point out that I am going to avoid their products until their ads are played at a reasonable level.

9/20/2014 12:06 PM: click on the ad thumbnail, because it makes the ad stop playing

9/18/2014 11:25 AM: go to youtube or my ipod and listen to music from my playlists

6/9/2014 5:51 AM: have a hotkey and i mute it completely, then there is a timer that umutes it after 1 minute (only for loud ads)

4/14/2014 8:47 AM: turn off, switch to itunes

3/18/2014 1:27 PM: Remove headphones to avoid inner ear damage AND lower the volume on my device + lower the volume on Spotify to avoid annoying my coworkers, as the ads can be heard across the office because they're so LOUD

[user-removed]

I'm in Albuquerque, NM. There are far too many ads, that are significantly louder than the previous song, for me to remember them.

[4754]

Tiaa commercial and target are very loud

[Kathleenbennett]

YEs please, I imagine it is actually dangerous to have in expectant loud noises coming into people ears through headphones. Please Spotify, the random loud ads are not cool!

[Mserres91]

So a placating post from February says they added an equalizer to ad volume but the comment stream is still very alive so I'm call Bull Spit on that. The users shouldn't have to report each and every company whose ads are too loud. Corporations are like a Hydra, cut one head off and two more rise up. Spotify should actually fix the problem. I'm going back to Pandora until I hear that spotify can play their ads at the same volume level as my music. Sure Pandora has ads and way less control, but at least when I play fun music at work, my coworkers and customers (some quite young) aren't suddenly interrupted by women screaming about their period pains and going into great detail on what that is like (I'm a guy). And as many people have pointed out, these ads are at least 3x as loud as the music. I wouldn't be as mad if my music could play as loud as the ads. 

I will miss you spotify, unfortunately I can't upgrade to premium because I can't get a bank account open and I'm on the verge of homelessness. I really wish it were you playing music to comfort me on my financial decline, but your ads are just too damned loud . 

[capnJackSparrow]

Volume normalization is broken, I still get a lot of very loud ads, usually for bands touring

[mmarchin]

The volume for the BMWi commercial in Kansas City is too loud.

[capnJackSparrow]

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@mmarchin wrote:

The volume for the BMWi commercial in Kansas City is too loud.

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Same here

[capnJackSparrow]

Vans Warped Tour is also WAY too loud

[bp64165285]

The current crop of ads are getting bad again on this subject.

By far the worst offender is that Desperados advert, but there are quite a lot, enough to suspect that Spotify's PR 'Starus Update' is probably just PR that's not based in reality.

[capnJackSparrow]

Even the spotify ads are loud enough that I can pop off the head phones and wait for them to go silent.