Ads playing on Podcasts

[HannahL1999]

I am a premium user and have had a premium account for 7 years. Up until recently there were no ads with podcasts and now there are ad interruptions during and after each episode. Why have ads been added when I am a premium user and am paying specifically to not have ads

Premium/Canada

Device: Galaxy s20FE

[Maxim]

Hey @HannahL1999,

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 🙂