Why doesn't spotify just stop playing the music if it "detects" ad blocking? It sounds like they don't know how to detect ad blockers and are resorting to fear tactics like this instead.
Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
341–350 of 963 posts
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#342They have threatened to do this on Android for a long time[1], unfortunately, this affects alternate clients as well as piracy.
[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/spotify-disables-modified-apps-m...
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#343It is my prerogative to decide which media files my browser consumes. It is my right to enforce security protections in my browser instance. All those that say 'good spotify is blocking the freeloaders' -- this is not the point. They are requiring you to consume specific media which you do not wish. Advertising is coercive, and Spotify is applying violence (threats) to enforce their business model. Not my problem. Not that I would pay any of this trash anyway.
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Or maybe not, but it's a feeling.
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.
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s fascinating to me is the length people go to in order to justify freeloading. 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.
> 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 custome…
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?
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's purely hubris. They clearly don't understand the nature of the beast.
A non-paying customer who doesn't listen to ads has absolutely zero value to Spotify. Why shouldn't they block them?
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...
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#347Good. Spotify has a pretty cheap paid option that removes all of that. To those who justify wanting the paid service for nothing by saying Spotify won't "take responsibility" or "assume liability" for their ads or those ads "might deliver malware" or are "intrusive" as a weak rationalization, you present a false dichotomy. There are at least three options: 1. Pay for the service 2. Suffer through the ads 3. Don't use…
I think it will all depend on how this plays out in practice. For now, this is only some fineprint in a ton of other legalese that might or might not be used in the future. I mean, if they show you a notification that you should really sign-up for a paid subscription or disable your adblocker, this does not really seem a big deal for me and all right for Spotify. However, if they terminate your account because you ha…
These two items do not go together:
happened to use Spotify for a while on a system with adblocking enabled
drive a lot of potential customers
If they're not paying and blocking ads, they're not customers. And if they weren't willing to pay for Spotify, why would they suddenly be willing to pay for Apple Music?
being on a Pi-Hole network
The number of people setting up home filtering devices isn't even a rounding error to a service the size of Spotify. All of those people could disappear and they wouldn't even be noticed.
Ditto for the number of people who might just happen to end up on an ad-restricted network at a friend's house.
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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?
No. That's analogous to choosing to leave Spotify after you already listened to some music because you decide you don't like their ads. Which is fine.
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#349Good. Spotify has a pretty cheap paid option that removes all of that. To those who justify wanting the paid service for nothing by saying Spotify won't "take responsibility" or "assume liability" for their ads or those ads "might deliver malware" or are "intrusive" as a weak rationalization, you present a false dichotomy. There are at least three options: 1. Pay for the service 2. Suffer through the ads 3. Don't use…
You cannot pay for the service, the service is free. You pay for not being forced to watch ads. Not forcing people to watch ads is what decent people simply do, nobody deserves to get paid for that.
Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
What if Spotify ran the ads from their own servers as to not give advertisers free reign on your data?
What if? What's your point?