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Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

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Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#431

Post by jetrink »

JeremyBanks wrote: post #203
snuxoll wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://www.pandora.com/upgrade

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.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#432

Post by owenversteeg »

Nullabillity wrote: post #395
djohnston wrote: post #256

Spotify: Provide service that costs labor, resources, licensing, etc. Spotify: Use ads for non-paying users to help cover the costs Freeloading Users: Use third party software to sidestep this source of revenue, essentially getting the product for free. Spotify: Ban these users. Freeloading Users: shocked_pikachu.jpg

> costs labor Neglegible marginal impact. Nevermind that most of this manpower seems to be wasted on adtech and bullshit redesigns. Their service sure hasn't improved recently. > resources This was completely self-inflicted. They used to run a p2p network, they chose to shut that down. That's fine, but they can't blame that on their users. > licensing Spotify's licensing budget is a fixed percentage of their revenue.…

> I guess artists could opt out if they thought their licensing slice was too small, but that's effectively career suicide. Just look at Prince.

What do you mean? Prince only took his music off spotify for about a year before he died. Was there a very obvious effect on his career in this time?

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#433

Post by djohnston »

some_random wrote: post #421
djohnston wrote: post #256

Spotify: Provide service that costs labor, resources, licensing, etc. Spotify: Use ads for non-paying users to help cover the costs Freeloading Users: Use third party software to sidestep this source of revenue, essentially getting the product for free. Spotify: Ban these users. Freeloading Users: shocked_pikachu.jpg

Spotify: Serves arbitrary, third-party content through known malware vector. Users: Blocks known malware vector. Spotify and 'the usual' HN crowd: shocked_pikachu.jpg

can you elaborate? TCP is also a known malware vector.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#434

Post by kingosticks »

dcbadacd wrote: post #115
kingosticks wrote: post #99

They also changed their terms regarding reverse engineering. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18978825

Isn't that unenforceable in the EU?

Parts of it certainly, but I am not sure about the "disclosed or communicated" part.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#435

Post by ionforce »

driverdan wrote: post #240
SnowingXIV wrote: post #118

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 slic…

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.

Probably they did the math and found that that feature wasn't delivering enough value or cost too much to maintain.

In comparison, Release Radar is an easy win; all the ML is already there.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#436

Post by fastball »

kgwxd wrote: post #425
akerl_ wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the approach is “I won’t use services that want to use 3rd-party-RCE-style ads”, it makes sense to me. But the folks who are blocking ads are taking Spotify’s offer (pay us, let us run our ads, or don’t use our service, pick 1) and trying to shoehorn a 4th option that Spotify doesn’t offer: get the content w/o Spotify getting paid. To tell Spotify “I’d use your service if you added an option where the ads didn…

I've never used this phrase in my entire life but it seems absolutely perfect for the described scenario. Sorry not sorry. I personally chose not to use Spotify at all, but I'm not going to fault anyone for using it with a thrid-party blocker. Even if Spotify didn't also do advertising the right way (e.g. branded playlists (I believe paying users get those too)), no one is obligated to subject themselves to personal…

If you don't want to "subject yourself to personal harm" you can either not use the service or pay for the ad-free service.

You don't have a right to use Spotify how you want.

It's an online service, not a piece of personal property.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#437

Post by g45y45 »

djohnston wrote: post #433
some_random wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify: Serves arbitrary, third-party content through known malware vector. Users: Blocks known malware vector. Spotify and 'the usual' HN crowd: shocked_pikachu.jpg

can you elaborate? TCP is also a known malware vector.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Spotify-Free...

Literally this service delivered malware in 2016. You are permitting spotify to distribute adverstising malware.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#438

Post by judge2020 »

gowld wrote: post #401
akerl_ wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the approach is “I won’t use services that want to use 3rd-party-RCE-style ads”, it makes sense to me. But the folks who are blocking ads are taking Spotify’s offer (pay us, let us run our ads, or don’t use our service, pick 1) and trying to shoehorn a 4th option that Spotify doesn’t offer: get the content w/o Spotify getting paid. To tell Spotify “I’d use your service if you added an option where the ads didn…

Pandora and Google Play Music (and maybe Spotify too I don't know) put ads in the audio stream (and video, if you are looking at the app screen while listening to music for some reason). Seems simpler to do this than get into a technical arms race with users.

They already do this, there are constant interruptions for 30-second audio ads. Currently, you can turn the audio down, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do something akin to the black mirror episode "fifteen million merits" where you have to look at/listen to the ads for them to go away.

The main gripe is using adsense which can still often be used to deliver malware.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#439

Post by DevKoala »

kgwxd wrote: post #425
akerl_ wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if the approach is “I won’t use services that want to use 3rd-party-RCE-style ads”, it makes sense to me. But the folks who are blocking ads are taking Spotify’s offer (pay us, let us run our ads, or don’t use our service, pick 1) and trying to shoehorn a 4th option that Spotify doesn’t offer: get the content w/o Spotify getting paid. To tell Spotify “I’d use your service if you added an option where the ads didn…

I've never used this phrase in my entire life but it seems absolutely perfect for the described scenario. Sorry not sorry. I personally chose not to use Spotify at all, but I'm not going to fault anyone for using it with a thrid-party blocker. Even if Spotify didn't also do advertising the right way (e.g. branded playlists (I believe paying users get those too)), no one is obligated to subject themselves to personal…

At the same same time you are stealing a service if you don’t accept either of their revenue proposals when taking advantage of it. If you don’t want ads, then you need to pay in some form. Spotify is not a charity.

Re: Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers

#440

Post by fastball »

wool_gather wrote: post #394
jbeales wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing(s): 1. It's not just 1 type of ad. In Little Snitch, I have permitted Spotify to connect to 281 different domain names, most of which are ad-related. That's a lot of companies being allowed to run JS in whatever webview Spotify uses to display ads. I don't listen much on my computer anymore. 2. They keep advertising deals to me - $0.99 for a month, or $9 for 3 months, that I can't subscribe to becaus…

> $9-10 I can buy 10-12 CDs per year This is good in other ways! One of the problems with Spotify is that the musicians don't really get paid a realistically useful amount. I say this as someone who has both a Spotify subscription and musician friends whose music is on Spotify. That said, I personally find the subscription price surprisingly low for what I get, but I wouldn't try to tell you what to do with your mone…

I'm willing to bet that your musician friends wouldn't be getting much of a payout if Spotify didn't exist either.

The actually popular artists make great money from Spotify.

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