Comment by prawn
1 month ago
Can't stand behaviour like this.
I pay for Spotify and the app now shows paid suggestions (cough ads), to paying users. When you tap the ellipsis and choose "Not interested", it doesn't respond with "OK, we'll stop" but something like 'We'll show less of this'.
No, don't show less, I want you to not show it at all.
I switched away from Spotify a couple of years ago because of this, after having been a paying customer for around 10 years.
But I fear all such services will eventually succumb to this, given just how much more lucrative ads can be compared to subscriptions.
I did the same, and switched to Apple Music. Soon after that, Apple Music started injecting their F1 movie soundtrack into suggested music for me. There really is no escape from this. They haven't done it since, so at least it's not as bad as what Spotify does. If I come across a good offline music player for iOS I will probably cancel my Apple Music subscription.
Is suggested music not already an ad? Why not just listen to your library?
That's not an ad and sounds like a you problem. I've never had the F1 soundtrack being played on radio/random and I do listen to a lot of soundtracks.
Last time I checked the sky tv financials, subscription revenue outweighed advertising revenue about 10:1, is for every £30 subscription they took £3 in adverts.
I guess that's part of the sentiment for the current resurgence of physical media, specifically vinyl and CDs. It's refreshing to be able to just enjoy media without mega corporations tracking your listening habits or serving you ads.
Might seem funny for some more senior readers, but as somebody who almost exclusively only listened to music through MP3s and streaming, I found the included artwork and other goodies in vinyl / CDs to be incredible. Who would have known that my favorite albums often had not just album covers, but lyrics sheets and entire booklets filled with interesting trivia and additional artwork?
NFL RedZone, the ad-free premium tv channel now shows ads for sports betting
I imagine a modern hacker needs to basically shun all fo mainstream media to get away from such behavior. No Google, no Meta, no Microsoft, etc. apparently no Smart devices either.
my XM app with a paid subscription now has in-app popups advertising concerts. it sucks.
I will say that they’re typically concerts related to the channel I am on, but there is no world in which I want to attend live music, and of course there’s no way to tell them that. so I have to tolerate getting interrupted periodically despite already paying them.
I was also infuriated by this, so much so that I switched to TIDAL. Migrating was easy— I used their recommended webapp ti migrate all my playlists. Have been using TIDAL happily ever since. Never any popups or ads.
I unsubscribed from Spotify for this very reason.