I quite literally never listen to podcasts and have no interest in changing that, but Spotify's recently gone from putting one podcast episode at the start of my Daily Drive playlist to sprinkling four or five episodes of different playlists throughout. I skip all of these every time, but have no way to remove them from the playlist entirely. This is a problem for a couple of reasons.
One: Spotify's iOS interface won't let you skip podcasts from the lockscreen, only fast-forward in 15-second increments. I can only assume this is because Spotify's iOS interface was designed by wolves, but that's neither here nor there. In order to skip podcasts altogether, I have to unlock my phone and open the app. Let me restate that more clearly: in order to skip podcasts in Daily Drive, a playlist that is designed to be listened to while driving, you have to spend several seconds fiddling around with your phone. I assume I don't have to spell out why that's a massive problem.
And two: I'm a premium member. I pay to not have to listen to ads. And wouldn't you know it, by what I'm sure is sheer coincidence, every day at least one of the podcasts being forced into my Daily Drive just so happens to trigger an unskippable ad before the podcast will start. Having poked around on this forum for a bit, I'm sure someone's going to come in here and say "well, some Spotify podcasts just have ads attached and that's just how they work," but I don't listen to podcasts! I shouldn't be subjected to podcast ads when I don't want to be listening to the podcast in the first place!
There's a very simple fix for this: let us opt out of having podcasts in our Daily Drive. Or, you know, fix your iOS interface and turn off pre-podcast ads. I'm not picky, so long as you fix this. Now.
(And yes, I know there's a Live Idea for Daily Drive customization, but it's been there since 2019 so frankly I don't believe y'all are going to implement that ever, so in the meantime I'm going to resort to complaining in other parts of the board in the hopes that Spotify gets the **bleep**ing hint.)