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.
Also I'm very pissed off with people who say freeloading. It's not freeloading. I pay with my time to watch or listen to your stupid ad. I should not also pay with my personal data. An ad is just an ad it should not have evolved to the monstrosity of tracking you.
It has evolved in the same way copyright has until we find a way to kill both of them as they are not needed in our world.
Not if you're using an ad-blocker.
Perhaps the reason you're using an ad-blocker is because you don't want to be tracked, and the only way to do that is to block ads completely. I get it. But you're also using up Spotify's bandwidth and licensing fees (which in turn allow music to be created in the first place), without providing anything in return.
This is only possible because paying and ad-watching customers are subsidizing your behavior. It is the definition of freeloading.
The issue isn't one of arbitrary code execution. Lets not be hypocrites.
AdBlock Plus has over 200 million installs on the desktop alone. Are you going to tell me that those 200+ million users of AdBlock Plus are concerned with arbitrary code execution? What percentage of those users do even know what that even means?
Between 10% and 20% of Internet users are using ad-blockers. Lets do an imagination exercise and say that Spotify would only serve images for ads. How many of those 10 to 20% of Internet users would whitelist Spotify?
"None" would be my guess.
https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/11/15/designing-audio...
I use adblockers to protect myself against malicious content masquerading as ads, which both the ad delivery networks and content platforms have proven unwilling or unable to address to an acceptable extent.
If you want to boycott Spotify for endangering people's computers, go ahead. Heck, if you want to attempt to use Spotify with an ad-blocker, go ahead. I don't feel morally comfortable using ad-blockers, but I won't fault others for using them.
You do not get to use Spotify's free tier, block their only potential revenue stream for that tier, and then turn around and cry fowl when Spotify notices and bans you.
I have this problem with websites, apps, social networks, etc. as well. I don't want to be tracked, retargeted and so on. Not because I think ads will influence me or anything but its about my trust in those companies and how they protect my data. When my data gets leaked because they are inadequate at security I don't get money back. I get a message saying "We take your privacy seriously"... And that data can then be used in various other ways to harm me.
Fuck the money, I’m not letting a site run arbitrary code on my machine, especially when they have a track record of spying and installing malware. They have a right to make a living, I have a right to own my property without having it damaged by casual greed.
Or don't. I've pirated music and movies. I just don't get too mad about it.
My point, put another way: I respect the desire to block JS ads, AND I respect the will a non-critical app in a competitive market to make stupid decisions with their ad policy. AND people who don't like that policy can move to Amazon/Google/Apple/other music platforms, or pay Spotify Premium.
Pardon my language, but it's a fucked up point to say pay a service money if you don't want their software to conduct clandestine operations on a device that probably contains all sorts of sensitive and private data that NOBODY has claim to but you, and the people you've expressly desired to share it with.
That's the point it would seem to me reading these comments; I realize paying gets rid of the ads, but it's pretty messed up to sit back and think that you're ostensibly paying for "good behavior" from Spotify w/rt to ad tech and what that technology enables on our devices.
It's easy to say pay or don't use the service, why isn't as easy to say "Spotify, don't be dicks with your ad technology on MY phone"?
If I pay a kid $.25 for lemonade, I'm paying for lemonade. If he says "hey, enjoy a free sample of my lemonade while I tell you how I made it", that's a fair trade-off. It is NOT a fair trade-off for his dad to spike my lemonade with a sedative so I'll want to sit down and give his kid an opening to blabber about his recipe while winking and saying "should paid us that quarter, chump".
If you sell yourself into slavery, you don't become a slave. If you use a product "in exchange for ads", you don't lose your right to protect yourself from them.
- Unspiked lemonade for $.25 - Spiked lemonade for free
Companies are free to sell what they want, for the amount they want. At least there's more than one option here.
Thst kid would be arrested, because it’s plain to see from a legal and moral perspective that it’s wrong. Besides, it’s not like that at all.
What it is like is a radio station threatening to cut off service to people who switch channels or turn down volume during ads. This is a problem with the business model, and using TOS tricks to try and twist people’s arm. If they want to be sub only then by all means, but if they want to use an ad model as well then they incur some risks with that. I’m also not clear that it stops with the “free” service only.
Personally I don’t use Spotify, because I like to own my music, and I trust in their business model’s longevity about as much as I believe in fairies. When companies have to threaten their customers to make a business model work, the model is already fucked beyond repair. Advertising on the internet isn’t compatible with the existence and proliferation of ad blockers, and I bristle when a company makes a move to try and undermine autonomy to shore that model up. Moreover if Spotify does it as people accept it, other companies will try to follow suit.
If a business is offering a product at terms you don't like, how exactly is that bad? Just don't use the product.
But this article is specifically about people using a product against the stipulated terms. Criticizing bad ads is valid in general, but people expect topical discussions to stick to the context. Either clarify you are speaking from a different context or you will get misinterpreted.
TV companies and print newspapers don't need third parties and invasive tracking to sell ads.
I tried to get a similar thing started for free software and it ran for a while https://www.fsf.org/news/ad-bard
If that requirement is freeloading then I disagree with that definition of the word. They enjoy the benefit of behavior which if it was offline would be illegal, and out competes those service which operate more ethically. Since society currently expect the users to be responsible if their machine get infected by malware, it is fully ethical if they use software like ad-blocks to protect themselves.
I agree. For the past two decades, companies have privatized immense swaths of the digital commons and paid nothing for it, freeloading on the work of the countless public institutions and hobbyists who both created it, and created the culture which attracted billions of "users" to it.
With Spotify it is even worse. They have taken music, a prehistoric participatory artform and characteristic behavior of our species, and are trying to gamify it into a product that is no longer just music and which they own.
For the record I am a musician, and I'm pleasantly well-off so I have a paid Spotify subscription though I rarely use it. I held out until mid-2018, and didn't listen to even a single track on the service before then. Not that there is the slightest moral issue with using an adblocker while consuming broadcasts that contain ads, which I also do.
I know this news doesn't affect me, but the principle is the important thing.
Can you state in clear terms the "principle" that Spotify is violating?
Everybody has the right to control what is displayed on their computer when they browse the Net, and Spotify has the right to cancel free accounts for whatever reason they want to. There is nothing wrong with running adblockers and anti-anti-adblocking scripts, etc., and there is nothing wrong with canceling free Spotify accounts. There is also no cognitive dissonance with running and ad-blocker and being angry when Spotify cancels your free account because of it, it's a perfectly reasonable and consistent attitude.
In the U.S., its $10 a month for your entire life. If you live another 100 years, thats $12k that could have bought top top top of the line speakers or enough cds to fill multiple bookcases. We have so many services like this now that are packaged monthly to hide the real cost of long term use. Its like rent to own all over again, except when you stop renting you do not own.
If you don't like that they have an ad based model, and personally want to boycott their subscription service because of it then do so and buy your own music.
It's not complicated. 'Not rewarding their behavior' is simple - don't use Spotify. Anything else is very transparent, after-the-fact justification of your desire for theft.
"Hey I really like this bike share service, but I don't think it's safe, so I'm gonna steal the bike, improve the safety and then ride it whenever I want. I don't want to reward their behavior of renting bikes I feel aren't safe."
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?
Bear in mind, this loaf can also only be eaten inside of the grocery store. You cannot leave the store with the bread, because it is welded to the infrastructure of the grocery.
Not paying for a gym membership would be a better example. You're using up available capacity without giving the gym a way to monetize your presence there.
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 customers to do so too, we don't know what it might be but since we wasted $0.003 to acquire you, we need to make at least $5 off of you and we don't really care what happens to your device or if someone breaches our customer and does bad shit to you."
I believe in reciprocity - and the odds are worse at my side if I "freeload" :)
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?