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Comment by lostlogin | Hacker News Reader

> It's a music player

Spotify doesn’t completely agree with that.

‘Spotify is a digital music, podcast, and video service that gives you access to millions of songs and other content from creators all over the world.’

I left in the middle of their ‘we do Podcasts’ bs, where they were pushing Joe Rogan hard.

Yuck.

https://support.spotify.com/nz/article/what-is-spotify/

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I like Joe Rogan. So not yuck for me. But I can understand how if someone you hate is pushed hard by a platform you’d want to leave it.

Agreed. I like Joe Rogan but hate Spotify. For that time period where Rogan was a Spotify exclusive, I didn't listen to his podcast at all.

I think a lot of people were in that camp. I'm not going to sign up for a Spotify account to listen to Rogan. I don't really have any problem with him and have found many of his guests interesting. No hate for Spotify either--I have never used the service so I don't really have an opinion about it, but the overhead of creating and maintaining another account and app was not something I was going to do for one podcast.

Why do people like Joe Rogan?

Isn't it just another ad distribution platform? The amount of ads they started to push to paying(!) users recently makes me want to cancel it every day (but I'm also too lazy to seek alternatives).

> The amount of ads they started to push to paying(!) users

I have never in the history of paying for Spotify had an ad play.

I get ads in podcasts. Not sponsored segments that the podcast creator inserted/narrated themselves (like used to happen), but ad served by Spotify itself, injected into the podcast. Easily 5 minutes in 30 min podcast[1], though this varies and I'm sure it is configurable by the podcast publishers.

1. This is not by feel, Spotify leaks it by displaying the original length and then updated one once it loads.

Other platforms do this too like pocketcasts. I assume it's the backend distribution network identifying your IP address and inserting 'relevant' ads. I don't believe it's being added by the podcast app (though for Spotify it may be, don't know)

I use Pocket Casts all the time and have never heard an ad inserted to a podcast.

Try using it abroad in a non English speaking country. You’ll notice the ads because they won’t be in English. This happens to me on Pocket Casts every time I travel.

Spotify (premium) also has preroll video ads.

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