
Spotify will now suspend or terminate accounts it finds are using ad blockers - sinstein
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/08/spotify-will-now-suspend-or-terminate-accounts-it-finds-are-using-ad-blockers/
======
cletus
Good.

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 the service

This thread is an object lesson in why basically every large service on the
Internet is ad-supported. When people aren't willing to pay for 1-2 coffees
for _a month of unlimited music streaming_ are you really surprised that
companies have no choice to use an advertising revenue model?

~~~
michaelmior
> 1-2 coffees a month

Where do you buy coffee that _one_ coffee costs $10?! (or even $5?) I still
don't think it's a lot of money, but not quite so trivial.

~~~
yial
Using US prices, a black basic coffee is probably $2-3 at a coffee shop.

Any kind of specialty drinks, which most people I would believe get at
Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, the local coffee shop, end up being $5-8, not even
in a major city or metropolitan area.

~~~
reaperducer
_Using US prices, a black basic coffee is probably $2-3 at a coffee shop._

Any size coffee is $1 at McDonald's 24/7\. The quality is improving, too, so
it's something to remember when you're traveling in unfamiliar territory.

~~~
gowld
Is that better than buying a pack of caffeine pills to travel with?

~~~
OldSchoolJohnny
Yes. You get to interact with real people and stretch your legs.

------
dessant
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.

[https://spotifyforbrands.com/en-US/ad-
experiences/](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.

~~~
bicubic
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.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> 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.

~~~
wolco
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.

~~~
macd
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.

~~~
nickthegreek
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.

------
furicane
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.

~~~
bad_user
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.

~~~
minikites
So you're rewarding them for bad behavior with your money. Think about what
this does to their incentives.

~~~
umanwizard
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?

~~~
c22
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?

~~~
umanwizard
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.

~~~
c22
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.

------
SnowingXIV
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.

~~~
driverdan
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.

~~~
IlGrigiore
For me it usually does what you describe. When opening the application it
shows me the new release of an artist I follow if it finds one.

------
ngngngng
Most of the discussion here is making this far too one-sided.

I reserve the right to control how content is delivered to my devices by
blocking ads, and spotify reserves the right to block my account for doing so.
Both of those practices are completely fair in my opinion. I have no problem
with this (also I pay for spotify)

------
SirensOfTitan
Sounds like a reasonable move.

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.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
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?

Why not just pay for it!?

~~~
sotojuan
Seems to me a lot of hackers/tech people get off getting around paying for
stuff, even if they make well over six figures.

~~~
WilliamEdward
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.

------
nixpulvis
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.

We must demand better.

~~~
davemp
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.

~~~
slouch
Grooveshark

~~~
lucasverra
Audio Galaxy [1] !

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiogalaxy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiogalaxy)

------
djohnston
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

~~~
some_random
Spotify: Serves arbitrary, third-party content through known malware vector.

Users: Blocks known malware vector.

Spotify and 'the usual' HN crowd: shocked_pikachu.jpg

~~~
judge2020
At least now, Spotify can only be downloaded in the Windows store (they
discontinued use of the desktop application on Windows 10). As I understand
it, W store apps are sandboxed, so something like this reasonably isn't
possible anymore (at least without an escape exploit)?

~~~
SamuelAdams
You could run a network-level ad blocker, ie PiHole [1].

[1]: [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

~~~
Siemens
And then you would be banned for blocking ads.

------
chucksmash
Unfortunately their web player has issues with recognizing some paid accounts.

I have a grandfathered $5/mo no ads account. My corporate firewall settings
prevent me from using the desktop Spotify client. The web player still plays
ads for me when I'm signed in to my account.

When I raised this issue with Spotify support, they were friendly and
professional but the answer boiled down to "use the desktop client, the
frontend sees your legacy paid account as a free one and we're not going to
update our code to handle it."

I use an adblocker on Spotify to get the ads-free experience I pay the company
for.

~~~
PopeDotNinja
Could you set up an SSH tunnel and use the client through that?

------
sidyapa
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.

~~~
danijelb
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?

~~~
phailhaus
...all the examples you gave are services you pay for. Spotify is preventing
users from blocking ads on their _free tier_.

~~~
danijelb
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.

------
phailhaus
The amount of people here outraged that Spotify is preventing them from
blocking ads on the _free tier_ is astounding. Pay for the service if you
don't want ads.

~~~
misiti3780
+1 spotify literally costs (per month) < 2 venti lattes from your favorite
cafe, and less than a beer at most bars in NYC and 1/2 of this thread is
complaining

~~~
danijelb
I'm one of those that are complaining, but at the same time I pay for Spotify,
Netflix and HBO GO, and I didn't pirate almost anything for years. It's not
about the cost, it's about their obsession with control. If they can't provide
free service without privacy intrusion (monitoring what you do with the data
they send to your network) they shouldn't provide a free service at all.

------
redsky17
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.

~~~
bad_user
Then why don’t you pay for a subscription?

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.

~~~
redsky17
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.

~~~
vageli
I was with you until > I don't want to pay for something I only use for a few
hours per day tops.

A few hours a day adds up pretty quickly. Though I can understand not wanting
_two_ music streaming service subscriptions.

~~~
redsky17
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.

~~~
misiti3780
why dont you just ditch the other two subscriptions and use spotify
exclusively ?

~~~
redsky17
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.

------
krn
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?

[1] [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)

[2] [https://blokada.org](https://blokada.org)

[3] [https://pi-hole.net](https://pi-hole.net)

~~~
sinstein
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.

~~~
YayamiOmate
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".

~~~
bootlooped
> they can't block service for technical difficulties but for intentional
> behaviour

They can block service for whatever reason they want.

------
antoineMoPa
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.

~~~
penagwin
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.

~~~
Retric
Most radio stations are crap, but the world is a huge place. Listen to say
WFMU out of NYC and you will hear a very wide selection of odd stuff.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
And most of that odd stuff is also crap. I value the ability to discover music
that is relevant to my tastes.

~~~
Retric
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.

------
tradesmanhelix
> All types of ad blockers, bots and fraudulent streaming activities are not
> permitted.

I feel like the bigger issue here is Spotify's conflating the use of "ad
blockers" with other (clearly illegal) activities like "fraudulent streaming".
If you don't allow ad blockers on your service, fine. But lumping them in the
same sentence with criminal activities...seems like a very slippery slope.

Hey Spotify: Instead of just throwing gasoline on the fire, why don't you
spend some of that venture capital to address the underlying issues here,
namely: Why are people running ad blockers in the first place? Are they
concerned about privacy or malvertising? Are your ads obnoxious? The only
reason we're in this boat is because the modern internet is pretty darn
unusable without an ad blocker - consumers are sending a clear message with
their use of ad blockers. Wake up and do something to help fix the problem.

As it stands, all you've done is throw down the gauntlet. Now, ad blockers
will probably just get more sophisticated to work around your detection
systems, and round and round we'll go.

As for me, I'm done. I've deleted my Spotify account and will spend my
time/money supporting other services that are trying to improve the
advertising situation on the internet instead of telling users to suck it up,
turn off their ad blocker, and support a crappy ad ecosystem that's especially
predatory toward our less-technical friends and family members.

And hey - if you want to see an example of how to do internet advertising
right, check out [https://carbonads.net](https://carbonads.net). There's no
reason Spotify couldn't pioneer the audio equivalent of what the awesome folks
at Carbon have done. Props (and a whitelist in my ad blocker) to them.

------
lucb1e
This is your friendly reminder to make backups of things you don't want to
lose. This happened to me when Grooveshark quit, so now I have a small script
that pulls all song metadata from my Spotify account. I can always still buy
music, switch services, etc., but I can't get my collection back if they see
my account mistakenly as blocking ads (I'm a paying customer but you never
know).

Same with Telegram (or your favorite chat service) by the way. Almost nobody
backs that up. Especially if you're not paying and they can read your
plaintexts (and find something potentially unwanted in there), be sure to make
regular backups.

------
narrator
Relevant South Park:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z696bTiP8Ro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z696bTiP8Ro)

~~~
moonshinefe
Ridding the world of non-US viewers too apparently. ("Not available in your
country")

------
RileyJames
I pay for Spotify, and I’m about ready to drop it.

Offline play is the primary feature I pay for, and it’s SUCKS!!!

They simply DONT allow you to search an index of the songs that are saved to
the device.

The major bug is, a song is generally only found via the index you saved it
in.

Ie: if you save a song in a playlist, you can’t find it by searching for the
artist.

If you save 3 albums by an artist, but not the artist, you try and view the
artist, nothing appears.

On top of that, Spotify is the slowest flakiest app regarding internet
connection. It regularly says “offline” or “can’t connect” when every other
app works just fine.

On top of that, twice while upgrading the app it has deleted my ENTIRE saved
library.

------
amatecha
I assume paid subscribers aren't affected by that rule? I have a pretty
comprehensive /etc/hosts file that blocks a lot of ad networks (particularly
ones known to traffic particularly onerous ads and/or malicious code). There's
no way I'm nuking that because Spotify has this new rule. But I don't see ads
in Spotify anyways due to having a paid subscription. I assume this new "rule"
will never affect me. Guess I better make a local backup of my
library/playlists just in case? :P

But.. to be honest, can we just have Rdio back? It was vastly superior and
when it went under, Spotify was literally not even capable of importing my
Rdio library (because Spotify actually limits how many songs you can add to
your library, with a ridiculously low limit of _10,000_ songs). Users have
been requesting an increase to this since 2014 or earlier, with of course zero
changes to this amount. [https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-
Music-Incre...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Your-Music-
Increase-maximum-Songs-allowed-in-Your-Music/idi-p/733759) (notice it has _451
pages_ of comments)

------
messe
There's thousands of free internet radio stations, most of which have none or
minimal advertising. I recommend people try them out.

~~~
pwaivers
Any links or suggestions?

~~~
corint
[http://radio.garden/](http://radio.garden/)

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.

------
heinrichhartman
The question this boils down to ultimately is:

Who owns the consumption platform (device/OS/Browser)?

If the user owns the platform, it's the responsibility of the service provider
to deliver HTML. Nothing more. The user may display the content in any way
he/she like. Store it for later consumption. Extract information, etc. This is
how the web was initially envisaged. Browser extensions which allow you to
inject JS/CSS are still a relict of this era.

If the service provider owns the platform, all the user may do is consume the
content in its provided form (inc. Ads) or leave it. This is where the web is
currently headed. With company controlled mobile platforms (iOS) the control
over the platform is already completely out of the hand of the user.
Consolidation of the Browser technology is another step in this direction.

If the regulator does not step in, this paradigm shift will go on, and we will
see more and more lock-down of the web.

------
akerro
Will it also block my account when I have pi-hole/openwrt adblock? which
blocks ads on DNS level

------
mancerayder
That's really not enough. There should be some kill signal, so that the
operator on the other end is electrocuted, and/or their equipment is destroyed
if they violate the Terms and Conditions. For example:

. Ad blocker usage

. Preventing telemetry / data funneling by using DNS blackholing or port
blocking

. Anything else specified in the Terms and Conditions*

* - Which the user clicked Yes / OK / The Checkbox willingly, entering into a contract. They didn't have to, right?

Up to, and including physical harm and death. How are companies supposed to
make any money? Doesn't everyone know the entire Internet would be non-
existent without the ad-supported model? Don't be selfish. Submit!

------
kylehotchkiss
I still miss Rdio :( Apple Music's playlists are great though! But iTunes is
such a hot mess. I love how if you double click a song name in the right
place, it gives you an interface to change the name of the song, album and
artist.

------
vesak
Nice alternative to Spotify is Apple Music. They recently opened up their API
([https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applemusicapi))
which has been used to create a nice web interface by
[https://musi.sh/](https://musi.sh/)

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.

~~~
justin66
I wonder how long it'll be before using Apple's logo on their page blows up in
their face.

------
kgwxd
I got this email notice today and my first thought was "why do I still have a
Spotify account?" then I remembered I was unable to get rid of it when I tried
a few years ago. I found you can delete it here[1]: Account -> I want to close
my account permanently. Then there are a bunch of confirmations, including an
email.

[https://support.spotify.com/us/contact-spotify-
support/](https://support.spotify.com/us/contact-spotify-support/)

------
isostatic
I assume this only applies to the _free_ version of spotify

~~~
slouch
They have a web player linked from the bottom of their home page, and ad
blockers work while using it.

~~~
stronglikedan
Are you sure that's for paid accounts? I'm using it right now on a browser
with no ad blocker and I don't get ads.

~~~
slouch
I don't understand your question. If you pay, they don't serve you ads, no?

~~~
stronglikedan
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.

------
mlthoughts2018
No one is allowed to guarantee that an ad shows up on a screen I own. They can
TRY to show an ad on my screen, and I might let them. But the conditions of
use of any type of free service they emit out into nature emphatically does
not include being allowed to control what appears on my screen. Nope. Never.

I am perfectly allowed to consume their free service AND ALSO control what I
allow to appear on the screen that I own. It’s my screen.

~~~
whyfy
And Spotify can control their service how they please, next.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
As a point of fact, they cannot, because their goal with "controlling their
service" is to control what is displayed on someone else's personal property
as a condition of listening to the free data stream they decided to emit.. and
so Spotify (or anyone else) is not capable of making that a reality.

They could change their service to try to block users who protect their
personal property from having certain harmful pieces of information (like ads)
mixed in with otherwise freely available data sources. But it would just be a
silly failure, since lots of people already circumvent that type of thing
easily and legally with technology all the time.

The only thing they could actually do is to entirely shut down their emitted
free stream of data all together, both content and ads alike. Of course they
are free to do that if they want. Nobody suggested they have to emit a free
stream of data.. only that _if they choose to_ then people will just keep
consuming it without allowing ads to appear, and the ads will keep being
legally and successfully blocked regardless of any type of ban that Spotify
tries to implement.

------
ProNeo
Where's the point when you can simply create new accounts? You do not even
need to verify new accounts, so you could simply push some garbage email.

~~~
bigbaguette
you'd loose your liked songs library, playlists... the whole profile that
makes the suggestion system work okay-ish.

------
Kye
Time to stop using it, I guess. Their ads blast my head off with double the
volume and make the whole thing unusable.

~$120/year to remove ads is a lot of money just so I can listen to the odd pop
song someone mentions that isn't on YouTube. I don't listen to much big label
music. "Big label music in one place" is basically Spotify's value
proposition. $120 buys a _lot_ on Bandcamp.

------
cdubzzz
We have been thinking, admittedly for a few months, about paying for a Spotify
subscription and this sort of makes me lean more against -- particularly as a
Pi-hole user (though it doesn't block Spotify's audio ads).

I wish Bandcamp would start a radio-style service. I have tried in the past to
use it that way but it always tends to fall out of my mind because I can't
just hit play and let it run.

------
jasonlfunk
Apparently the new TOS says that they _may_ do it, not they they will do it.

------
wicket
I use a Firefox extension to protect me from CSRF attacks and tracking
networks. It basically blocks all content from domains which do not not
pertain to the page that I am reading. A side-effect of this is that it blocks
most ads. The extension is frequently mistaken by many websites to be an ad
blocker. I've no problem with ads per se, I realise that they are often
important for funding a website. What I have a problem with is that the
overwhelming majority of ads on the internet come from networks that are used
for tracking.

I don't think I'm alone. I wonder what percentage people use ad blockers
primarily for privacy purposes. In a perfect world, websites would implement
their own way of displaying ads that doesn't rely on ad networks. This would
make ads much harder to block, websites could potentially take 100% of the ad
revenue, privacy advocates would be much happier and there would be less
incentive for anyone to develop or use ad blockers.

------
xbkingx
Are they still going to take all sorts of telemetry and 'share' (read:sell) it
to third parties if I pay for the service? Yes? Okay, then I'll continue to
support the most dastardly peglegs to ever sail the seven seas. I value my
personal data at twice the value of their service, so technically I'm paying
more than my fair share by not collecting on it. I'm saving THEM money - they
would owe me the cost of their service if I didn't block ads. And just like
Spotify, I don't have an opt-out option, so I don't take it personally if they
cease to provide service. I mean, technically, I DO require a 3 month notice
and reserve the right to collect a $50,000 early termination fee, but I'm a
nice guy.

It's funny how automated systems that are impossible to oversee operate. It's
almost as if it shouldn't be allowed, but, hey, they have my info and could
have contacted me.

You get my data or my money, not both. There was a time when I would be fine
with data collection - when it actually improved the product - but now that
it's another revenue stream to sell all that off to random third parties I
have no control over, sorry, no dice. I have zero qualms with people not
wanting advertising thrown at them 24/7 while their life is continuously data
mined.

Advertising is mental pollution. It's not even junk food, since it offers no
sustenance. It's predatory. People need to stop pretending it's an
inconsequential option to throw it on a mediocre product no one would actually
buy. If someone told me the apps/programs I paid for bumped their prices up by
10x, I would still buy them. If I installed your app and chose the ad-riddled
version, it's because I barely care that it exists or didn't want to bother
with sifting through 10,000 clones.

This is what we get for the mobile app race-to-the-bottom. Mentally, "$0.99 vs
free _" is much closer to "$20 vs free_", than "$20 vs $40". But, now we're
stuck. No one's going to up their price to something reasonable, and if stores
eliminate the free tier, then the ads will just migrate to the lowest priced
tier. I 100% expect that ads will require camera permissions and force you to
look at them within 10 years, maybe 5. Are people still going to be singing
the startup-saving praise of ads when Pepsi is permanently burned into their
retinas? "I mean, you're already looking at your phone, and you get this neat
flashlight button!"

------
davb
I wonder if they'll penalise paying users who also happen to be running an ad
blocker. I pay for a Spotify family subscription but also block advertising
and analytics domains in the hosts file on each of my devices. Spotify queries
Scorecard Research regularly in the background even when it's ostensibly not
running (on Android).

------
dawnerd
I’m just concerned as a paying customer. I blanket block all known ads and
tracking scripts network wide via pihole. Are they going to ban me too because
their precious tracking is blocked and their automated system thinks I’m the
same as a free user blocking it? Solution that’s less hostile would be to just
axe free accounts altogether.

------
userbinator
To the other (currently) highly-positioned comment here who proposes "just pay
for it or don't use it":

How do they know if you close your eyes or look away? How do they know if you
plug your ears? How do they know you are actually paying attention to the ads
and not just ignoring them? Are those actions, none other than the human free
will, not essentially a form of adblocking?

My biggest concern with the "just pay for it or don't use it" attitude is not
how much it costs. That's irrelevant. It's the idea that it's wrong to not
"consume" ads somehow, or that it's acceptable for companies to use
increasingly intrusive techniques to monitor users for "compliance" of this
consumption.

Not a Spotify user, so I have no skin (or ears...) in this game. But now I'm
even more unlikely to become one.

------
GhostVII
I think more companies with a free and paid teir should start doing this. The
answer to ads shouldn't be an ad blocker, it should be to pay for the service.
The big problems we have to solve with this is making it easier and safer to
pay for online services, and giving more services a paid and a free tier.

------
arthurofbabylon
It blows my mind that an advertiser would present their product on Spotify’s
ad network. The audience selects for people unwilling to spend even very
little money on high-quality goods.

(In my social circles, avid consumers subscribe to Spotify by default. Several
even subscribe to both Spotify and Apple Music.)

------
tzakrajs
People here on HN are confused and believe that breaching a TOS is some sort
of moral peril.

Calm down. It’s business and no one is going to jail because they blocked an
advertisement. Society at large doesn’t think piracy is even worth punishing,
so why and when did we become obsequious for RIAA or MPAA?

------
gboudrias
So... they just became profitable, and now they're about to spite a lot of
users for about 10% of their revenue? I hope this day haunts them.

I can't believe how many people are discussing this as if ads are the utmost
legitimate moneymaker. Ads are parasitic by their very nature, their purpose
is to forcibly occupy some mind real-estate. Nobody wants to see ads, yet a
large industry exists based on making people see them anyway.

I'm happy when I learn that more and more people are using adblock, and I hope
companies that rely on ads to survive disappear. Spotify has chosen to put
itself in that camp. I think it's foolishly short-sighted, and I hope time
proves me right. The alternative is a future where the ads win... who really
wants that?

~~~
webninja
They have an ad-free service option available

------
phn
I get where they are coming from, but I've never seen this kind of strategy
work. If someone wants to keep listening to their songs for free they will
find a way to do it, possibly with a different vendor.

There's also the possibility this is just talk to keep the advertisers happy.

------
epidemian
I'm having a hard time understanding the rationale of this being "Good."

It's not like forcing people to watch or listen to the ads will make them
click the ads, or like the products sold in those ads. In fact, i'd suspect
forcing someone who prefers not to see ads to see them anyway will most likely
make them dislike the advertised products, or the service that runs those ads,
so it'd be a net loss.

It that not the case? If it is, then what's point of doing this?

(Note: i pay for Spotify. I like the service, and i think providing "extra"
features like being able to play exactly the songs you want, or download them
is a better way of promoting the paid version than running annoying ads.)

------
djsumdog
I have never used one of these subscription services because I hate renting my
music. I buy my music. I frequently buy CDs in bars and rip them. I know when
I buy a CD from an indie artist, they usually only paid $1 ~ $2 for that CD
and get the full amount I pay them minus that. Bandcamp is seocnd best,
because they only take 15% (compared to over 30% from Amazon/Apple/Google).

Buy your music people! You can get 250GB microSD cards. Back when the limit
was 128GB, sure I couldn't get all my music on my phone (I just had A-V .. W -
Z just had to wait), but now I have all of it on there and probably won't max
out until larger cards are affordable.

------
jochs
I'm surprised at the amount of entitlement hiding behind "I'm worried about
the security concerns of allowing 3rd party JS to run on my device." If you
don't want that happening, use one of the many alternatives and take the
usability hit. Pandora, online portals for actual radio stations (like BBC
Radio 1), and Youtube all work, but maybe don't have as great of a user
experience as Spotify (or another paid streaming service). And let's be
honest, the small minority of people here who evangelize "Spotify is evil" to
friends/family is not going to have a meaningful impact on their user numbers.

------
bmaupin
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.

[1]
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)

~~~
freeone3000
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.

------
tareqak
I wonder how Spotify's revenue sharing agreement between themselves, record
labels, and independent music producers compars with Spotify's ad agreements
between themselves and people buying ads.

------
davidhyde
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.

------
move-on-by
Isn't the latest versions of Firefox blocking ads and trackers by default now?
Is Spotify just going to block every Firefox user now? This seems extreme, I
guess we'll have to wait and see.

------
kingosticks
They also changed their terms regarding reverse engineering.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18978825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18978825)

~~~
dcbadacd
Isn't that unenforceable in the EU?

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

------
cannabis_sam
It’s laughable how much of a fraud ”intelletual property” has become.

Smile everybody! We’re gonna be in a 30th century encylopiedia article about
the stupidity of the 21th century..

------
dbg31415
I used Spotify for a few years (with an ad blocker at the DNS-level) and never
heard a single ad. I was constantly blown away by how great the service was,
and free! Then I was on a road trip and heard the ads on my phone because I
wasn't using my at-home DNS. The ads were so annoying, came on after ever
3-4th song. Ad blockers were really effective on Spotify.

I've been a paying member for a few years now.

Curious if they will block paid users too.

------
barbecue_sauce
I don't have an adblocker per se, but I do have a great deal of ad domains
rerouted to localhost in my hosts files (not intended for Spotify but for the
web in general). This occasionally causes issues with Spotify, like the
playlist not continuing because an ad can't be loaded properly, but I still do
get some ads (which I don't really mind). I wonder if this will affect my
account or not.

------
kpcyrd
Just to be sure, this is only for free accounts, right? Having a paid account
suspended because a friend runs a pi hole would be pretty annoying.

~~~
cjaybo
I'm wondering the same thing. I've paid for a premium account, and run a pi-
hole on my home network. The way I interpret the language in the terms of
service (IANAL) is that the act of blocking an ad is forbidden, but not the
running of the ad-blocker itself. Since a premium accounts are not delivered
ads in the first place, I would hope that this means paying users will be
unaffected.

I am very interested to hear a more qualified interpretation of the situation.

------
shocks
Using an ad-blocker to listen to Spotify for free because you "don't believe
in their malware serving practices!" is sort of like being vegan but eating
meat anyway. If you really can't accept Spotify on some fundamental level you
shouldn't be using Spotify.

All these people up in arms about ad-blockers on Spotify are just trying to
justify being cheap.

------
morpheuskafka
They 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...](https://www.neowin.net/news/spotify-disables-modified-apps-may-
suspend-accounts-of-repeat-offenders/)

------
sinstein
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

~~~
umanwizard
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?

~~~
hiccuphippo
What if Spotify ran the ads from their own servers as to not give advertisers
free reign on your data?

~~~
umanwizard
What if? What's your point?

------
Havoc
I can deal with paying for stuff. I can deal with "you are the product being
sold" services.

I can't deal with being both simultaneously. Companies that attempt that combo
can kindly shove a cactus somewhere.

Maybe this is just a bad article, but to me the no ad-blockers sounds like a
blanket ban not just free users.

------
Nursie
I like spotify, I pay for a family subscription which gives us an account each
for my partner and I, plus a bunch of spare accounts for things like Sonos and
Alexa to use. Never hear an ad because I pay for the service.

If they _did_ start shooting ads at me, I'd cancel in a flash, same goes for
Netflix etc.

------
elamje
But Spotify is only $10 a month....Your time spent pirating vs. time saved on
Spotify has to be worth something.

~~~
hiccuphippo
My time searching for and discovery albums is invaluable to me. Spotify
removes that satisfaction.

~~~
elamje
That's a valid reason. I don't think that most people have the same view, and
after people experience Spotify playlists like Discovery, it's hard to go back
to the old way of finding music.

~~~
shittyadmin
I find those spotify generated playlists are really bad. I think they try to
prefer music that's cheaper for them to play or something. Definitely not a
great discovery tool for me.

------
MattyS
I have no idea what the ads on Spotify are like now as I haven't used it in
over 3 years but it was pretty annoying where you're listening to heavy metal
and then an ad for a pop band comes on. And are they still doing that crap
where a free account can't pick any specific songs?

------
ArrayList
I just hit Mute as soon as an ad comes on, and unmute when the ads are done...
joke's on you, Spotify.

------
rjplatte
Cool. For all those hating on grifters, I don't think anyone's in the moral
right or wrong here. Spotify is trying to monetize a free service, some people
don't like that. This won't affect Spotify's profits meaningfully, and the
grifters will always grift.

------
jshowa3
I don't agree with blocking users with ad block. Just embed ads in stream, it
makes so much more sense. This is just an excuse so Spotify can run ad spam on
their clients. I'll stick with Google Play. 100 times better. Only play a few
embedded stream ads (like Pandora).

------
ryandrake
I wonder how this works with things like Pi-hole. I block ads at the DNS level
for my whole house with dnsmasq. Any guest who connects to my WiFi AP gets
this benefit through their DHCP configuration. Will Spotify ban their accounts
for using the service while visiting me?

~~~
chadlavi
I also wonder about this. I'm a paying Spotify member who uses DNS-level ad
blocking. Without a clear explanation of how they detect as blocking or if
this applies to paid members, I can't tell if things I'm doing for web safety
will get me banned from a service I was never trying to block ads for in the
first place.

------
bregma
This is the music industry. Spotify should be happy playing music for me in
exchange for exposure.

~~~
dddddaviddddd
[https://andymacdonald.bandcamp.com/track/exposure-
dollars](https://andymacdonald.bandcamp.com/track/exposure-dollars)

------
MorrisofOrange
But can they block me muting the ads?

~~~
ModernMech
Dont give them any ideas. Next they will require you to say the advertised
brand name 5 times in order to get back to the content.

~~~
dcbadacd
I think Sony has that patent, don't they?

~~~
ModernMech
Yeah, this is the one I had in mind:

[http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-
terri...](http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-hilarious-terrifying/)

------
moonshinefe
I hate ads and they are often brain melting / malicious / resource hogging
anyway. I also cannot afford to pay $5-10 for dozens of separate services a
month at the moment. Guess I'll be listening to other sites if they ban me.
You win Spotify.

------
arkades
Every time someone says, "ugh, I'd pay for FB just to remove the ads" ...
well, here you are.

This is spotify's action to protect its revenue for its ad-supported free
offering. _You can pay to be rid of it_.

Absolutely no one is strong-arming you into this.

------
mancerayder
There are so many complaints about Amazon's power and reach, but does anyone
else here see an in for Amazon Music? I've been a Spotify paying member for
years, but even though it only affects free members it makes me raise my
eyebrows.

------
x15
It will be interesting to see how this goes.

If the users are serious about the right to choose for themselves. If they
dislike adverts. Spotify may experience some business shrinkage.

That could signal a reversal of one catastrophic aspect of the current
Internet.

------
itslennysfault
Interesting. I wonder if this includes paid customers. 'cause I pay for
Spotify, but run ad / tracker block on my network. If they suspend or
terminate me they'll be losing a paying customer.

------
aklemm
Monthly paid service for all the music I can possibly want is such a good deal
vs. the old days of collecting CDs. This is one specific area where the
Internet as absolutely delivered on it's potential.

------
coenhyde
I recently cancelled my Spotify subscription because of their low quality
audio. But i was reverting to it for music i couldn't find on Tidal. I guess
I'm going to have to nuke it entirely now.

I'm assuming they are going to consider my use of outbound traffic
restrictions on the Spotify app "ad blocking". Spotify makes all kind of
ridiculous outbound requests for ad services, and many of those requests are
over plain text http. Given that Spotify is a webkit app, that's a nice little
attack vector Spotify is providing. Not to mention malicious ads often make
their way into the ad networks. So i just block anything other than 443 to
*.spotify.com domains.

Just deleted the app. I'll use Youtube instead.

~~~
randie63
YouTube ? Audio Quality ?

Anyway, I also dislike that my premium subscription is only 320kbit vorbis. I
can hear a difference between that and a lossless flac on my 2016 OnePlus 3
and 15$ KZ ZSN Headphones. Obviously even bigger difference on my desktop DAC
and over ear monitors. I guess I have to build an offline lib and sync it with
syncthing and use Spotify like soundlcoud only to discover new stuff

------
lajtul
So, I block Spotify ads by adding entries in the hosts file on Linux, Mac, and
Windows... will Spotify still ban me since I'm not using an ad blocker or a
modified app?

------
the_arun
Isn’t spotify family plan expensive? Netflix & Amazon prime - both are < $15
per month for HD family plan. But spotify just for music is $15. Is it fair?

------
Taylor_OD
Boo. Anti consumer practices like this are a slippery slope.

------
toyg
1.3% of the userbase is hardly a major problem, imho; it’s just another cost
of doing business.

Spotify must be trying to bury some other bad news to their investors.

------
tiuPapa
I use uBlock Origin and I still receive ads on Spotify. Am I in the clear or
not? (I would pay for it but Spotify keeps delaying Indian launch)

------
JohnTHaller
Simple solution is to allow paid accounts to run adblockers and block free
account users who block ads without banning their accounts.

~~~
cr1895
Paid accounts don't have ads.

~~~
JohnTHaller
Right, but most folks have an adblocker just on all the time. So, the paid
users shouldn't get penalized in any way if it happens to be on while browsing
Spotify. I'd wager this is the case, but the article doesn't specify.

------
close04
What qualifies as adblocking? Would connecting to the WiFi of someone using
PiHole constitute adblocking and get you account banned?

------
codykochmann
There goes the accounts of anyone working in a place that blocks ads for their
entire wifi network for anti-malware purposes.

------
g45y45
It 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.

------
jimnotgym
If enough of us set out to click every ad we saw I think we could make a
really interesting change to the internet...

------
solarkraft
That took pretty long. I've been using a modified Spotify client that worked
exceptionally well until it was shut down.

------
cmurf
I notice a ton of stuff is being piholed when I'm listening to Pandora, even
though I still hear ads.

------
yakubin
And what if I pay for the service AND have an ad blocker installed? Are they
going to suspend my account?

------
tareqak
What if a paid account is using an ad blocker? Does the account holder get
banned then?

------
m3kw9
Makes sense, given they pretty much depend on either ads or pay to remove ads
to survive

------
geggam
Yet FM radio is still free and no one can tell if you turn the radio down
during ads

------
minikites
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.

------
noja
Free accounts or all accounts? (is this a precursor to adverts for paid
accounts?)

------
darod
I wonder if this also applies to people who edit their hosts file.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Probably, since most ad blocker detection can't tell the difference, and the
difference is irrelevant to an ad vendor anyways.

~~~
Laforet
This is going to end badly. What if the ISP or corporate network have their
own domain blacklists?

~~~
mrkstu
I block advertising as a category at our corporate proxy (it saves about 20%
of potential web traffic and about 85% of the vectors of infection,)!

People definitely aren’t going to be happy if they start losing their accounts
for listening at work...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
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.

------
laretluval
Next step is smarter ad blockers.

Where is this arms race headed?

------
anarchy8
This is an arms race that Spotify will loose.

------
starpucks
Are there ad blockers on iOS for Spotify ?

~~~
broth
Not for Spotify directly. However, I do use Purify for iOS as a content
blocker for Safari. It might work depending on if Spotify has any web views
embedded in its app.

------
bigbaguette
on a side note, that's going to be 2 million less users in their ML feeds (1.3
percent of the user base)

------
polskibus
What if I have firewall that blocks some IPs and it just so happens that they
belong to the ad servers? Will it count as circumvention?

~~~
ProAm
banhammer

------
include
I just want the content I paid for.

------
iamaziz
I never liked Spotify anyways!

------
midnightdiesel
Ah, the imminent decline of Spotify. I’ve been wondering what was taking so
long to get that going.

------
CraneWorm
I predict an arms race.

------
dirtylowprofile
Spotify has a really crap mobile app both iOS and macOS.

------
alexbanks
Adios Spotify.

------
Simulacra
Another good reason to not use Spotify.

------
xtat
lol bye spotify

------
jordache
ha watch their total subscriber count drop

------
rnvhhynr
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.

------
00deadbeef
I pay on credit card so they can expect a chargeback if they pull this shit on
me

~~~
pilsetnieks
I don't think it applies to paid accounts.

~~~
sinstein
Yeah, paid subscribers don't have to deal with ads anyway I guess?

~~~
CraneWorm
for now

