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

[ben_de_vette]

Here in the Netherlands we here the Add of Telfort and many others which are way louder than the music we are listening (and we are listening to Metalica, Muse, Five Finger death punch, disturbed, etc.

[summerlcaton]

I was having a huge problem with this because I'd be listening to soothing music while I was sleeping at night, I'd wake up alll the time to hear a loud spokesperson or loud beats and I recently cracked my phone because the ad scared the **bleep** out of me and I thew it across the room. I got really fed up with it this evening and decided I'd see if anyone else has had the same problem. Currently almost 1 am and I am so angry with Spotify. They used to be my favorite music player, but now I think I'll just start using something else. It's unfortunate that such a good app cannot regulate the volume of their ads. Thanks anyways.

[mrryc]

There is no way volume has been equalized for ads. Almost every ad is considerably louder than the music volume, some are painfully louder. I'm in Virginia and recently there's a slew of Cap Center ads that are so loud I have to check if my ears are bleeding every time they come on and they're just talking, no sound effects. O'Reilys is repeat offender I see mentioned here too... 

Spotify, this is absolutely obnoxious, and potentially dangerous, get control of it. This thread is from 2012 and rather than fix the problem over 6 years, you just keep re-directing post after post to a common thread where nothing is done. There are thousands of comments on this matter in god knows how many threads. Perhaps someone needs to SCREAM IT IN YOUR EAR

[Keeper3945]

"DaveSmith.com" ad for pre-owned vehicles is much too loud! Heard via Spotify Desktop app.

Sounds almost double the volume of previous songs thatve played.

[Ahnyeong]

So, I'm coming back after my last comment like 2-3 years ago because it's still the same thing. The volume on my ads have been so loud I have to take my headhpones off because they hurt my ears so badly (I'm using 33% PC volume, 100% spotify volume) My music is by no means loud, but these ads are so painful. The thread says it is implemented, but I'm pretty sure that's a lie. There must be some QA checks before you play ads, please check the volume on them as well. About to stop using spotify and just use youtube instead.

[ben_de_vette]

On Windows 10, I enabled the "Loadness Equalization".

This can be found at Properties of your output device / Enhancements.

This works pretty well, because the peak volume is always the same.

One drawback is that songs like the bolero are louder as they should be.

[deftware]

The ad for getting tickets to a November 13th show at Golden 1 Center starts with blaring distorted guitars and was clearly way louder than the other ads and the songs I have been listening to. I have volume normalization enabled but my ears still weren't spared from the ad's sonic wrath 😞

[Ultranuma]

Please remove the ad with the car horns. It's dangerous. I just heard it again today. Thankfully not while I was driving.

[12124992811]

I stopped using Spotify about a year ago because of this exact issue. Today I came back because I missed the variety and matching algorithms that Spotify uses to help me find more music--and I almost uninstalled again thanks to ad from Estrella Jalisco about bringing bitter beer to a party. I am in the Dallas metro area. My ears are still ringing. 

Thank you for taking steps to resolve the overly-loud-advertisments issue. This is unacceptable and dangerous behavior on behalf of the advertisiers. 

[kuronova]

The ad for Gary Clark Jr's tour is considerably louder than the rest of spotify content for me.  It feels like I have to lower the volume 50% to get it to the same volume as the music.