Premium Subscription: Forced to listen to ads???

[EvenNumbers]

Hi community,

As a long-standing premium subscriber, I genuinely enjoy listening to podcasts without advertisments and any form of interruptions. 
Recently, listening to "The Daily" by the NYT, there was a one minute add break that I could not skip using the "browse forward/backward by 15 secs buttons".

To me, this is utterly unacceptable and I would like to see those restrictions removed ASAP. Otherwise, I will start looking for alternatives. As I am sure I am not the only one here, Spotify should really reconsider how they treat their customers: Focus on service rather than milking us to the moon. 15€ per month is not an unsubstantial amount of money and well spent somewhere else if you start dictating my time. Is this 1984? 

I am shocked that I have to actually spend time posting this issue - I would rather post it in r/a$$wholedesign! 

Looking forward to hearing from the Spotify team back as soon as possible. In the mean time, I will explore possible alternatives if this is actually by design and not by mistake!

Best, 

Evennumbers

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Android, iPhone, and Desktop

[Billy-J]

Hey @EvenNumbers, thanks for reaching out to the Community!

I am sorry to hear you're feeling this way. 

Spotify doesn't play ads that interrupt the music listening experience, however, some podcasts may include advertising, host-read endorsements, or sponsorship messages.

There is some more information on podcasts here. 

I hope this helps but don't hesitate to reply if you have any more questions!

[EvenNumbers]

Hi Billy,

Thanks for getting back to me. I understand that media creation, art, journalism isn't free to produce. 

But with all due respect, arguing that the artists chose to embed ads completely missed the point. I DO endorse placing ads as long as I have the freedom to skip them as I choose. 

It is YOUR (Spotify's) functionality that blocks skipping ads and it is your earning model that puts creators in a predicament needing to fall back on using those a$$hole design revenue models as you seem to fail to pass down the appropriate share of what I pay to Spotify.

You have all the listening statistics, make sure to compensate creators sufficiently and don't call a product premium if, in fact, it is just another way to milk its customers. 

Give me back my freedom to control what I want to listen to - like already have been able to back in the 90's with an OG recorder!

Please consider replying with a solution rather than excuses and feel free to escalate this up the command chain. Happy to provide input!

Best,

Evennumbers 

[CarlosE]

Hey there @EvenNumbers,

Thanks for keeping in touch.

We'll be happy to explain a bit more about this. The podcast creators or hosts are given the option to choose if they would like to have a dynamic ad slot in their podcast. You can find more info on this here.

It's up to the individual podcast owners if they choose to have that type of ad in their content, so this isn't controlled by Spotify nor the ads are played from Spotify's end.

There's currently an idea about this, so we recommend checking it out here. You can add your +Vote and comments to show your support and input on this, which we always take into consideration. You can also Subscribe to it to be on top of any updates.

You can learn more about how ideas reach the right teams here.

We hope this sheds some light on the matter. If you have any questions or need anything else, give us a shout.

Cheers.

[EvenNumbers]

Hi Carlos,

Thanks for pointing me into the direction of a new proposal. I sure did vote on that one.

Coming back to my initial point though: Spotify chooses to add functionality to their system. If you choose to add a "no skip functionality" for ads, than you sure have a stake in the whole issue - please do not frame the situation as if it were only the podcast creators. 

Sure, they are partly to blame and be sure that I have already sent feedback their way. 

But to sum it up: On the technical end, you allow ads to be "unskipable". In doing so, you promote those practices that thwart the very idea of a premium product: absolute freedom to choose what to listen to and to skip ahead and/or back as one chooses.

Please acknowledge that in your chain of arguments, currently, it is flawed the way you are putting it. 

And to be very clear: If a third party podcast provider choses to add advertisments and/or speaker-announced endorsements, I am content with the practice and happy to listen or skip as I freely choose. I just hate the poor design choice of blocking the skip functionality. This post isn't even as radical in what it asks for compared to the "no ads in podcasts" post as I understand that content creators sometimes rely on ads.

Thanks,

Evennumbers