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

[Ilja2]

Can you screen the ads from now on and run them through the limiter if necessary?

Nothing against commercials, but often they are much louder than the music. For example AH, Disney, King Toto, Tele2. Examples of good advertisements are your own advertisements for Premium, Mazda, and Ben.

The Spotify setting Normalize volume does not work on advertisements.

[Ilja2]

Hello Alex, THX! for the link, I treasure it in my bookmarks.

Here in Holland by law commercials on TV and radio are bound to comply to the European Broadcasting Union guideline EBU R 128 S3. Since 2011. Something similar is also by law in the USA.

Here is the link within a link to the full PDF:

https://tech.ebu.ch/publications/r128s3

For Internetradio, DAB+, digital streams like Spotify, it's still regulated voluntary.

It's also of interest for the advertisers: Everyone hits the killswitch when a commercial is to loud.

At least I do... 🤗

[Ilja2]

Hello Alex, THX! for the link, I treasure it in my bookmarks.

Here in Holland by law commercials on TV and radio are bound to comply to the European Broadcasting Union guideline EBU R 128 S3. Since 2011. Something similar is also by law in the USA.

Here is the link within a link to the full PDF:

https://tech.ebu.ch/publications/r128s3

For Internetradio, DAB+, digital streams like Spotify, it's still regulated voluntary.

It's also of interest for the advertisers: Everyone hits the killswitch when a commercial is to loud.

At least I do... 🤗

[globnomulous]

Advertisements are -- on spotify as everywhere else -- almost always louder than what they interrupt. Their audio is also tuned in ways that further increase their perceived loudness: both the treble and the bass are significantly boosted. It makes sense, because ads are intended to draw the listener's attention, but it's also obnoxious, jarring, and unpleasant.

I recently let my Spotify subscription lapse because of Spotify's continuing support for COVID misinformation. The volume and audio tuning of advertisements and announcements is not just preventing me from signing back up for premium but driving me off the platform.

So my suggestions are:

1. Apply album-level volume normalization to advertisements, regardless of whether the user has enabled the feature, so that the listening experience is less unpleasant.

2. Impose strict standards on audio tuning in advertisements, barring advertisers from artificially boosting frequencies that grab the attention of listeners.