How can I stop getting in-app recommendations?

[johnwastle]

I've attached an example of some Direct marketing sent my way.

How can I stop it?

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

Device

IPhone 12

Operating System

iOS 17.1

[johnwastle]

Hey folks!

Just a follow-up here 🙂

Regarding the in-app messages with a 'Sponsored Recommendation' tag:

You’ll see them for artists you follow or listen to a lot and they will only appear when you first navigate to Home. They won’t interrupt your music listening experience. 

Opting out of them is possible for Premium subscribers. To do so -  tap on What's this? the next time you receive a notification. From there you can stop them from showing for the artist you've received the notification from, or stop them showing altogether. 
 
Regarding the in-app concert recommendations:

It is not possible to turn off in-app concert recommendations (or any other in-app messages in general), unlike email and push notifications which are sent outside of the app and can be turned off.

Hope this clears things up!

[j-mma_pt7e8g]

So Spotify's position is "sucks to be you" and this cannot be turned off in-app? I'm fluid and will simply move to Apple Music, I don't care.

[#4]

I have turned off recommended songs on my playlists but they still pop up and it's annoying

[Eddy_bola]

It’s very frustrating. My solution was to stop following the artists. Seems like an opposite result, but if that is what it takes…

[OffLuffy]

Plan

Premium Family

Country

United States

Device

Google Pixel 7 Pro

Operating System

Android 14

My Question or Issue

Why am I getting banner ads in various places with ads to buy tickets when I pay to not have ads? I have every single category of notification disabled in settings and I still get this nonsense taking up screen space. Is this somehow not an ad? Each time I see one of these, it pushes me closer to tidal.

  

[blauesauto]

Yes this is outrageous! I am paying to listen to music and Spotify dares to show me ads I apparently can’t opt out of.  The whole “your library” area is a private zone. Ads there are an absolute no go / must always be opt in! If this is not fixed soon I’ll switch to Apple Music.

[MisterBooze]

I was about to cancel my subscription on the spot when they pulled this garbage on me.  Nothing personal to the artist, but I pay for this service and think I shouldn’t have to sift through sponsored content.  I blocked Taylor Swift as a result of this, and I know that’s a metric Spotify tracks, so hopefully enough people do this that they get the point.

[blauesauto]

Does not work for me. I get recommendations for artists I don’t follow. I have saved songs from them though

[treizh]

The whole point of paying premium is not getting adds.

[Makon06]

Getting the same thing. Between the constant and unwelcome UI changes, getting concert ads despite paying for no ads, having audiobooks and podcasts I don't care about shoved down my throat, I am getting incredibly sick of Spotify's **bleep**.

[Tomatoer]

The same here in Warsaw, Poland. I believe this is against GDPR because I have opted out any form of marketing. I think we should start to notify the authorities in each EU country, because it is becoming clear that Spotify is doing this illegally, on purpose and is fully aware that it is illegal.

[zuilkowski_]

This is primarily a UX issue. Often this banner pops up simultaneously when I am trying to tap or interact with something else. Because it shifts things around it often causes me to tap the wrong thing. I don't mind knowing about concerts I would be interested in but I DO mind when your interaction design is directly responsible for making your product harder for me to use.

Please either find a better interaction design for this or build a dedicated section that I can view live concert recommendations. As it stands now this feature is just profoundly annoying.

[johnwastle]

I think Tomatoer is right about GDPR.

I have written to the Data Protection Officer at Spotify to ask for an explanation. My email of 19 December has been acknowledged, but I have yet to get a reply.

I will update the thread when I get a response.

[legendozixtynin]

True where to do this 

[oortone]

Plan

Premium

Country

Sweden

Device

iPhone 13

Operating System

17.2.1 (and earlier too)

My Question or Issue

In Settings>Notifications (meddelanden) I have turned everyting off. The iOS has been restarted many times since then.

Still I get this annoying advertisment (same every time) for some concert in April (started months ago). It's in the upper part of the window, and is closed by an X.

I'm pretty sure it comes from Spotify, doesn't look like an Apple notification and I only get it in Spotify, usually a while after starting it/starting to listen/interacting. 

Why are not my notification settings working? Is there some other place the setting for these notifications can be found?

[toucanstubs]

Spotify’s CEO is getting far too greedy. Y’all already pay the artists the lowest percentage out of all the streaming platforms, and it’s not enough? In the last year there have been updates which broke the whole platform such as the lovely “crash after playing 5 songs” feature, UI changes which make my main screen look like it was designed by EA to push “surprise mechanics”, and now constant ads for concerts despite having all the “settings” turned off. Did the CEO’s highschool aged nephew that was hired to design the app as an “internship opportunity” break it again or is Spotify just now willfully ignoring its customers? I dropped Netflix for these shenanigans and have no problem migrating to Tidal or Apple Music.

[Robnice]

This does not work. I will cancel my subscription if this persists. I pay for an ad free experience. 

[onlytocomplain]

Let's do that. **bleep**ing software companies think they're beyond the law

[fo0bar]

1. Please let us turn this off. It's the worst.

[storybrooke]

So frustrating! I unfollowed the artist I kept getting this notification for (not ideal but I was so sick of it popping up). I thought I had fixed it but no! A couple weeks later, got it again for the same artist! Checked and I’m still not following them. Come on… I pay for no ads, I’m not following the artist… I absolutely should not have to deal with this ad.

[oortone]

I think I will contact the artist in question. I don't think they now that their advertising campaign is causing this trouble for their listeners.

And I don't get why Spotify has settings so I can personalize my notifications and then it does not work. How hard can it be? Almost no other software (apart from Microsoft chaos at work) is unable to let me personalize notifications.