Ads on podcasts with Premium Subscription

[SpazeBear]

Hi, i have been a Premium subscriber for years, but the pasts few months i have been getting Ads on podcasts and its been getting more and more frequent.

I am not talking about sponsor reads (where the podcaster reads out a sponsor message), i am talking about Ads from my own country that pops up during the podcast.

At first it was maybe 2 Ads per podcast, one at the start and one at the end. But now they appear every 10-20 minutes during.

I have checked my Premium subscription and all payments has been succesful. It happens on all platforms, Android and windows.

I am from Denmark and all the ads are in Danish.

The only podcast where i dont get these ads is Louder With Crowder, but every other podcasts does have all these ads.

With all these ads i see less and less of a reason to continue as a Premium user, i pay to use this platform without ads but i get more and more.

Plan

Premium

Country

Denmark

Device

Samsung Galaxy S21

Operating System

Android

[Maxim]

Hey @SpazeBear,

Thanks for coming to the Community.

Spotify advertises that a Premium user can listen to music without ad interruptions, which is one of the key benefits of a Premium subscription. However, podcasts for both free and Premium users may include ads, and they can be either host-read endorsements, sponsorships or audio adverts within the podcast track itself.

A special feature is available that can dynamically insert ads within a podcast stream. This can be enabled or disabled by the podcast publishers. The desire here is to provide some added value for those who want to host their podcasts on Spotify.

The teams at Spotify understand that there might be some confusion on the fact that Premium comes with ad free music listening, but doesn't cover podcasts.

Hopefully this explanation provides you with a better understanding of the Premium subscription and the ads that you listened to. Apologies if this was not made sufficiently clear before.

Spotify cares about their users' opinion and they're doing their best to expand on the information sources available to be more transparent 🙂

[R5N250E24]

This information should be inside the subscription information, that ad-free does not include all podcasts, as it's not exactly a logical conclusion and quite an irritating experience.

Though i do understand why it works this way. 

[SpazeBear]

Thank you for the reply.

With the amount of ads present and the price for spotify as it is, i dont see any reason to continue as a paying member.

[Philf84]

Can we get a response from someone that actually works at Spotify?

I've had a subscription for about a year now and never had an ad in any of the podcasts that I was listening to and today all of a sudden there were ads at the start of it. And no baloney of Spotify gives the podcast publishers the ability to enable or disable the ads, we are talking about an american podcast with 5 to 7 minute episodes that suddenly have local spanish ads, and mind you my account is in Hungary.

Just want to know why this was decided now and when will it be removed again as it is totally unacceptable no matter if they say "oh you get ad free music, but not podcasts", well I did have ad free podcasts so what changed?

[Geek22]

I am also getting ads on podcasts, why? I am a premium member

It was a "Xero" ad in the middle of the podcast.

[Chloem1]

So effing annoying!!! Sick of these effing ads when we pay PREMIUM RATES!! fix it Spotify! 

[JoanneHere]

I completely understand why podcasts have ads, and this comment is not to complain that they exist. 

But holy moly, you'd think the dynamically inserted ads would be better. I was just listening to a podcast episode, and the exact same local ad played back-to-back 3 times!! And then a 4th and 5th time not even 5 minutes later! Absolutely horrendous listening experience.