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Comment by wayneftw | Hacker News Reader

I can’t use Spotify(premium!) without having a freaking in-app pop up on iOS too.

I’m actually thinking about going back to pirating music and just building my own player that load things off of S3.

I don't really get these complaints - the entire point of freemium services is to upsell users to a pay-for tier.

There is a difference between up-selling and being an annoying pest to the extent that people stop (or at least reduce) using your product

Whats not to get? He doesnt want ads and doesnt want premium so he leaves. Seems like the freemium product is working in separating the paying customers and the never-will-buys via annoyance.

I have premium!!

That’s the kicker…

I have had premium since 2011 and aside from the occasional oddball popup for a concert near me (which is always based on what I listen to), I never get ads. What exactly are you seeing?

That's the thing. Paying for premium means you have discretionary income.

As such, you're far more valuable to Spotify than its free users.

You can show the value of your premium offering without shoving ads for it in people’s faces.

To be fair they are demonstrating pretty well that premium users don't see ads.

I'm a Spotify Premium user and it still annoys me with a modal popup pitching something stupid every now and again. Not very often at all, maybe once every few months, but still.

Deezloader is quite a miracle in that regard btw. after so many years there still are the ways to illegally download music from the legal service and that is just... something.

D-Sub (for Android) and AirSonic are actually perfect for this - without having to build/debug anything.

Seconding Airsonic! https://github.com/airsonic/airsonic

Big fan of play:Sub as a client for iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/play-sub-music-streamer/id9553...

Install Telegram. Open up a chat with you favorite music downloaded bot and listen whatever you want for free on the go. It steams but also caches what you already listened so it's pretty much better than anything you could easily fire up without spending a weekend.

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