Spotify Premium Podcast ads inserted by Spotify

[therealrebs]

I have Spotify Premium and I've been getting ads within podcasts and the podcast creators said some of them are being inserted by Spotify (and quite poorly in fact).  Here was my journey to the truth.

1. I first became suspicious when I noticed ads cutting off podcast speakers mid-word.  By the time the podcasters came back from the commercial break the topic sometimes felt lost and the break seemed very detrimental to the program.  In addition, some podcasters would take a supported sponsor break shortly after the commercial.  
2. One commercial for McD (which *somewhat* surprised me for this small podcast) was at the very end of the podcast.  I didn't listen to the entire commercial because the podcast was over.  I stopped about halfway through the commercial and went to a completely different podcast.  Guess what? The new podcast started by playing that commercial immediately where I had stopped.
3. I used another application St...... and listened to the same podcasts and there were no random commercials inserted mid-word / sentence.  Yes some podcasts still had their sponsors, but no additional commercials were added.
4. Finally, I contacted the podcasters via Twitter and told them about my experience.  Needless to say they did not support adding these commercials nor are they getting revenue from them.

This is a very disappointing trend and although I haven't cancelled my subscription I'm now going to start listening to my podcasts on a different service.  

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Note 9

Operating System

Android Oreo

My Question or Issue

[osornios]

Hey @therealrebs 

Do you get email receipts for your subscription purchases? Search for one of them in your email account. In it, the Spotify username you're paying for is shown:

Username/ID:        xxxxxxx

Logout of the app, and be sure to use that username to login to your account. It's the one with the Premium features.

You can login to the website with that username to check the status of your subscription, and your receipts.

Hope it helps. 🙂

[GabrielTojo]

I have the same experience.

[Alex]

Hi there @GabrielTojo,

Thanks for joining this thread.

We'll gladly explain a bit more. While the Spotify app doesn’t play ads that interrupt the music listening experience of Premium subscribers, some podcasts on the platform may include third-party advertising, host-read endorsements or sponsorship messages in their episodes.

We're always striving to improve our users' experience and we appreciate your feedback on this. 

Other users in the Community have also expressed their desire to have a completely ad-free podcast experience. Head over to this Idea thread and add your +Vote to show support. 

 Here you can read more on how ideas work. As a heads-up, it's good to know that the higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for the idea to be implemented

Hope you find this info useful. You can always reach out if you have more questions.

[leelalynn]

I just experienced this for the first time. Listening to JRE it stopped half way in to play three different ads, all inserted by Spotify. I have a premium account.

[marcounitech]

commercials every minute, and the SAME political commercials, just listening a podcast for the first time and in 6 minutes I'm already quitting listening to podcast on Spotify, by the way i am "premium member"..... what a piece**bleep**! 

[DrunkenPixi]

I'm having the spotify ads play over the podcasts. Once the ad is done, if I rewind to hear what was said, it'll play a whole new ad in its place at the same spot.