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Comment by Covzire | Hacker News Reader

The ads on Spotify for paying US users is what keeps me off of it for the most part. You can fast forward but it's a gigantic pain in the ass.

Their UX is awful too compared to a simple web app, they should just clone a basic Youtube/Odysee/Rumble functionality for their video side.

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I am surprised you are getting downvoted. Very long ad breaks on paid accounts are unacceptable and the reason I refuse to listen to this podcast.

I see a potential feature that spotify could differentiate themselves. Pre-marked ads, and a setting to skip automatically.

Wait, -paying- users get ads in the US? Then why do they pay?

I'm assuming for the privilege of fast forwarding them, but I'm not sure, it's probably the biggest reason I can't feel any affinity for the platform at all. I'm happy to chip in for the service like i do with Youtube Premium, but come on. They're not short ads either, and I think most of them are put in place by Joe Rogan himself because they're often him going on for 2-3 minutes.

It's only the ads that the podcasters put in themselves. They are not the Spotify ads.

This makes me wonder… would Spotify allow ads in music? Can I upload a music track that has an ad in the middle? Hmm…

I don't have Spotify, but check if The Who Sell Out is there since that has ads in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_Sell_Out

Pretty sure they used fake ads, but it’s a good precedent anyway.

Edit: and yes the album is available on Spotify in full.

The whole album was supposed to be a play on a pirate radio station if memory serves, and a damn good one at that. Probably my favorite Who album honestly (besides Live at Leeds, of course).

Uhhhh I'd have to take Quadraphenia in any best Who album list...I think I've bought it at least 6 times in like 4 formats and I can still listen to it end-to-end without effort.

> Pretty sure they used fake ads, but it’s a good precedent anyway.

the ads aren't fake.. well, not all of them -- they're included ironically -- and many aspects of that album generated legal issues for the band.[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Who_Sell_Out

Yes.

See also: about half of the rap tracks on the platform, where every third line is product placement.

Even the podcasts that Spotify owns and produces have ads. So in that case they are putting ads in their own podcasts for their own paying customers.

It does seem like double-dipping. But I imagine they will continue to include more and more advertising until they reached the threshold where people unsubscribe.

It's odd, though, that Rogan's podcast only started doing mid-episode ads after the move to Spotify. Prior to the move the only ads were at the beginning of the episode.

Maybe analytics indicated that people were skipping the first chunk of the show to avoid the ads. I know that is a common feature of other podcast players.

Maybe that's one of the benefits of having a podcast on Spotify. They can probably collect fine-grained analytics compared to an RSS-based client.

I've never heard ads on Rogan's podcast in the past few years, this might be a US only thing

It is really weird actually. Not every episode comes with adds. Seems like Spotify is dark launching ab testing

>You can fast forward but it's a gigantic pain in the ass.

Does Spotify not support FF == skip 10 seconds forward that every other podcast player does? I have genuinely no idea, but it wouldn't surprise me.

These long ads are actually separate tracks, so you can just skip to the end. The pain in the ass aspect comes mostly from the fact that not everyone has the app open in front of them.

yeah, I was thinking about that in my own podcast listening. For me I guess the reason why I don't care as much is I'm always using headphones with controls or in the car where it's a simple steering wheel button press.

When playing podcasts, Spotify skips 15 seconds forwards or backwards. When playing music, it skips to the next track or the start of the current track. But you still have to actively skip ads, which is annoying.

Especially while driving. I've shut off podcasts because I can't sit there listening to the same 2 minute interview-style ad for the 10th time.

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