
Spotifree – Free OS X App for Muting Spotify Ads - gprasanth
http://spotifree.gordinskiy.com/
======
jormungand
I don't see any reason to do that for an app whose paid and ad-free version is
really cheap for the huge value it provides. Remember when you used to buy CDs
for every album.

~~~
samuli
The author says, that you cannot purchase a Spotify subscription in Ukraine,
where he is based.

------
vages
CHANGE MY MIND:

I find no moral justification for using this, even if you can't afford
Spotify's paid alternative.

~~~
lemagedurage
I'll bite:

People should be allowed to modify their property, including what runs on
their computer.

~~~
Legogris
That people should not be forbidden to modify what's running on their computer
does not morally justify any code you may be running on your computer.

Try to separate ethics and morality from rights.

~~~
papermachete
Surely if they didn't mind people blocking ads, they would add DRM and
doubly/triply encrypt every data the app accesses/serves. As it is, they
decided ads are just extra content you can strip away from your songs.

~~~
Legogris
I do not see that as a legit moral justification.

Not saying I do think it's morally wrong, just that these are beside the
point.

~~~
papermachete
Having a hard time understanding your moral compass. Do you find it wrong that
a userspace program is manipulated by the kernel? Do you think it's unfair
because this may or may not devaluate ads?

~~~
Legogris
What I think on that issue has nothing to do with my argument that "People
should be allowed to modify their property, including what runs on their
computer" is orthogonal to whether it's morally justified to run any kind of
software of your computer. Is running a spam bot PMing suicide threats to
people also justified with this logic?

------
jesperlang
So how does it work?

> Spotifree is polling Spotify every .3 seconds to see whether the current
> track number is 0 (as in all ads). If it is, Spotify is muted for a duration
> of an ad. When an ad is over, the volume is set to the way it was before.

------
bl4ckneon
I agree with most of the comments here that you should just pay for Spotify...
BUT genuine question. If it's just muted then the ad still plays and Spotify
and the artist still get their money, so what is the harm?

(the obvious answer would be the advertising company, anyone else or anything
else I am not seeing?)

~~~
megla_
Everyone in the comments is acting like you're comitting a war crime, but the
majority sees no problem with adblockers, which are pretty similiar,
especially autoclicking ones.

The only one directly losing resources is the ad company, until they get tired
of it and stop advertising on Spotify. But Spotify is affordable, so the
amount of people that jump through hoops and use these methods is
insignificant.

My guess is that you still benefit them more than people who share accounts.

~~~
q3k
> Everyone in the comments is acting like you're comitting a war crime, but
> the majority sees no problem with adblockers, which are pretty similiar,
> especially autoclicking ones.

They're not similar.

1) There is no paid alternative to ads I see in Firefox - eg., I can't pay to
support the sites I consume, like I can with Spotify.

2) Spotify ads might track my music listening habits. Web ads track everything
I visit in a web broswer.

3) Spotify ads do not attempt to exploit my browser privacy features to
deanonymize me.

~~~
megla_
Similiar as in the only one who is losing money is the advertising company,
that's why I've added _especially autoclicking ones_.

If nobody is seeing ads, nobody is really losing money, Google is just getting
it slower.

------
ojagodzinski
or just pay them like a decent human being.

~~~
q3k
Not only that, but they also have a donation link in there. Ew.

------
vr46
This - not being able to pay from country X, and then deciding to make this
app, and then soliciting donations for it - is a great example of how people
are frequently incentivized to do the wrong thing.

~~~
q3k
The author lives in the Netherlands according to their twitter bio. Spotify is
available there.

------
sidkhanooja
Most ads on Spotify are not even intrusive - they are (in)famously bad for
advertising Spotify's own premium service (try premium for free!).

This is just ridiculous. If you're annoyed by the ads, get a subscription
then.

~~~
megla_
Haven't used Spotify in years, but back then the ads were much louder than
music. I'm not sure if that's still correct, but I've read about this issue
multiple times.

You could argue that you should _just get_ a subscription, but intrusive ads
defeat the whole idea of a free version. Might as well remove it, if you're
going to make it tedious to use.

------
ollie87
Yeah, this is gonna be a no from me.

