Yeah, corporate filters blocking a number of ad domains is quite common, and a lot of people listen to Spotify at work. This is probably going to go very badly.
> The following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever:
...
> 10. circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service;
"circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service;"
so anyone who contributes to a general-purpose adblocker like ublock origin is in violation of spoitfy's ToS? what if someone has a paid account but is also (for example) the author of pihole? that's over-reaching.
This is a good move. Even though ads are annoying and frustrating at most times it is not anybody's birth-right to use a product/service for free and block their sources of revenue. If they have a pay-to-remove-ads option, use it.
Absolutely, they have right not to serve any customer they don't want to serve. But do they have a right of tracking your actions? How would you react if there was an employee of any broadcast TV station peeking through your window to see if you're avoiding ads on their channel, and if they determine you avoid the ads, install a broadcast signal jammer near your house?
I don't like the increasingly intrusive behaviors from big tech companies, and this case with free Spotify is a good example. If they can't provide a free service without privacy intrusions, they shouldn't offer it. Radios and broadcast TV survive on ad-based model without privacy intrusions.
While I'm sure I'm in the minority, I absolutely do have the birthright to control what content appears on my device. If they want to prevent ads from being blocked, blocking me from using their service is 100% fine by me.
But that's not the same. You have the right to control your content, but that's not what's happening here. Presumably in this example you want to use Spotify (otherwise the whole conversation is moot) but they don't want to you circumvent how their service works. You're not the one controlling this situation, Spotify is.
Your statement sounds very akin to "fine, kick me out of this party I was clearly enjoying, I don't want to associate with these kind of people anyway..." which feels disingenuous.
I think you really just don't care that much about using spotify, which is a perfectly cromulent opinion.
The analogy doesn't seem right. It's more like you are at a party and the clown they hired goes on your face to yell something. You have the right to move away and enjoy the party elsewhere. And now they'll kick you out of the party if you don't allow the clown to yell at you, ok, I'll leave the party myself in that case.
more like they threw a party where you could pay a cover charge to get into the room with no clown or you could get in for free and know you had to deal with a clown. you decide to go in for free and just duck tap the clown's mouth shut because you felt you deserved to be at the party without paying and without having to deal with a clown.
Except the clown paid to host the party with the caveat that they get to yell at people. It's their party that you're getting to enjoy for free. You tried to get the benefit without any cost despite he terms being known and now the clown is kicking you out as a result.
Not the person you're responding to. That's between the clown and whoever is hosting the party. Not my problem. I'm just avoiding having the clown yell in my face, given that I also know that the clown is malicious and pulls pranks on people sometimes. Sure, I have the option of buying a card that I can show the clown that will make him go away, but I'd rather just leave instead. There are plenty of other parties out there.
Should TV networks try to block you if you don't look at the TV while ads are running? Or if you turn it off/switch channel/mute it? Same goes for newspapers and magazines - do you have a right to skip pages filled with ads and not look at them?
Not necessarily. There are free TV channels and free newspapers as well. Spotify is trying to prevent people from choosing which data packets will their devices process or not. Which is exactly the same as a publisher trying to prevent you from not looking at a page with ads, or cutting it out. In my opinion, users have a right of modifying anything they get - whether free or paid, which includes processing and filtering data that comes to their devices.
The only difference between turning off the audio and ad blocking is at which point the data gets blocked. Turning off the audio means that it gets filtered by your phone's audio processing system. Ad blocking means it gets blocked on the network level.
If you install software into your TV that blocks the ads, then they should be able to boot you off. You have a right to not listen or pay attention to ads. However, you bring up a good point with the magazines example. That opens up a whole new can of worms.
I have no beef with ads in general. But I do have a concern for user tracking. If the ads are just ads - then that is all fine and well. However, most if not all of these so called ads are tracking users across services and devices. Then 'enriching' that data with more data from other sources and selling that information about me to whoever wants it.
I think privacy is what the majority of people who use these blockers are trying to get. I know that is the reason I use ad blockers at least. I do have a right to privacy, and the amount of information advertisers can learn about me though meta data is a serious violation of that privacy. Unfortunately with targeted advertising, then line between ads and tracking has disappeared, they are one and the same. And yes, I am aware that a lot of advertisers allow you to disable targeted ads- however they still collect the same amount of information, they just claim not to use it for their ad choices.
OP was asking if it was limited to the free version, and your answer seemed to imply that the web player served ads for all versions, since it didn't specify the account type. If that wasn't the implication, then my question is no longer valid.
"on the free version of Spotify"
I block ads on everything, and everyway I can, but I do pay for my subscription.
It makes sense to block freeloaders, especially when they need to PAY some for the song one listened. It is reasonable that they get some revenue in one form or another.
On this one, I believe people should be protesting over the nature of format of ads, not the existence of ads altogether.
+1. This only seems to be applicable to free accounts, but that doesn't mean that's the way it's written. Anyone want to bite the bullet and read the legalese?
What about the Brave browser[1], which works at the application level? Or Blokada[2], which works at the OS level? Or Pi-Hole[3], which works at the network level?
As someone mentioned in another comment, I don't think they will care about how the ads are being blocked. As long as you are bypassing ads, you are in breach of their TOS.
Yea, but there is no way to distinct why ads don't reach the target, and as it's worded, they can't block service for technical difficulties but for intentional behaviour.
I haven't seen even if they specified whether it must be the account user or not. E.g. your network host or isp can do it.
So that seems interesting, unless they can do it on a whim anyways and dont have to prove anything. Though they could just say, "no free service if we cant serve ads".
They allow advertisers to run JS on your device, and ads are a trendy way to deliver malware. People are using ad blockers not just to hide annoyances and to improve performance, but to protect themselves from bad actors.
> JavaScript or iFrame Tags: All third-party tags and tracking URLs need to be in https format.
I was on the fence about this because there is a legitimate need to bring in revenue from free users, but they should stick to audio, video and image ads.
Well it worked on me and I'm usually wary of consumer-facing subscription services.
I heard about Spotify through a musically-minded, but not technical, friend. I joined because of their insistence that it was a good service 3+ years ago.
Today, they complain about the desktop client and ads. I no longer use Spotify.
I've been trashing Windows for ages too, but there's a big difference here: people who really want to run some particular (usually proprietary) software generally have to use Windows to do that, and Windows has a lock on non-Apple computers for that and for many other reasons.
Spotify doesn't have any kind of lock on music. The Apple fans are all using Apple Music, after all, and there's lot of other choices out there. Ditching Spotify isn't going to affect your life or digital device using in any significant way.
But without some incentive to do so, they won't. If they're already getting around basically one of the biggest dealbreakers for the Free tier (the ads), then there isn't really incentive to pay 9.99 a month when they're already getting essentially the same service for free.
A non-paying customer who doesn't listen to ads has absolutely zero value to Spotify.
I'd challenge this because they can convert to paid users or advertise the service via word of mouth, or probably provide other value as well (user data, listening habits, etc.).
However, even if these users have zero value to Spotify, then why terminate them? Spotify is getting some negative press over it, so it seems like a net loss for them...
Mostly a privacy and ownership issue: Spotify doesn't own the device receiving their service nor are they paying for the bandwidth used for the ad payload, and it's none of their concern how these are used. In the end it all boils down to whether Spotify's right to run a business supersedes a person's rights of ownership.
The attitude you describe can easily hurt their business. They may be future paying customers that are exploring your service, or don't have the money yet to subscribe. And even in the latter group there is an opportunity for building brand loyalty.
But to see these opportunities, the first step is to not have a hostile attitude towards your users.
No, that was just "pay me for this service/good". Most businesses who ventured into "fuck you" territory would soon be out of business because disgruntled customers opens up opportunities for competition to rise.
Sadly, you don't have that anymore with today's economy-of-scale effects.
I mean, they're pushing things to your device at your request, because you logged on to use their free service. If you don't want them to push ads to your device, they were kind enough to offer you a paid option where they won't do that.
Between the dwindling Netflix catalog and increasingly hostile subscription service experience on Spotify, I have found myself flying the black flag again. I still have subscriptions to both, but I will be cancelling them this year. I don't want their shitty analytics payloads, I don't want their shitty anti-adblocker tech. I don't want their shitty tactics of deleting random songs off my playlists. I just want the content I paid for.
It's not because I don't want to pay for the content, I'd happily pay 2-3x under the right circumstances. It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation, and manipulative cross-sell tactics.
Whatever arguments were made about piracy detracting from sales are laughable now. The copyright and ad lobbies are detracting from those sales, piracy is just a symptom of the cancer that they are.
Sonarr + Couchpotato + Plex + Subsonic is somehow a more consumer-friendly experience than their 'legitimate' counterparts. The fact that the premium subscription cost for those services is more than netflix+spotify, and yet people are willing to pay that much for their piracy, that should be pretty telling to any industry analyst.
> It's not because I don't want to pay for the content, I'd happily pay 2-3x under the right circumstances. It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation.
Can't help you with movies/Netflix, but in the case of Spotify, you could go back to buying mp3's. Google Play, Amazon, iTunes (aac format), etc will all sell you DRM Free tracks at $1.30 a piece, and the ad-free songs become yours forever to listen to however you wish.
mp3s are compressed and lossy. Makes them unsuitable for buying. There are a few sites like bandcamp that sell flacs. Not sure why the big players don't let you buy flacs. It's not like there's an engineering issue. Maybe they get the rights only for lossy files.
Edit: Since some will invariably point out that you can't hear flacs, here's a better argument. Even if you prefer lossy music, there are and will be better codecs than mp3. So the choice of encoding should be up to you so that you can choose a better codec in the future if you wish. And mp3 wasn't even free until last year. So until 2018, it was illegal to play mp3s on a free system.
For recent releases they tend to be available, but you might have to look through many channels: next to Bandcamp Beatport, Qobuz, Juno Download, Bleep, Boomkat are stores I check.
Yep.
At this point now there's so much paid music available in high quality than anyone who says that it's still not good enough is looking for reasons to feel better about themselves for not paying.
Video is something of a shitshow and I'm somewhat sympathetic to people who don't want to buy a DVD just because Netflix has driven all the local rental places out of business, their own catalog is rotting, and it's not available for even a la carte streaming. Or you have to subscribe to yet another streaming service just to watch one show.
But music? There may be corner cases but pretty much any of the big streaming services plus judicious a la carte purchases have you pretty well covered. Personally I do like owning music but then I started from a pretty large collection of physical media.
Anyone offering the complete collection of any artist including bootlags, unreleased tracks, artwork and in some cases images of used tickets of the shows?
If bootlegs and unreleased tracks were officially released, they would become official and released tracks.
If there's a specific unreleased track you want, fine, pirate that. I don't think there's anything wrong with pirating content that's not available for sale (as long as you buy it if/when it does become available for sale). However, the existence of some unreleased tracks do not give you license to pirate tracks which are released.
Outside of specific, exceptional circumstances, I have zero sympathy for anyone pirating music in 2018. Music is finally being distributed in the DRM Free, affordable, and unencumbered formats consumers have been asking for.
The problem is that if your tastes are not very conventional, the "exceptions" are half the cases, and you start to wonder why you bother.
A good example is Morphine's The Night. We're not talking about a bootleg record, it's a proper studio album owned by UMG. Yet it's not available on Spotify, Google Music or Amazon Music. It's on iTunes, but that requires installing a native app, which doesn't run on any of my devices, including the most popular OS in the world (Android). Alternatively I can buy a CD, which will cost me something like $50 with shipping, and rip it myself - and that's only because I still happen to own a desktop with a CD drive.
c’mon, ur on haxxor news and u cant run a windows vm? there’s a free image on microsoft’s homepage, and I bet you’ll manage to get itunes working and transfer the music within the free trial period.
Sure, but don't you see the absurdity? I have to download and install VirtualBox, download a full Windows VM image, download and install iTunes on it, create an account, create a virtual credit card, register it on the account, purchase the album, and then copy the files out of the VM.
All so that the artists get about $1 from my $10.
Or I can download a torrent and give those $10 to Vapors of Morphine on their Bandcamp page, which is much easier for me and will net them about $8 instead.
It's important to keep the piracy channel alive. Right now you may feel you have choices and options but there are a handful of players who can sell you everything. 2020 may not be as great.
If the media we purchase today is DRM Free, it will be easy to distribute when and if the legal channels disappear.
Having easy-accessible piracy channels now works against that goal by incentivizing content providers to invest in more stringent DRM schemes. DRM can rarely prevent piracy completely, of course, but it can make piracy more difficult and less accessible.
DRM never stopped piracy and DRM affected paying customers and drove them toward piracy makincg it more accissible (more people sharing bigger hive). The effect is not the cause in this case.
As for iTunes, don’t they sell in high bitrate AAC? It is very hard to hear a difference in the vast majority of music between a high bitrate AAC and an uncompressed file.
a well-encoded mp3, ogg, or aac file will be audibly transparent to almost every end user, even on extremely high-end equipment. mp3 does have the side benefit of being supported on damn near everything.
It feels, for some-odd reason that us audio people have to justify our purchasing decisions and desire for quality and fidelity way more than people who spend hundreds of dollars on 21 inch 144hz monitors and care about things like frame rate and texture resolution do.
Enthusiasts complain about the crappy latency and refresh rates of modern LCD televisions all the time, against people saying "just turn on motion smoothing and most people won't notice." I'm not justifying one or the other, but it happens in both domains.
For me it's not about lossless sounding better. Storage is so cheap nowadays that it's silly not to have a full lossless encode for an archive/backup. I can transcode that lossless file into any other lossy format but transcoding a lossy file to another format destroys the quality.
Netflix offers too much value for a small amount plus the size of movies makes downloading/previewing the throwaway type of netflix shows make it hard to justify the effort to pirate.
Spotify always seems less useful compared to winamp if you knew what music you liked or like to download everything from one band who's best days are behind them. A hassle for new stuff but if you want the all of the 'yes' albums the rare shows, interviews spotify just doesn't cut it.
For me it's the opposite way around. Netflix's UK catalogue is tiny compared to the US, but Spotify always has the music I want. I pay for Spotify, but not Netflix.
That might have been true a while back, but Netflix' US catalogue seems seriously small these days due to the fragmentation of video streaming in the US, and them focussing on their own original material (at least some of it is good).
Assuming you have Netflix and Prime Video, these days I'm finding more and more occasions when the selection in the UK is bigger (!).
A bit of a tangent, but the production quality and writing of shows on BBC iPlayer is high compared to Netflix. Netflix shows increasingly feel like they're written for a generic audience, with a lot of mediocre writing and, I hate to say it, a little dose of virtue signaling as well.
Not to neglect that traditional media for music can be found cheaply. I got something like 200 cds of great classical music from the relatives of a passed neighbor. Garage sales and such are great, too. They’re not great for newer music, but there are options.
ok well I bundle my media consumption with my phone service so on that hand it's not that problematic for me, but on the other hand I have netflix, paramount, cmore, viaplay, HBO nordic bundled as well as some cable channels and I would still have to pay another 30 dollars or so per month to get what I don't have now that I want
A happy medium for me is google play music. Basically the same song selection and features as spotify, plus the ability to upload your own mp3s that aren't available on the platform (I actually haven't used this feature in a while, but it seems like it still works). And you get ad-free youtube as well.
I am all about Youtube premium. Replaced my spotify with it and I love it. Ad free youtube, my own mp3s along with the google music catalog is great. They even grandfather people in on the original price that they subbed for when the service price increased.
They changed that last year though. An All Access subscription now only includes YouTube Music Premium, which does not remove ads. That requires a YouTube Premium subscription. Plus I hear there are plans to ditch Play Music for YouTube Music this year...
Have you pirated in a while? Things like popcorntime make it trivial for even elderly people like my folks to check out new movies and shows. No longer are the days where you have to download the entire movie and hope it was a good copy you just click play and they start a progressive download from the beginnin and you can stream it within seconds. If it is a bad copy stop it and move on. I keep thinking about joining these services because it is nice to pay I believe people should get paid, but what Spotify is now doing is user hostile and now I am no longer considering joining. I use Adblock. I can not see how this will work for them. People surely will backlash.
Bandcamp is another option. They have multiple download formats, including FLAC. Lately I've been seeing more albums from artists on ("major" indie) labels, not just self-released.
Physical media still exists for a lot of music, but I know first-hand that some music, collections/anthologies/compilations and playlists containing some original content are becoming increasingly digital-only. Check for an artist's profile on a music service that allows you to purchase and download the content. Bandcamp (no affiliation) is one such service. Then you can make your own physical or digital backups external to the service.
The Sony/BMG rootkits only worked on Windows. I never had any trouble playing them on Linux. I stopped buying all Sony products when I found out what they were trying to do. And that's after half a lifetime of recommending Sony. Idiots.
Spotify is a great way to discover and browse music; but it kind of goes with the nature of streaming services that your access to their content is neither as reliable or as anonymous as playing files you’ve downloaded. Then again, major labels now provide lossless DRM free files through Qobuz, Juno Download, Beatport etc (although some region localisation still exists, but once you’ve bought the file that no longer affects you). Smaller labels operate through these platforms as well, and through Bandcamp (which is my favourite platform for buying music). So I do think the situation when it comes to legal access to digital music is much better than it ever was.
Bandcamp is definitely my favourite platform for buying music. No DRM, flac format available if that's your thing. Artists can put up both digital and physical merch.
Wish they had a more fully-featured experience for streaming music on PC. Downloading to play in foobar is a bit of a faff sometimes!
You can use Bandcamp Downloader [https://github.com/Otiel/BandcampDownloader] to download the artist's music – including any or all albums and any of the songs – just by entering the addresses of the pages.
Might make getting the audio easier, considering you've already paid.
BC lets users stream every track at least a couple of times before asking you to pay. This 'free plays limit' resets after a few days, so theoretically, you wouldn't have to pay to hear it ever. I like the reminder because I'm more willing to support independent artists, and if I get the prompt for a song I like, why not pay $5-8 or whatever to have it in my collection?
Just wanted to mention that any limitation in listening to a track is set by the artist, not Bandcamp. With an artist profile, you can set the number of times people can listen/stream your music before being prompted to buy (I have such a profile).
That app doesn't even do anything special. The link to the mp3 is right in the page source code, which Bandcamp intentionally doesn't obfuscate. They justify this by asserting that if somebody really wants to pirate, they'll do so with or without Bandcamp; ergo, it's better to keep them on-platform.
I also like that this fits in with their general marketing of lossless files - sure, you can download the 128kbps mp3s. Go ahead. They're inferior - just previews.
The selling point of BC for me is the sense of community. You can see reviews of releases from other fans, and you cannot post a review unless you've paid up, which eliminates 99% of trolls/shit-stirrers.
It definitely helps that BC is focused on independent artists and doesn't seem interested in pushing grand visions of a global musical monoculture in the way Spotify does (those pretentious Year in Music retrospectives, Drake, "chill beats playlist", Lana del Rey etc).
Must agree with you here (even though I do like me some Lana del Rey). Majority of Bandcamp music in my collection is retro/synth/new wave, and some "drone" which is nice to have on as white noise while working.
Nothing wrong w/ LDR at all, I was taking issue with Spotify's nudging behaviour like "Hey, millions are listening to these artists, why aren't you?", when my listening history would clearly indicate that I'm not interested in those artists.
Old-school sites like last.fm used user-submitted tags to link my listening history to new artists I'd probably enjoy. You don't need any fancy machine learning for this kind of basic pattern recognition. Spotify could obviously do this, but like Netflix, Amazon etc, they choose to push artists that make them the most money.
>> I have found myself flying the black flag again
I'm in the same boat(no pun intended), and also still pay for the subscriptions. I thought that more streaming services and more maturity(time passed) meant this situation would be improving - not degrading.
When the business model is to float a huge amount of capital to purchase unsustainable licensing agreements while you become a record label or movie studio — then it makes sense why we are here.
There is so much good CC music out there, I don't feel the need to pay for a music service. Amongst Soundcloud, the Free Music Archive, Bandcamp, and Jamendo there are lifetimes of new music available for enjoyment out in the Creative Commons. When I find artists I truly enjoy, I prefer to support them directly.
The trick I use for AM is they have a single user deal $99/12 months. You can almost always find $100 iTunes gift cards for $80-$85 making your effective price $6-$7/month.
You just have to keep an eye out. My sub renews over Christmas and I got one from PayPal for $80. I think last year Amazon had a lightening deal for $80 (may have been 2 $50 cards for $40 each). $85 is pretty easy to find though. I think PayPal just had a deal earlier this week.
> It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation, and manipulative cross-sell tactics.
I'm not sure if they'd satisfy these requirements, but I generally open paid Hulu more than I do Netflix. Google Play Music seems to cover everything Spotify does and there is no free option (so there are never ads), but it's Google, so it could go the way of Reader at any point.
> I canceled Netflix a few months ago. Their catalog is really garbage now.
I keep reading this and wonder how much TV watching do people do daily? Netflix already has more content than I will ever get to with just the back catalog of TV shows and originals. It does not even count movies.
> hostile subscription service experience on Spotify
???
I pay $14.99 a mo and my wife and I enjoy as much music as we can stomach. It's the one subscription I never even think about. Their service never goes down and they are constantly trying to improve the product.
> Sonarr + Couchpotato + Plex + Subsonic is somehow a more consumer-friendly experience than their 'legitimate' counterparts.
???
If you have the time to configure all of that stuff (and support it, and find pirated content) you need to seriously up your billable rate and reconsider the value of your time.
Then again if you just enjoy doing it yourself and running your own gear, that is fine too, but admit it. I don't think this has anything to do with the market being hostile.
So... I had a Spotify family subscription for me and my wife (2 persons... of course living under the same roof). Suddenly my wife lost her spotify premium functionality and asked me if I had cancelled.
Turns out Spotify invalidated her as part of my family plan and asked me to add her again. Cool.... I go to the config to add her and Spotify asks for her address and does not let me add her when putting her/my address... I don't remember what address did I enter when I opened spotify more than 5 years ago, and the stupid thing does not let you see your address (like, 1 field in a database, how hard is that?)
> People are using ad blockers not just to hide annoyances and to improve performance, but to protect themselves from bad actors.
This is why I started blocking ads at the network level last year, after resisting blocking them at all for so long before that. A number of popular sites (imgur.com being the worst offender, but certainly not the only one) hosting adverts that attempted drive-by downloads, tried to access cameras or microphones (luckily caught by permissions blocks elsewhere), played obnoxious loud audio, played high-res bandwidth chewing video, opened pop-ups or pop-unders, and so forth.
Serve the adverts from your own domains and agree to take responsibility for any damage done by code/other served from your domains, and we can talk. Otherwise: no ads. Ban me from your site or application for that if you wish.
Exactly. I use an ad blocker (usually I disable it when a site asks nicely, but I turn it right back on if their ads are intrusive) but I don't get the sense of entitlement that seems to come with ad blocking for some people. If I want to use an ad blocker, that's my right; if a service wants to block me for it, that's theirs.
> They allow advertisers to run JS on your device, and ads are a trendy way to deliver malware.
I wonder if the ad industry is onboard with HTTPS yet? In 2013 when I was last looking at ads as an attack vector, none did, and many executed JS, or gave privileged access to system APIs on device via JS, which meant that it was fairly trivial to intercept ad delivery, return malicious JS, open a "reverse JS shell" and poke about the filesystem in the app, open new screens, etc, all remotely.
I reported this as a vulnerability in several apps, telling them that HTTPS was an important aspect of preventing this, and was told that ad networks were against HTTPS and therefore they had to find alternative mitigations.
iOS/MacOS block HTTP requests by default unless you request (and for apps on the App Store, are granted) an exception. So, I’d think that in-app advertisers on iOS would want to support HTTPS.
Today I could easily afford that. But thinking back a few decades when I was young and didn't have much money at my disposal I would say using stuff for free isn't that bad.
Especially when piracy is so much easier than getting your account suspended for using an adblocker.
I can just about understand this attitude with services that do not have an ad-free subscription option, but Spotify does! How do you reconcile that you deserve to be able to use Spotify both without paying them money and without them monetising you via ads?
Because they offer it? They are giving public access to music and ads, choosing to only accept their offer of downloading the music (given that the ads are annoying and may contain malware) is only making use of part of what they offer. Their business model is their own business. Mine is making sure my computer stays secure and that I'm not bothered by annoying interruptions.
Not that I have ever used Spotify, but that would be how I would defend it. If I did, I would just move on since my account would soon be suspended.
So how does Spotify defend running potentially malicious ads from 3rd party providers on end-user systems? Do they even vet those ads? Are they even aware of what code will be running on users computers that they are serving via the ad frameworks?
Why not? Spotify is not entitled to forcing you to display their ads either, and there are plenty of other free services on the Net that don't require you to watch ads.
woah woah woah, you can't go expecting a company to take responsibility for what their service does. I think there's a constitutional amendment about that.
I skimmed the legalese in the article and did not see them differentiating between account types. Seems like a general statement that may also apply to premium accounts.
Spotify delivers so much value that I couldn’t imagine not paying for it (or enduring ads). I listened to something like 25 straight days of music last year.
Wow. I ... I couldn't tell you who was in the top 10 in any genre right now. I may have listened to 25 minutes of music last year. I came here just because the title drew me in.
I can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find someone talking any sense. Is it really the case that most of HN are listening to Spotify all day every day and blocking the ads?
Personally, I am not paying for it because it's not officially available in my country for whatever reason. I realize there's rights issues etc., but if someone won't take my money, I feel no guilt whatsoever doing whatever I want with their product.
This is the real issue here. If you can afford to be on hackernews, you can afford $10 a month. People just have cheapness deeply ingrained into their psyche as a pleasure response.
I wondered the same thing when that New York Times article came up about people paying for News. They acted like the media can support themselves for free, just like artists. One way I differ from some HNers is that I like support good journalism and I like to support the my favorite music artists as well. I know music quality has gone down over the years since artists know they’re much less likely to strike it rich. I met some kids still in highschool and heck even they were listening to music from the early 2000s, 90s and 80s instead, surprisingly.
I agree, and I think maybe music has different places in different people's lives.
Personally, I pay for Spotify and use it constantly to listen to everything from game and movie soundtracks (and covers), rock and metal bands, EDM, indie, pop, and more obscure instrumental music.
I understand if you mostly listen to a few bands from the era you grew up in, or don't listen to music too often at all, it might make more sense to keep a paid music collection and use Spotify less frequently (and justify using the free version), but if I paid for all of the music I listen to individually, it would easily rack up to something like 10 times (or more) the amount my yearly Spotify does. IMO, if you aren't a "power user," use a different streaming service or buy your music individually.
no kidding, not only does it deliver a ton of value but a large portion of their revenue goes to artists. people are able to listen to nearly any band on any device at the push of a button and literally don't want to pay a penny.
(I think I had about 1500+ hours of listening last year ... 60 days or so)
Considering how services like Spotify and Apple Music incourage extra data usage, and randomally delete music as they see fit, I'm finding myself thinking more and more of these services as discovery tools (akin to radio) and less like media players (they aren't).
One day very soon I'll be playing all my music in something else entirely again. While it's impossible to brush off the value of streaming services like Spotify, it's a huge step backwards on many levels.
It feels weird to say but the zune marketplace was the best music platform so far. Who knows if it would have stayed that way if it ever got a decent market share though.
You can make songs available offline, meaning they're saved on your device. Not sure what else you could ask for, unless your problem is actually with DRM, not data usage.
Yes; with pinning music offline it's still encrypted & within the Spotify app. The app needs to be connected to the internet at least every 30 days to ensure that your subscription is still current (and, presumably, that all those tracks are still permitted to be on your device).
I've suffered the same, as content agreements have changed, tracks have been made unavailable in playlists.
There's a setting in Spotify to see this; you can disable "hide unplayable tracks in playlists". You'll then see all the affected songs return, but greyed out.
Bandcamp has a lot of great music but draws independent artists and small labels by a large margin. Their app and website sort of totally suck, but it's not a subscription model, they promote the buying and downloading of albums.
It's less than $10/month, what are you expecting? Getting all the music in the world and have the ability to keep it for yourself? They own the music, you are renting a service. All the same music is available for purchase if you want to own it.
Better already exists, you can buy the mp3/ogg/flac, or you can hoist the Jolly Roger. Either option is better than Spotify in the long run, because your copies can’t be removed at a whim, and there are no TOS.
You can download all of your playlists easily and make them available offline in Spotify. You can even set them to be high fidelity and only download over WiFi.
Now with Apple Music you don’t have the option to choose between WiFi/Cellular for downloaded music but Spotify doesn’t have that problem.
I use an app to mute my android device's volume when "advertisement" appears in the "now playing" notification. For the past 4-6 weeks I've noticed Spotify will sometimes 'fail' to accurately update the "now playing" notification. I brushed it off as a bug, but this ToS makes me wonder if they are collecting device volume (which they can definitely do in android) and perhaps testing to see if I'm using the notifications to auto-mute? [puts on tinfoil hat]
Pandora will pause the music if it detects you muted your phone (it tells you this, not a hypothesis) so I always mute it and up the volume one bar. This way I still cant hear it but it is not technically muted.
The only reason I use an ad-blocker with Spotify in the first place is that they have an abundance of NSFW ads that play. I'm not really comfortable with Trojan advertisements while I'm sitting in the office plugging away. It's definitely their right to deny service if people are freeloading... but there could be other people like me who wouldn't use an ad blocker in the first place (on Spotify, at least) if the ads weren't such garbage.
So the reason for that has more to do with my corporate firewall than anything. I do pay for subscription services that I enjoy more than Spotify (currently, Google Play Music and Tidal). However, I cannot have a phone at work, so I can't log into GPM (2FA requires the phone), and Tidal is blocked for other reasons. So that basically just leaves Spotify. I don't want to pay for a third subscription service that I only use for a few hours per day tops.
I could be mistaken, but it was my understanding that those backup codes are one-time-use only, and that using one basically burns it forever. My cookies get cleared every single time I close my browser, so I would have to continually log back in and keep burning more codes. If I'm wrong about this... that would be excellent.
You can keep a sheet of about 5-10 of them, and generate more when needed.
It's inconvenient, but if your in an environment that disallows phones or other portable electronics (like 2FA Fobs/USB sticks), it may be the only reasonable way.
I wonder if there's a way to programmatically re-generate the one-time-use codes. It might be a fun project to set something up that emails a one-time-use code to my work email and then regenerates one.
There's a massive amount of websites that are blocked, so it's not really what I would call 'unfettered.' The reason that phones aren't allowed is related to the fact that they have cameras / microphones. They don't want someone's infected phone spilling company secrets.
GP would need to remember to generate codes in advance and write them down and bring them to work, on a regular basis. And keep track of which codes were used. Can't speak for others, but this would be way too much effort for me to even entertain.
This is why I really dislike forced two factor authentication. It might make sense in a lot of circumstances, but not for everyone.
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Edit: Although, if we're talking about Google Play Music, I'm a bit confused, since you can turn two factor off for Google accounts. If you feel you need two factor on your main Google account but not Google Play Music (seems reasonable!), make a separate account for Google Play Music.
That's not a great scenario for me, either. I'm currently paying $7.99/mo for GPM because I've been a subscriber since the beta. If I switch to another google account just for GPM, I will end up paying $2/mo more.
Does Google 2FA still have the option to telephone the code through to a phone? If you have a direct-dial number to your desk phone would that not work?
Or any service that lets you read your text messages remotely; Pushbullet or anything offering the same functionality?
I had no idea that was an option in the first place. I'll have to look into this more.
All of the services that I know of that let you read texts remotely are also blocked at work. Basically anything that falls under the category of messaging or email.
I should have phrased it differently, but there's a strong emphasis on the word 'tops' there. I'd say that most of the time at work, I don't listen to music at all, and when I do listen to music, it's never for more than two hours per day.
That's the thing.. I'm already paying for two music streaming services that I use far more often than Spotify. And my wording isn't clear, but I don't listen to it 'a few hours per day every day.' It's more like 'a few hours when I do listen to music at work, which I don't usually do.' I'd guess that it's less than 10 hours per month that I'm listening to Spotify.
The simple answer is that I don't like Spotify as much as I like GPM and Tidal. Tidal is my go-to for high-quality music when I'm listening at home on my nice speakers. I've found that Tidal has the best radio experience, at least for the type of music I listen to (Spotify and GPM have a bad habit of playing the same exact songs / artists when I do a radio for a particular artist/album/song, Tidal varies it more).
Google play music is simply extremely convenient considering how nicely it works with Google Assistant. Additionally, I have tens of thousands of my own music collection uploaded to GPM that I'm free to download whenever I want without restriction. Spotify lets you play music offline, but it's basically cached and still tied to your premium Spotify subscription.
I really like google’s music offering, but I the only reason I don’t subscribe is because I listen to music on my work box, and I refuse to sign into Google on it with my personal account
Google's 2FA doesn't require a phone. Use a USB token, use a secondary email, or use a single recovery code and leave the account logged in in a separate browser used only for GPM.
Only one of those is sort of an option for me. USB tokens = disallowed. Accessing personal email at work = disallowed. Using a single recovery code is a possibility, but I would have to rotate through them constantly (see other comments in this thread).
For me personally 100% true, is it for everyone else is another question. If you are in a 3rd world country then it might be more cost effective to listen to ads.
Premium doesn't have any of those ads. And if you're blocking their ads you're not paying with time and attention. Spotify seems pretty reasonable to me, it's free with ads or you can pay for a better product with no ads.
Sure it's adfree but the parent said "because it brings you value". Well so do I when listening to the ads. My problem is the fact they allow for JS and iframes.
I’m not sure how much targeting they do on their ads but they are also targeted terribly.
I don’t listen to Spanish music, and I don’t speak Spanish. Multiple times when I had my free Spotify it would randomly decide that I would get all of my ads in Spanish that week. No idea why. My first thought was that my account had been hacked and someone changed my language - but nope, Spotify just doesn’t know my demographic.
My wife is an avid Pandora user, recently there's been ads from Adam & Eve on the service. It's been fantastic to sit down and eat dinner as a family, then hear an ad for a sex shop play after a couple of songs.
It's not like I'm offended at there being an ad for an adult store or anything, but it's just really offputting? I guess? to hear about some buy one get one on adult toys or whatever while I'm eating.
I know that the value we place on things varies, but it amazes me that people are willing to have ads play during a family dinner rather than pay $5/month. That single dinner probably cost two to three times that amount.
I pay for an Apple Music Family subscription, my wife still uses Pandora on occasion however. She trialed Pandora Premium and a couple months ago noticed her stations suddenly started playing very different music selections, so she decided to not upgrade.
> It's not like I'm offended at there being an ad for an adult store or anything, but it's just really offputting? I guess? to hear about some buy one get one on adult toys or whatever while I'm eating.
It sounds like you are offended. How else would you characterize being "offput" by something? We also use Spotify in our household and I vaguely recall hearing A&E ads as well, but they just jumble together in my subconscious with all the other ads.
Meanwhile, all the ads I get are for Spotify Premium! The same ones over and over again. I wouldn't mind some variety. My Spotify account is even linked to my Facebook with all the ad targeting opportunities that entails.
I definitely won't get the only product they advertise to me. I already have Google Play Music, and just use(d) Spotify occasionally for discovery and when people link to playlists.
I suppose nobody is advertising to Australia then.
With an ad blocker on your browser, you can skip all ads. If you're afraid of getting banned and losing your playlists, then create your playlists using one Spotify account, set them as collaborative, then import them from another Spotify account, and run them from there.
I dont get why people use spotify instead of listening to free online radios from anywhere in the world. As a bonus, its like travelling. There are ads, but they target other people than you so its not even annoying (you will not be influenced to buy a car at a dealership in another country). Note that if you are the kind who likes targeted ads, this does not apply to you.
I use Spotify because I like their discovery service, large library, and the fact that they are simply the best client I've found for multi-device listening (going from office to car to headphone to home stereo seamlessly). I pay for Spotify because their service offers great value and ad ad-free, skip-free experience.
I hate the Spotify client overall, but the multi-device integration stuff is done so well
If I'm listening to music, I don't have to think what device I am doing it from, I can just grab my phone, laptop or tablet to navigate/change songs and it works just like magic
Any kind of ads are annoying to me and well worth the couple of $/month alone, but I also like being able to skip songs I don't like and having in general a better set of songs that I actually enjoy
Radio stations at least around the midwest here in the US only seem to play ~20 different songs, and it gets really repetitive, really fast, just ask anybody working retail.
Plus the genre's are rather limited, it's usually one or two pop stations (with 90% song overlap), one or two country, maybe NPR or something in a podcast format, etc. Meanwhile all of the ads.
Personally I'm on the student plan, and for what I like the listen to it's a steal for 5$ (and free hulu?) Any of the alternatives, deezer, apple music, etc would likely work too, but I can't imagine only using fm radio stations.
I find novelty to be it’s own reward. However, that’s literally just 1 of ~100,000 radio stations out there. Spotify is decent, but if you want to try something else their really are great options.
Radio doesn't play music I like, doesn't let me choose the song I want, doesn't let me pay for a subscription to remove adverts, doesn't let me use playlists, doesn't let me play part of a song or rewind a song or skip a song. I understand the appeal of something like live radio, but it definitely doesn't fall into the category of replacement for a music library or streaming.
That seems rather disingenuous. You don't know why people like to customize their music experience instead of listening to radio which they have no control over which songs play? Really?
It's fascinating how we, humans, are lazy. We're lazy to the point where we'd gladly allow services like Spotify to control our computers just so they can make sure their ad was delivered. We'll even justify it by "well, I really listen to a lot of music". All I want is to push a button and get some bearable-noise during my 8 hours at work.
I don't know about the rest, but I really hate when someone makes a fool out of me. I'm a lazy person too, if a service that I like asked me bluntly "hey dude, wanna give us all your info and let us sniff your traffic so we can stick ads in, we're even gonna sell it" - I'd say - sure, you were honest enough, screw it - go ahead, I didn't have to navigate through a wall of text critting me for 9000000 to get that piece of info.
But no. No one behaves like that. Long user agreements, service agreements, catchy call-to-actions on websites that promise wonderland filled with unicorns shitting M&M's and what not just so they get those few bucks out of me...
Oh well, hello foobar2000 my old friend, seems like I'll un-lazy myself just to spite these prying assholes.
Then don't use their service. Why is this made out to be difficult. If you want to take/consume their service then pay, for it via ads or subscription.
If you don't like that they have an ad based model, and personally want to boycott their subscription service because of it then do so and buy your own music.
It's not complicated. 'Not rewarding their behavior' is simple - don't use Spotify. Anything else is very transparent, after-the-fact justification of your desire for theft.
"Hey I really like this bike share service, but I don't think it's safe, so I'm gonna steal the bike, improve the safety and then ride it whenever I want. I don't want to reward their behavior of renting bikes I feel aren't safe."
It's totally unclear to me why you think this should be considered bad behavior.
Imagine a grocery store has a promotion - you can get a loaf of bread for free if you listen to a twenty minute advertising presentation. Does this justify not going to the presentation, and just stealing the bread?
A better analogy is a protection racket: pay up or we'll serve ads that might contain malware to your device. If Spotify took responsibility for fixing my computer when it gets a worm from an ad, we'd have a deal that is much more fair.
Absolutely, not using Spotify is better option. My original comment was arguing against "just pay for it" being a good outcome, as it relates to Spotify's future incentives.
You go to the presentation and someone demands you empty your pockets into a bowl that they will take into another room while you watch the presentation, wallet, phone, keys, etc.... You decline and leave, but you already ate the bread! Did you steal it?
I'd say it's more akin to using Spotify with an ad blocker before this change. If Spotify wants to switch to only handing out bread after the presentation obviously that's fine too, but it doesn't make the whole proposition any less shady.
Well this would have to be a special kind of bread where the inventory amount does not change when a loaf is consumed.
Bear in mind, this loaf can also only be eaten inside of the grocery store. You cannot leave the store with the bread, because it is welded to the infrastructure of the grocery.
Not paying for a gym membership would be a better example. You're using up available capacity without giving the gym a way to monetize your presence there.
You don't need to run arbitrary third-party software to run ads, period. I'm perfectly fine with ads in an ad-sponsored ads but I'd appreciate if it didn't open my computer to malware infestations.
It's not just about justification of freeloading. It's about a company being able to push arbitrary stuff to your device masked as adverts. Yeah fine I listen to music for free on your service. Does that mean that everyone should be able to spy on me? Nobody is complaining about voice or image or video-based ads. But running JS and iframes is just arrogant.
Also I'm very pissed off with people who say freeloading. It's not freeloading. I pay with my time to watch or listen to your stupid ad. I should not also pay with my personal data. An ad is just an ad it should not have evolved to the monstrosity of tracking you.
It has evolved in the same way copyright has until we find a way to kill both of them as they are not needed in our world.
I don't use Spotify personally. I have Apple Music, my problem is more with the fact they are now forcing you to run arbitrary 3rd party code to have access to their catalog. Just keep the ads as images and videos and sound and I'll be pretty happy.
I have this problem with websites, apps, social networks, etc. as well. I don't want to be tracked, retargeted and so on. Not because I think ads will influence me or anything but its about my trust in those companies and how they protect my data. When my data gets leaked because they are inadequate at security I don't get money back. I get a message saying "We take your privacy seriously"... And that data can then be used in various other ways to harm me.
> I pay with my time to watch or listen to your stupid ad.
Not if you're using an ad-blocker.
Perhaps the reason you're using an ad-blocker is because you don't want to be tracked, and the only way to do that is to block ads completely. I get it. But you're also using up Spotify's bandwidth and licensing fees (which in turn allow music to be created in the first place), without providing anything in return.
This is only possible because paying and ad-watching customers are subsidizing your behavior. It is the definition of freeloading.
>>Perhaps the reason you're using an ad-blocker is because you don't want to be tracked
I use adblockers to protect myself against malicious content masquerading as ads, which both the ad delivery networks and content platforms have proven unwilling or unable to address to an acceptable extent.
I honestly don't consider this particularly relevant, especially in the case of Spotify which has a paid ad-free option (as opposed to something like cnn.com, where you don't have a choice).
If you want to boycott Spotify for endangering people's computers, go ahead. Heck, if you want to attempt to use Spotify with an ad-blocker, go ahead. I don't feel morally comfortable using ad-blockers, but I won't fault others for using them.
You do not get to use Spotify's free tier, block their only potential revenue stream for that tier, and then turn around and cry fowl when Spotify notices and bans you.
Completely agree. Spotify offers two options: free with ads, or paid with no ads. Completely up to you which one to go with. If you don't like ads they have and option for you. I don't like ads either, and I use an adblocker to block tracking and protect against malware. I also want to use Spotify. So I pay for it. How self righteous do you have to be to complain about this? If you don't like Spotify's model, don't use the service. It's a perfectly valid option, and there are plenty of alternatives.
Advertising can be done without arbitrary code execution. Magazines, broadcast TV, radio, podcasts, movie theaters, billboards, news papers, etc. all manage to do it without that. Spotify already has a way to deliver audio and video to the machine, nothing else is required, and if they used that existing avenue, blockers couldn't stop it.
Audio and video ads are super annoying and I'm reminded of that every time I listen to radio or watch TV, which is why I gave up on both.
No thanks.
The issue isn't one of arbitrary code execution. Lets not be hypocrites.
AdBlock Plus has over 200 million installs on the desktop alone. Are you going to tell me that those 200+ million users of AdBlock Plus are concerned with arbitrary code execution? What percentage of those users do even know what that even means?
Between 10% and 20% of Internet users are using ad-blockers. Lets do an imagination exercise and say that Spotify would only serve images for ads. How many of those 10 to 20% of Internet users would whitelist Spotify?
Whitelisting won't even be a factor because ad blockers won't work against ads delivered along with the main content. At least not without way more processing power, much more complex software, and a lot more volunteers creating filters manually. The current ad delivery methods are what makes the ads so easy to block. So, being unable to block ads, users will either deal with it, pay for ad-free, or leave, and then the real value of the service will be revealed.
Capability + intent is what counts in this case. They intend to deploy countermeasures targeting a minuscule percentage of people, but every user will probably feel the consequences. This, plus the fact that they are willing to serve JS from third parties, is a dangerous mix. It's not what you would expect from a music player app.
What’s fascinating to me is the length people go to in order to justify freeloading.
Fuck the money, I’m not letting a site run arbitrary code on my machine, especially when they have a track record of spying and installing malware. They have a right to make a living, I have a right to own my property without having it damaged by casual greed.
Or don't. I've pirated music and movies. I just don't get too mad about it.
My point, put another way: I respect the desire to block JS ads, AND I respect the will a non-critical app in a competitive market to make stupid decisions with their ad policy. AND people who don't like that policy can move to Amazon/Google/Apple/other music platforms, or pay Spotify Premium.
Pardon my language, but it's a fucked up point to say pay a service money if you don't want their software to conduct clandestine operations on a device that probably contains all sorts of sensitive and private data that NOBODY has claim to but you, and the people you've expressly desired to share it with.
That's the point it would seem to me reading these comments; I realize paying gets rid of the ads, but it's pretty messed up to sit back and think that you're ostensibly paying for "good behavior" from Spotify w/rt to ad tech and what that technology enables on our devices.
It's easy to say pay or don't use the service, why isn't as easy to say "Spotify, don't be dicks with your ad technology on MY phone"?
If I pay a kid $.25 for lemonade, I'm paying for lemonade. If he says "hey, enjoy a free sample of my lemonade while I tell you how I made it", that's a fair trade-off. It is NOT a fair trade-off for his dad to spike my lemonade with a sedative so I'll want to sit down and give his kid an opening to blabber about his recipe while winking and saying "should paid us that quarter, chump".
You aren't paying to get rid of ads, you're paying to get music. Ads pay for the music, or money can. It's only paying to get rid of ads if you view the music as an inevitable outcome, and this change is Spotify asserting that's not the case.
Emotionally manipulating people for profit, harming them not just by annoying them but also by impairing their ability to make rational decisions, is always wrong. And that's what advertising is.
If you sell yourself into slavery, you don't become a slave. If you use a product "in exchange for ads", you don't lose your right to protect yourself from them.
It's more like the kid giving you 2 options:
- Unspiked lemonade for $.25 - Spiked lemonade for free
Companies are free to sell what they want, for the amount they want. At least there's more than one option here.
Thst kid would be arrested, because it’s plain to see from a legal and moral perspective that it’s wrong. Besides, it’s not like that at all.
What it is like is a radio station threatening to cut off service to people who switch channels or turn down volume during ads. This is a problem with the business model, and using TOS tricks to try and twist people’s arm. If they want to be sub only then by all means, but if they want to use an ad model as well then they incur some risks with that. I’m also not clear that it stops with the “free” service only.
Personally I don’t use Spotify, because I like to own my music, and I trust in their business model’s longevity about as much as I believe in fairies. When companies have to threaten their customers to make a business model work, the model is already fucked beyond repair. Advertising on the internet isn’t compatible with the existence and proliferation of ad blockers, and I bristle when a company makes a move to try and undermine autonomy to shore that model up. Moreover if Spotify does it as people accept it, other companies will try to follow suit.
So if a company X is offering something I would like but on different terms, you think it would be entitled and selfish of me to make it known publicly that I would prefer different terms?
The presumption is that they were using the product against the stipulated terms. Nobody is arguing against free speech and if you think Spotify are awful for serving bad ads you can say so.
But this article is specifically about people using a product against the stipulated terms. Criticizing bad ads is valid in general, but people expect topical discussions to stick to the context. Either clarify you are speaking from a different context or you will get misinterpreted.
I didn't use the term "allowed" to imply there is a free speech argument, but to imply that there is an unreasonable expectation on people's behavior. Expecting that customers should "just" stop using service without complaining about the fact that they are doing so is not a reasonable expectation. People should air their grievances in addition to voting with their feet.
I have no problem with advertisement if they agree to take full liability if any contains malware or breaks the law.
If that requirement is freeloading then I disagree with that definition of the word. They enjoy the benefit of behavior which if it was offline would be illegal, and out competes those service which operate more ethically. Since society currently expect the users to be responsible if their machine get infected by malware, it is fully ethical if they use software like ad-blocks to protect themselves.
> What’s fascinating to me is the length people go to in order to justify freeloading.
I can tell you didn't read carefully what I wrote, but that's fine.
Here's what Spotify tells me: "Spotify gives you instant access to millions of songs – from old favorites to the latest hits. Just hit play to stream anything you like."
Where's "but we'll also monitor you and inject whatever code we can, we might allow our customers to do so too, we don't know what it might be but since we wasted $0.003 to acquire you, we need to make at least $5 off of you and we don't really care what happens to your device or if someone breaches our customer and does bad shit to you."
I believe in reciprocity - and the odds are worse at my side if I "freeload" :)
What you described is more or less covered in the T&C's checkbox you ticked when you created your account.
And even if Spotify had appended their marketing language with the "but we track you, never forget that", would that have somehow made you turn off the adblocker?
I'm not a "freeloader" as I pay for the premium service, but this news is the last straw. I'm unsubscribing and uninstalling, as soon as I figure out how to download my playlists.
I know this news doesn't affect me, but the principle is the important thing.
The technical challenge of getting something for free, without restriction, without digital restrictions management, able to be shared, in an archival form that will last decades is worth 100x the cost for whatever trash Big Media will sell you.
There is absolutely nothing to justify here. Running ad-blockers is perfectly fine in any context whatsoever.
Everybody has the right to control what is displayed on their computer when they browse the Net, and Spotify has the right to cancel free accounts for whatever reason they want to. There is nothing wrong with running adblockers and anti-anti-adblocking scripts, etc., and there is nothing wrong with canceling free Spotify accounts. There is also no cognitive dissonance with running and ad-blocker and being angry when Spotify cancels your free account because of it, it's a perfectly reasonable and consistent attitude.
Clicking on magnet links is just as difficult as clicking on a song in spotify, maybe the websites arent as nicely dressed though.
In the U.S., its $10 a month for your entire life. If you live another 100 years, thats $12k that could have bought top top top of the line speakers or enough cds to fill multiple bookcases. We have so many services like this now that are packaged monthly to hide the real cost of long term use. Its like rent to own all over again, except when you stop renting you do not own.
> What's fascinating to me is the length people go to in order to justify freeloading.
I agree. For the past two decades, companies have privatized immense swaths of the digital commons and paid nothing for it, freeloading on the work of the countless public institutions and hobbyists who both created it, and created the culture which attracted billions of "users" to it.
With Spotify it is even worse. They have taken music, a prehistoric participatory artform and characteristic behavior of our species, and are trying to gamify it into a product that is no longer just music and which they own.
For the record I am a musician, and I'm pleasantly well-off so I have a paid Spotify subscription though I rarely use it. I held out until mid-2018, and didn't listen to even a single track on the service before then. Not that there is the slightest moral issue with using an adblocker while consuming broadcasts that contain ads, which I also do.
It isn't lazy to want to listen to unlimited music from an app on your phone. Its an efficient and a very useful service. There are other options (like buying albums), but Spotify makes it easier.
Are people lazy, or do they have much more important things to concern themselves with? I'd rather get work done and spend time with my family than spend time looking for the "ideal" way to listen to music.
To counter this, I got an email from Spotify a few days ago telling me about their terms of use update, and they were very upfront about the ad-blocker crackdown right in the email. I don't think they were hiding anything behind their ToS at all.
Their suggestions AI is quite a bit behind Spotify's unfortunately. Dunno if that's by a lack of design or because of Apple's privacy stance -- probably the former.
It's what you get when you smush internet radio and a virtual globe together. I really enjoy exploring different parts of the world and listening to their music.
https://SomaFM.com was founded 19 years ago and is still going strong. They have a few dozen streams, most of which are electronic, but they also have quite enjoyable indie, jazz, folk, etc. options. Not to mention refreshingly unique seasonal streams around Christmastime.
I basically see two schools of thought in the discussion:
1. People that believe ads are strictly a source of revenue. If you don't like them but want to use the service, pay for the service
2. People who believe that ads are more than a banner on the page, its permission for ad networks and services to run potentially malicious content on their computer
Even if 2 is true, how does that change the point? "Either pay us for our content, or let our ad networks run whatever they want on your browser" sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Would you thing it was more ethical if Spotify just got rid of the free option completely?
If the service Spotify uses to host/serve ads get hacked and delivers malware to my computer, they should be held responsible for the cost and time spent addressing the malware. If I actually brought this up with them, I assume I would be laughed out of their office. Spotify can't have it both ways.
Anyone know if there's a host file blacklist for malicious domains only? Most of the ones I've seen block all ads.
The first time I experienced a malicious ad in Spotify on my Linux machine, I started blocking them via my hosts file [1]. I was only hoping to block malicious sites but it ended up giving me a completely ad-free experience in Spotify.
As a free user I accept that I will be exposed to ads in exchange for not paying for the service, but they seriously need to do a better job vetting for malicious ads.
Malicious advertisements are served off of normal ad distribution networks, which is what gives them their power - they're being hosted using the normal process, not from anybody new or special. The server used for the malware is disposable and ephemeral. Vetting advertisements would interfere with the real-time auction process, so nobody does any more than is required.
You can use the malware domains blacklist [1]. It can be applied through uBlock Origin or as a hosts blacklist if you process the file.
Although I personally treat ads as a malware vector and block them. Hopefully I don't get banned from Spotify as I'm a paying customer. If I do, I'll switch to another platform.
Long time premium spotify user, but it seems they are more interested in their ad-tech than anything else. They introduce 0 new features or improvements and in fact actually remove things over time. It's amazing to see a product continue to get worse.
Before you could send your friends a message within Spotify to send a song for them to listen while in the application and could even carry on a discussion. It was slick. It was amazing and worked very well. They totally gutted it and made no indication of bringing it back. Now we're stuck with this ridiculous arcane method of sending a link through a text message that now opens up in a browser (sometimes?) instead of the application itself.
Too much work to maintain this beloved feature, better fire all the engineers working on it and hire people to prevent ad-blocking for the non-paying customers.
similar for me, very long time premium subscriber and it is extremely annoying how seemingly all the "improvements" over the years have been nothing I cared about while features I actually found useful have been removed
I stay a subscriber because of (1) the size of the catalog and (2) the 'discover weekly' constantly delivers me new songs/bands that I thoroughly enjoy and would never have discovered on my own
Same here. I'm contemplating unsubing and my first thought was to look if there is a tool to download my discover weekly archive. I have an IFTT applet that adds the weekly playlist to an archive so I can listen to it later. Over 900 songs that I still haven't checked/catalogued.
Remember when subscribing to artists would give you alerts for when they released new content? It was a fantastic way of keeping up with new music. For me it was a killer feature. They replaced it with the terrible "Release Radar" playlist that shows a small sample of whatever this week's ML algo recommends. It's garbage.
Following an artist works fine for me. Perhaps check your communication preferences? Maybe you've disabled emails or notifications about new releases from artists you follow.
Unfortunately, Spotify has reached a point where there's a potential (possibly even real, but I'm not in any position to know) higher return in monetizing existing users over improving the experience in order to gain new users or make sure they keep whatever miniscule number of users who'd otherwise leave over a lack of updates and improvements (or even a gradual loss of 'minor' features). Spotify is good enough for a vast majority, such that they just won't leave. Then there are other factors like network effects and the power of the default that are far more effective (if your friends are on it, you're much more likely to stay) in keeping users captured to their platform.
They lose more money and more if you actually use the service. Since they’re a publicly traded company now, they’re probably being pressured to keep earning more and more money each year.
That's true. They have a perverse incentive to reduce music played time or interaction with their service while still preserving one as a customer. I hadn't thought of that.
I tend to agree. Take their lyrics feature for example—imagine if Netflix showed subtitles, but then obscured them with “interesting facts” at random times, and that they were missing altogether from most of their selection.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadSome ISPs blacklist known bad actor ad services, don't they?
People definitely aren’t going to be happy if they start losing their accounts for listening at work...
> The following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever:
...
> 10. circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service;
https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/end-user-agreement/
The user in this case would not be responsible for the blocking.
Or when popular antiviruses start blocking suspicious website contents.
Denial of Service at the ad provider, cripple the user base, advertise your service with a "don't get spoti-screwed"
I guess that answers that one.
I don't like the increasingly intrusive behaviors from big tech companies, and this case with free Spotify is a good example. If they can't provide a free service without privacy intrusions, they shouldn't offer it. Radios and broadcast TV survive on ad-based model without privacy intrusions.
Your statement sounds very akin to "fine, kick me out of this party I was clearly enjoying, I don't want to associate with these kind of people anyway..." which feels disingenuous.
I think you really just don't care that much about using spotify, which is a perfectly cromulent opinion.
I think anybody that can say they "care a lot" about using Spotify pays for a subscription.
I think privacy is what the majority of people who use these blockers are trying to get. I know that is the reason I use ad blockers at least. I do have a right to privacy, and the amount of information advertisers can learn about me though meta data is a serious violation of that privacy. Unfortunately with targeted advertising, then line between ads and tracking has disappeared, they are one and the same. And yes, I am aware that a lot of advertisers allow you to disable targeted ads- however they still collect the same amount of information, they just claim not to use it for their ad choices.
It makes sense to block freeloaders, especially when they need to PAY some for the song one listened. It is reasonable that they get some revenue in one form or another.
On this one, I believe people should be protesting over the nature of format of ads, not the existence of ads altogether.
[1] https://brave.com
[2] https://blokada.org
[3] https://pi-hole.net
I haven't seen even if they specified whether it must be the account user or not. E.g. your network host or isp can do it.
So that seems interesting, unless they can do it on a whim anyways and dont have to prove anything. Though they could just say, "no free service if we cant serve ads".
They can block service for whatever reason they want.
https://spotifyforbrands.com/en-US/ad-experiences/
> JavaScript or iFrame Tags: All third-party tags and tracking URLs need to be in https format.
I was on the fence about this because there is a legitimate need to bring in revenue from free users, but they should stick to audio, video and image ads.
Well, it was nice knowing you Spotify.
I heard about Spotify through a musically-minded, but not technical, friend. I joined because of their insistence that it was a good service 3+ years ago.
Today, they complain about the desktop client and ads. I no longer use Spotify.
Spotify doesn't have any kind of lock on music. The Apple fans are all using Apple Music, after all, and there's lot of other choices out there. Ditching Spotify isn't going to affect your life or digital device using in any significant way.
I'd challenge this because they can convert to paid users or advertise the service via word of mouth, or probably provide other value as well (user data, listening habits, etc.).
However, even if these users have zero value to Spotify, then why terminate them? Spotify is getting some negative press over it, so it seems like a net loss for them...
When I go to a restaurant and eat without paying, why do they kick me out?
If you buy into the system you are more dependant on it than just going another route and you end up not giving a damn about Spotify
But to see these opportunities, the first step is to not have a hostile attitude towards your users.
Fuck you, Pay me
Sadly, you don't have that anymore with today's economy-of-scale effects.
I mean, they're pushing things to your device at your request, because you logged on to use their free service. If you don't want them to push ads to your device, they were kind enough to offer you a paid option where they won't do that.
It's not because I don't want to pay for the content, I'd happily pay 2-3x under the right circumstances. It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation, and manipulative cross-sell tactics.
Whatever arguments were made about piracy detracting from sales are laughable now. The copyright and ad lobbies are detracting from those sales, piracy is just a symptom of the cancer that they are.
Sonarr + Couchpotato + Plex + Subsonic is somehow a more consumer-friendly experience than their 'legitimate' counterparts. The fact that the premium subscription cost for those services is more than netflix+spotify, and yet people are willing to pay that much for their piracy, that should be pretty telling to any industry analyst.
Can't help you with movies/Netflix, but in the case of Spotify, you could go back to buying mp3's. Google Play, Amazon, iTunes (aac format), etc will all sell you DRM Free tracks at $1.30 a piece, and the ad-free songs become yours forever to listen to however you wish.
Edit: Since some will invariably point out that you can't hear flacs, here's a better argument. Even if you prefer lossy music, there are and will be better codecs than mp3. So the choice of encoding should be up to you so that you can choose a better codec in the future if you wish. And mp3 wasn't even free until last year. So until 2018, it was illegal to play mp3s on a free system.
But music? There may be corner cases but pretty much any of the big streaming services plus judicious a la carte purchases have you pretty well covered. Personally I do like owning music but then I started from a pretty large collection of physical media.
If there's a specific unreleased track you want, fine, pirate that. I don't think there's anything wrong with pirating content that's not available for sale (as long as you buy it if/when it does become available for sale). However, the existence of some unreleased tracks do not give you license to pirate tracks which are released.
Outside of specific, exceptional circumstances, I have zero sympathy for anyone pirating music in 2018. Music is finally being distributed in the DRM Free, affordable, and unencumbered formats consumers have been asking for.
A good example is Morphine's The Night. We're not talking about a bootleg record, it's a proper studio album owned by UMG. Yet it's not available on Spotify, Google Music or Amazon Music. It's on iTunes, but that requires installing a native app, which doesn't run on any of my devices, including the most popular OS in the world (Android). Alternatively I can buy a CD, which will cost me something like $50 with shipping, and rip it myself - and that's only because I still happen to own a desktop with a CD drive.
https://www.amazon.com/Night-Morphine/dp/B000046PUL
All so that the artists get about $1 from my $10.
Or I can download a torrent and give those $10 to Vapors of Morphine on their Bandcamp page, which is much easier for me and will net them about $8 instead.
So fuck the leeches, I'll keep pirating.
Having easy-accessible piracy channels now works against that goal by incentivizing content providers to invest in more stringent DRM schemes. DRM can rarely prevent piracy completely, of course, but it can make piracy more difficult and less accessible.
As for iTunes, don’t they sell in high bitrate AAC? It is very hard to hear a difference in the vast majority of music between a high bitrate AAC and an uncompressed file.
Or maybe not, but it's a feeling.
Spotify always seems less useful compared to winamp if you knew what music you liked or like to download everything from one band who's best days are behind them. A hassle for new stuff but if you want the all of the 'yes' albums the rare shows, interviews spotify just doesn't cut it.
Assuming you have Netflix and Prime Video, these days I'm finding more and more occasions when the selection in the UK is bigger (!).
I load up my holds list online on the weekend and pick up a dozen or so CDs one day a week on the way home from work.
This is less than ideal, but it works for now.
I guess Vinyl is the only way to go for true security-minded individuals.
Wish they had a more fully-featured experience for streaming music on PC. Downloading to play in foobar is a bit of a faff sometimes!
You can use Bandcamp Downloader [https://github.com/Otiel/BandcampDownloader] to download the artist's music – including any or all albums and any of the songs – just by entering the addresses of the pages.
Might make getting the audio easier, considering you've already paid.
I also like that this fits in with their general marketing of lossless files - sure, you can download the 128kbps mp3s. Go ahead. They're inferior - just previews.
https://get.bandcamp.help/hc/en-us/articles/360007902173-I-h...
It definitely helps that BC is focused on independent artists and doesn't seem interested in pushing grand visions of a global musical monoculture in the way Spotify does (those pretentious Year in Music retrospectives, Drake, "chill beats playlist", Lana del Rey etc).
Old-school sites like last.fm used user-submitted tags to link my listening history to new artists I'd probably enjoy. You don't need any fancy machine learning for this kind of basic pattern recognition. Spotify could obviously do this, but like Netflix, Amazon etc, they choose to push artists that make them the most money.
https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/
Looking at my current most-played list, I'd suggest:
https://starcadian.bandcamp.com/album/saturdaze
https://future80s.bandcamp.com/album/trans-am
https://nightvision2.bandcamp.com/album/runaway !!
https://neondroid.bandcamp.com/album/no-more-sunset-2017-ep
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19109437
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19118498
That felt pretty hostile when it happened to me.
I'm in the same boat(no pun intended), and also still pay for the subscriptions. I thought that more streaming services and more maturity(time passed) meant this situation would be improving - not degrading.
For movies, criterion collection is coming out with a streaming service, if that's your thing. I don't have netflix but I will have that.
If you can buy them in a place with good credit card rewards percentage on the gift card it's even lower.
I'm not sure if they'd satisfy these requirements, but I generally open paid Hulu more than I do Netflix. Google Play Music seems to cover everything Spotify does and there is no free option (so there are never ads), but it's Google, so it could go the way of Reader at any point.
Feels great flying the black flag again with Plex.
weird, I just upp-ed the screen limit after 6 years because there are so many awesome new things that my wife and I want to watch independently.
I keep reading this and wonder how much TV watching do people do daily? Netflix already has more content than I will ever get to with just the back catalog of TV shows and originals. It does not even count movies.
???
I pay $14.99 a mo and my wife and I enjoy as much music as we can stomach. It's the one subscription I never even think about. Their service never goes down and they are constantly trying to improve the product.
> Sonarr + Couchpotato + Plex + Subsonic is somehow a more consumer-friendly experience than their 'legitimate' counterparts.
???
If you have the time to configure all of that stuff (and support it, and find pirated content) you need to seriously up your billable rate and reconsider the value of your time.
Then again if you just enjoy doing it yourself and running your own gear, that is fine too, but admit it. I don't think this has anything to do with the market being hostile.
Turns out Spotify invalidated her as part of my family plan and asked me to add her again. Cool.... I go to the config to add her and Spotify asks for her address and does not let me add her when putting her/my address... I don't remember what address did I enter when I opened spotify more than 5 years ago, and the stupid thing does not let you see your address (like, 1 field in a database, how hard is that?)
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-can-I-check-my...
Needless to say, I cancelled Spotify Family premium and went to Google Play Family plan. Great deal if you tell me.
This is why I started blocking ads at the network level last year, after resisting blocking them at all for so long before that. A number of popular sites (imgur.com being the worst offender, but certainly not the only one) hosting adverts that attempted drive-by downloads, tried to access cameras or microphones (luckily caught by permissions blocks elsewhere), played obnoxious loud audio, played high-res bandwidth chewing video, opened pop-ups or pop-unders, and so forth.
Serve the adverts from your own domains and agree to take responsibility for any damage done by code/other served from your domains, and we can talk. Otherwise: no ads. Ban me from your site or application for that if you wish.
On a data connection redirected me to my ISP's game shop that apparently lets me buy crappy games for I don't know what with one click via phone bill.
Multiple redirects to a website that claims my phone is infected while maxing out the CPU and triggering permanent vibration.
I wonder if the ad industry is onboard with HTTPS yet? In 2013 when I was last looking at ads as an attack vector, none did, and many executed JS, or gave privileged access to system APIs on device via JS, which meant that it was fairly trivial to intercept ad delivery, return malicious JS, open a "reverse JS shell" and poke about the filesystem in the app, open new screens, etc, all remotely.
I reported this as a vulnerability in several apps, telling them that HTTPS was an important aspect of preventing this, and was told that ad networks were against HTTPS and therefore they had to find alternative mitigations.
Especially when piracy is so much easier than getting your account suspended for using an adblocker.
Setting aside the possibility of malware for a second, would you have taken spotify/pandora with ads back then?
Not that I have ever used Spotify, but that would be how I would defend it. If I did, I would just move on since my account would soon be suspended.
So how does Spotify defend running potentially malicious ads from 3rd party providers on end-user systems? Do they even vet those ads? Are they even aware of what code will be running on users computers that they are serving via the ad frameworks?
We are talking about people who use ad-blockers to get a “premium” experience while using free, unpaid accounts.
Basically leeches undermining everyone else.
I see no issue with Spotify terminating these accounts. Even as someone using an ad-blocker. Because I pay for the freaking service I use.
However, they do seem to include ads in their podcasts for all users. So it's not quite that simple.
Spotify delivers so much value that I couldn’t imagine not paying for it (or enduring ads). I listened to something like 25 straight days of music last year.
Why not just pay for it!?
Personally, I pay for Spotify and use it constantly to listen to everything from game and movie soundtracks (and covers), rock and metal bands, EDM, indie, pop, and more obscure instrumental music.
I understand if you mostly listen to a few bands from the era you grew up in, or don't listen to music too often at all, it might make more sense to keep a paid music collection and use Spotify less frequently (and justify using the free version), but if I paid for all of the music I listen to individually, it would easily rack up to something like 10 times (or more) the amount my yearly Spotify does. IMO, if you aren't a "power user," use a different streaming service or buy your music individually.
One day very soon I'll be playing all my music in something else entirely again. While it's impossible to brush off the value of streaming services like Spotify, it's a huge step backwards on many levels.
We must demand better.
Personally, if you don't own the content I don't think you can whine when it goes away.
We did?
It's a subscription service. Of course you don't own access.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiogalaxy
I've suffered the same, as content agreements have changed, tracks have been made unavailable in playlists.
There's a setting in Spotify to see this; you can disable "hide unplayable tracks in playlists". You'll then see all the affected songs return, but greyed out.
> services like Spotify and Apple Music incourage extra data usage, and randomally delete music as they see fit
I certainly wouldn't use a service that deletes my music.
They don't randomly delete things. They remove content due to licensing expiring. Thank our backwards media licensing system for that.
Now with Apple Music you don’t have the option to choose between WiFi/Cellular for downloaded music but Spotify doesn’t have that problem.
http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-terri...
https://github.com/Xeroday/Spotify-Ad-Blocker/
If you keep listening to Spotify, surely it brings you value.
I know I’m getting value from it. I listen to music all day at work and personally I don’t have many services that I use so often.
Use one of your backup codes?
It's inconvenient, but if your in an environment that disallows phones or other portable electronics (like 2FA Fobs/USB sticks), it may be the only reasonable way.
This is why I really dislike forced two factor authentication. It might make sense in a lot of circumstances, but not for everyone.
---
Edit: Although, if we're talking about Google Play Music, I'm a bit confused, since you can turn two factor off for Google accounts. If you feel you need two factor on your main Google account but not Google Play Music (seems reasonable!), make a separate account for Google Play Music.
All of the services that I know of that let you read texts remotely are also blocked at work. Basically anything that falls under the category of messaging or email.
That looks like a rather active use.
A few hours a day adds up pretty quickly. Though I can understand not wanting _two_ music streaming service subscriptions.
Google play music is simply extremely convenient considering how nicely it works with Google Assistant. Additionally, I have tens of thousands of my own music collection uploaded to GPM that I'm free to download whenever I want without restriction. Spotify lets you play music offline, but it's basically cached and still tied to your premium Spotify subscription.
Multiplied by how many days per year? Seems significant to me.
I don’t listen to Spanish music, and I don’t speak Spanish. Multiple times when I had my free Spotify it would randomly decide that I would get all of my ads in Spanish that week. No idea why. My first thought was that my account had been hacked and someone changed my language - but nope, Spotify just doesn’t know my demographic.
I have since upgraded to premium.
It's not like I'm offended at there being an ad for an adult store or anything, but it's just really offputting? I guess? to hear about some buy one get one on adult toys or whatever while I'm eating.
It sounds like you are offended. How else would you characterize being "offput" by something? We also use Spotify in our household and I vaguely recall hearing A&E ads as well, but they just jumble together in my subconscious with all the other ads.
Why not? I don't understand the problem with a condom ad.
Some work places are far too serious.
I definitely won't get the only product they advertise to me. I already have Google Play Music, and just use(d) Spotify occasionally for discovery and when people link to playlists.
I suppose nobody is advertising to Australia then.
Plus the genre's are rather limited, it's usually one or two pop stations (with 90% song overlap), one or two country, maybe NPR or something in a podcast format, etc. Meanwhile all of the ads.
Personally I'm on the student plan, and for what I like the listen to it's a steal for 5$ (and free hulu?) Any of the alternatives, deezer, apple music, etc would likely work too, but I can't imagine only using fm radio stations.
It's a globe you can move around and tune into radio stations all around the world just like you're talking about.
It was once highly upvoted on HN.
I don't know about the rest, but I really hate when someone makes a fool out of me. I'm a lazy person too, if a service that I like asked me bluntly "hey dude, wanna give us all your info and let us sniff your traffic so we can stick ads in, we're even gonna sell it" - I'd say - sure, you were honest enough, screw it - go ahead, I didn't have to navigate through a wall of text critting me for 9000000 to get that piece of info.
But no. No one behaves like that. Long user agreements, service agreements, catchy call-to-actions on websites that promise wonderland filled with unicorns shitting M&M's and what not just so they get those few bucks out of me...
Oh well, hello foobar2000 my old friend, seems like I'll un-lazy myself just to spite these prying assholes.
If you don’t like the ads, Spotify has a subscription plan. In my country that’s €5 / month.
Surely that’s less money spent than the effort it takes to pirate music for usage with foobar2000.
If you don't like that they have an ad based model, and personally want to boycott their subscription service because of it then do so and buy your own music.
It's not complicated. 'Not rewarding their behavior' is simple - don't use Spotify. Anything else is very transparent, after-the-fact justification of your desire for theft.
"Hey I really like this bike share service, but I don't think it's safe, so I'm gonna steal the bike, improve the safety and then ride it whenever I want. I don't want to reward their behavior of renting bikes I feel aren't safe."
Imagine a grocery store has a promotion - you can get a loaf of bread for free if you listen to a twenty minute advertising presentation. Does this justify not going to the presentation, and just stealing the bread?
Bear in mind, this loaf can also only be eaten inside of the grocery store. You cannot leave the store with the bread, because it is welded to the infrastructure of the grocery.
Not paying for a gym membership would be a better example. You're using up available capacity without giving the gym a way to monetize your presence there.
TV companies and print newspapers don't need third parties and invasive tracking to sell ads.
I tried to get a similar thing started for free software and it ran for a while https://www.fsf.org/news/ad-bard
Also I'm very pissed off with people who say freeloading. It's not freeloading. I pay with my time to watch or listen to your stupid ad. I should not also pay with my personal data. An ad is just an ad it should not have evolved to the monstrosity of tracking you.
It has evolved in the same way copyright has until we find a way to kill both of them as they are not needed in our world.
I have this problem with websites, apps, social networks, etc. as well. I don't want to be tracked, retargeted and so on. Not because I think ads will influence me or anything but its about my trust in those companies and how they protect my data. When my data gets leaked because they are inadequate at security I don't get money back. I get a message saying "We take your privacy seriously"... And that data can then be used in various other ways to harm me.
Not if you're using an ad-blocker.
Perhaps the reason you're using an ad-blocker is because you don't want to be tracked, and the only way to do that is to block ads completely. I get it. But you're also using up Spotify's bandwidth and licensing fees (which in turn allow music to be created in the first place), without providing anything in return.
This is only possible because paying and ad-watching customers are subsidizing your behavior. It is the definition of freeloading.
I use adblockers to protect myself against malicious content masquerading as ads, which both the ad delivery networks and content platforms have proven unwilling or unable to address to an acceptable extent.
If you want to boycott Spotify for endangering people's computers, go ahead. Heck, if you want to attempt to use Spotify with an ad-blocker, go ahead. I don't feel morally comfortable using ad-blockers, but I won't fault others for using them.
You do not get to use Spotify's free tier, block their only potential revenue stream for that tier, and then turn around and cry fowl when Spotify notices and bans you.
The issue isn't one of arbitrary code execution. Lets not be hypocrites.
AdBlock Plus has over 200 million installs on the desktop alone. Are you going to tell me that those 200+ million users of AdBlock Plus are concerned with arbitrary code execution? What percentage of those users do even know what that even means?
Between 10% and 20% of Internet users are using ad-blockers. Lets do an imagination exercise and say that Spotify would only serve images for ads. How many of those 10 to 20% of Internet users would whitelist Spotify?
"None" would be my guess.
https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/11/15/designing-audio...
Fuck the money, I’m not letting a site run arbitrary code on my machine, especially when they have a track record of spying and installing malware. They have a right to make a living, I have a right to own my property without having it damaged by casual greed.
Or don't. I've pirated music and movies. I just don't get too mad about it.
My point, put another way: I respect the desire to block JS ads, AND I respect the will a non-critical app in a competitive market to make stupid decisions with their ad policy. AND people who don't like that policy can move to Amazon/Google/Apple/other music platforms, or pay Spotify Premium.
Pardon my language, but it's a fucked up point to say pay a service money if you don't want their software to conduct clandestine operations on a device that probably contains all sorts of sensitive and private data that NOBODY has claim to but you, and the people you've expressly desired to share it with.
That's the point it would seem to me reading these comments; I realize paying gets rid of the ads, but it's pretty messed up to sit back and think that you're ostensibly paying for "good behavior" from Spotify w/rt to ad tech and what that technology enables on our devices.
It's easy to say pay or don't use the service, why isn't as easy to say "Spotify, don't be dicks with your ad technology on MY phone"?
If I pay a kid $.25 for lemonade, I'm paying for lemonade. If he says "hey, enjoy a free sample of my lemonade while I tell you how I made it", that's a fair trade-off. It is NOT a fair trade-off for his dad to spike my lemonade with a sedative so I'll want to sit down and give his kid an opening to blabber about his recipe while winking and saying "should paid us that quarter, chump".
If you sell yourself into slavery, you don't become a slave. If you use a product "in exchange for ads", you don't lose your right to protect yourself from them.
- Unspiked lemonade for $.25 - Spiked lemonade for free
Companies are free to sell what they want, for the amount they want. At least there's more than one option here.
Thst kid would be arrested, because it’s plain to see from a legal and moral perspective that it’s wrong. Besides, it’s not like that at all.
What it is like is a radio station threatening to cut off service to people who switch channels or turn down volume during ads. This is a problem with the business model, and using TOS tricks to try and twist people’s arm. If they want to be sub only then by all means, but if they want to use an ad model as well then they incur some risks with that. I’m also not clear that it stops with the “free” service only.
Personally I don’t use Spotify, because I like to own my music, and I trust in their business model’s longevity about as much as I believe in fairies. When companies have to threaten their customers to make a business model work, the model is already fucked beyond repair. Advertising on the internet isn’t compatible with the existence and proliferation of ad blockers, and I bristle when a company makes a move to try and undermine autonomy to shore that model up. Moreover if Spotify does it as people accept it, other companies will try to follow suit.
If a business is offering a product at terms you don't like, how exactly is that bad? Just don't use the product.
But this article is specifically about people using a product against the stipulated terms. Criticizing bad ads is valid in general, but people expect topical discussions to stick to the context. Either clarify you are speaking from a different context or you will get misinterpreted.
If that requirement is freeloading then I disagree with that definition of the word. They enjoy the benefit of behavior which if it was offline would be illegal, and out competes those service which operate more ethically. Since society currently expect the users to be responsible if their machine get infected by malware, it is fully ethical if they use software like ad-blocks to protect themselves.
I can tell you didn't read carefully what I wrote, but that's fine.
Here's what Spotify tells me: "Spotify gives you instant access to millions of songs – from old favorites to the latest hits. Just hit play to stream anything you like."
Where's "but we'll also monitor you and inject whatever code we can, we might allow our customers to do so too, we don't know what it might be but since we wasted $0.003 to acquire you, we need to make at least $5 off of you and we don't really care what happens to your device or if someone breaches our customer and does bad shit to you."
I believe in reciprocity - and the odds are worse at my side if I "freeload" :)
And even if Spotify had appended their marketing language with the "but we track you, never forget that", would that have somehow made you turn off the adblocker?
I know this news doesn't affect me, but the principle is the important thing.
Can you state in clear terms the "principle" that Spotify is violating?
Everybody has the right to control what is displayed on their computer when they browse the Net, and Spotify has the right to cancel free accounts for whatever reason they want to. There is nothing wrong with running adblockers and anti-anti-adblocking scripts, etc., and there is nothing wrong with canceling free Spotify accounts. There is also no cognitive dissonance with running and ad-blocker and being angry when Spotify cancels your free account because of it, it's a perfectly reasonable and consistent attitude.
In the U.S., its $10 a month for your entire life. If you live another 100 years, thats $12k that could have bought top top top of the line speakers or enough cds to fill multiple bookcases. We have so many services like this now that are packaged monthly to hide the real cost of long term use. Its like rent to own all over again, except when you stop renting you do not own.
I agree. For the past two decades, companies have privatized immense swaths of the digital commons and paid nothing for it, freeloading on the work of the countless public institutions and hobbyists who both created it, and created the culture which attracted billions of "users" to it.
With Spotify it is even worse. They have taken music, a prehistoric participatory artform and characteristic behavior of our species, and are trying to gamify it into a product that is no longer just music and which they own.
For the record I am a musician, and I'm pleasantly well-off so I have a paid Spotify subscription though I rarely use it. I held out until mid-2018, and didn't listen to even a single track on the service before then. Not that there is the slightest moral issue with using an adblocker while consuming broadcasts that contain ads, which I also do.
Their suggestions AI is quite a bit behind Spotify's unfortunately. Dunno if that's by a lack of design or because of Apple's privacy stance -- probably the former.
It's what you get when you smush internet radio and a virtual globe together. I really enjoy exploring different parts of the world and listening to their music.
I'm also partial to Minnesota Public Radio's offerings (https://www.mpr.org/): https://www.thecurrent.org/ is great for contemporary music, along with their sub-stream Rock the Cradle (https://www.thecurrent.org/rock-the-cradle) which is a solid choice if you have kids in the house.
1. People that believe ads are strictly a source of revenue. If you don't like them but want to use the service, pay for the service
2. People who believe that ads are more than a banner on the page, its permission for ad networks and services to run potentially malicious content on their computer
Would you thing it was more ethical if Spotify just got rid of the free option completely?
The first time I experienced a malicious ad in Spotify on my Linux machine, I started blocking them via my hosts file [1]. I was only hoping to block malicious sites but it ended up giving me a completely ad-free experience in Spotify.
As a free user I accept that I will be exposed to ads in exchange for not paying for the service, but they seriously need to do a better job vetting for malicious ads.
[1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
Although I personally treat ads as a malware vector and block them. Hopefully I don't get banned from Spotify as I'm a paying customer. If I do, I'll switch to another platform.
[1] http://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/domains.txt
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18978825
Before you could send your friends a message within Spotify to send a song for them to listen while in the application and could even carry on a discussion. It was slick. It was amazing and worked very well. They totally gutted it and made no indication of bringing it back. Now we're stuck with this ridiculous arcane method of sending a link through a text message that now opens up in a browser (sometimes?) instead of the application itself.
Too much work to maintain this beloved feature, better fire all the engineers working on it and hire people to prevent ad-blocking for the non-paying customers.
I stay a subscriber because of (1) the size of the catalog and (2) the 'discover weekly' constantly delivers me new songs/bands that I thoroughly enjoy and would never have discovered on my own
In comparison, Release Radar is an easy win; all the ML is already there.