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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

#591

Post by ar0 »

reaperducer wrote: post #347
ar0 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 err…

> 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?

Well, because they have been terminated by Spotify, of course. I mean, it is pretty easy to imagine that your preferences are "free Spotify with blocked ads is better than Spotify / Apple Music / etc. for 10+$", but that after the "free with blocked ads" option disappears you will (grudgingly) end up paying.

And the right move by Spotify would be to support this transition in a way that does not drive this business to their competitors. If you end up moving these people to choose between "ok, now I have to contact customer support to get my account unblocked so that I can then start entering my credit card details" versus "ok, I can just use this big 'Start Free Trial' button here on Apple Music", I don't think that is a very difficult choice.

Also, while Pi-Hole might be quite niche, the point I was trying to make was more that many people use adblockers (about 20% in Europe[1], far bigger than a rounding error), but many of those probably don't do so specifically for Spotify, this is just a side-effect of running Spotify in the same browser. So they might be amenable to a warning that they should disable their adblockers on Spotify, while just terminating their accounts will just drive these users to competitors.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-percentage-of-Internet-use...

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

#592

Post by andai »

Bonooru wrote: post #550
heynk wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've paid for Spotify for a while, so its been some time since I've heard an ad. But from what I remember, if you put the volume below ~30%, the ad pauses.

I haven't ever used spotify, so forgive my ignorance. How are they measuring the system volume from inside a webapp? Shouldn't that information not be visible to them?

It pauses it if you put the in-app volume too low. I think the desktop client also reacts to the system volume setting, but it's been a while since I had the free plan.

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

#594

Post by robdachshund »

beering wrote: post #514
kgwxd wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no stealing, it's not even lying. Show me where in the agreement it says exactly "you must to listen to ads from a third-party if you listen to music". There are things like "we retain the right to...", or "by using this service, you agree to allow us to...". There are no commandments, only stuff that covers their ass so you can't sue them for closing your account, exposing your personal information or letting o…

I'm frankly surprised at the level of entitlement that you and others are operating under. Section 8 and 9 of the Spotify T&C is what you are looking for, btw.

It's not really surprising. Spotify is just a pivot by the music industry. An industry that has a history of abusing musicians and customers alike. You could also argue that spotify isn't doing enough to help artists, and the subscription model had probably decimated what was left of album sales. As a musician, you bow have to use spotify or flounder alone.

It's not far off from people supporting piracy. You can argue about justifications and morality, but it shouldn't be surprising given the state of the music industry and the the last 2 decades we've had with high levels of piracy.

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

#595

Post by icebraining »

buckminster wrote: post #481
icebraining wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

Amazon has it for cheap. https://www.amazon.com/Night-Morphine/dp/B000046PUL

It's not cheap once you account for the typical 100-200% in cross-Atlantic shipping charges.

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

#596

Post by H1Supreme »

wasdfff wrote: post #549
wool_gather wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $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…

If you wanted to support the artist the answer is buying concert tickets and $40 tshirts. Physical and digital sales/streaming are a drop in the bucket for a music arists income; you really burn the label when you pirate content. Cue RIAA “you wouldnt download a car, think of the artist” propaganda.

This is genre specific, and artist's popularity specific. I listen to a lot of smaller bands whose tours are almost never less than 2-3 hours from me. Plus, I don't really care for concerts anymore.

I'd rather just buy the album.

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

#597

Post by eridius »

wasdfff wrote: post #557
erikstrottmann wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iTunes has two options for cloud syncing your library: $10/month Apple Music (which includes downloading or streaming both music you uploaded and the whole Apple Music catalog) and $25/year iTunes Match (which lets you downloading or streaming music you uploaded, but not the whole Apple Music catalog)

I wonder who the target is for itunes match. I always figured people with massive physical libraries aren’t using iTunes to begin with.

There's 2 ways Apple handles music you've ripped. If the music's fingerprint matches that of something they already have in the iTunes Store, your iCloud Music Library will be populated with the iTunes Store version of the song, so you can download that on your other devices. Only the original uploading device retains the original file. This is usually a good thing as the iTunes Store version is frequently better-quality than whatever MP3 or AAC you had ripped.

The second way is if the file's fingerprint doesn't match any song in the iTunes Store catalog, then with iTunes Match, iTunes will actually upload the whole file and your other devices will then stream or download that exact file. There are some limits here; I think there's a limit on the song duration (not sure what it is but I'm pretty sure songs over 1 hour are past the limit), and there's a limit on total number of songs (at launch this was 25k; I think they've raised it higher but I don't know what the current limit is). Whatever the limits are, I do know my father's music collection (all manually ripped from a massive CD collection) is too large for iTunes Match, so he's stuck managing music the way we all used to do before Apple Music and iTunes Match came along.

As far as I'm aware, the Apple Music subscription supports the first mechanism but not the second, and the iTunes Match subscription is needed for the second option. That said, I'm not 100% positive.

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

#598

Post by Wowfunhappy »

wolco wrote: post #565
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 track…

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.

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

#599

Post by ohyeshedid »

zanny wrote: post #541
fastball wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do NOT have a right to use the service "partially" (by blocking ads), as blocking ads on their free plan is against the ToS.

ToS's (online, at least) aren't legally enforceable. If they were actually legally binding companies would be sueing users for violating them all the time. Theres a reason the extent of ToS enforcement is just account closure, its because they have no legal standing and just act as a safeguard against actual legal challenges.

You would be absolutely incorrect. I've received scores of C&D's over the years, which I've always complied with, and seen several people get sued and lose with penalties being both criminal and financial.

I would say it's unlikely that Spotify would even send a C&D to an adblocking user, but the folks that make their own apps to bypass the advertising or rip the streams are at legal risk.

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

#600

Post by robdachshund »

cabaalis wrote: post #459
kgwxd wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I believe it's safe to assume that (1) You sell a product or service for which people pay you, or (2) You derive an income working for someone else that sells a product or service for which people pay, or that (3) You receive financial support from someone who is within one of the above. What happens to the food on your table when people take that product or service without giving you money for it?

On the other hand, is spotify a benevolent entity saving starving musicians or is it something they are now forced to comply with?

How much money do you think musicians make on spotify? Do you think it's any better than it was before, or do you think spotify probably takes advantage of musicians?

Additionally, spotify has pretty much destroyed retail and online album sales (ignoring record sales), effectively forcing musicians to use the service.

Unless spotify is paying everyone well, they probably aren't the benevolent actor you make them out to be.

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