I opened Spotify this morning to be greeted by a modal popup with a “sponsored recommendation”.
Why am I seeing ads if I’m already paying for the premium plan!? 😑
Unpopular opinion - in Spotify (and Spotify ONLY) I actually like that it does this. I like discovering new music and Spotify seems to have really good recommendations sometimes. Sure they collect a lot of listening data - but how else could they give good recommendations if they don’t know what you like?
But that’s not what this is. This is just an ad. Not a “since you like X, try Y”
I agree with you, but you may be missing the point - this recommendation is sponsored, so likely it wouldn’t have been recommended unless the artist paid.
It seems relatively harmless as long as they don’t overdo it though. The only incentive for someone to pay for this is that that you might like their music and will listen to it more in the future, which would be a win for you as well.
Maybe it also allows smaller artists to gain momentum without only depending on the magic recommendation algorithm.
Thats how all advertisements started. Small, not overdone. Then people became okay with paying and receiving ads. So they slowly increase the amount until you have what cable has become.
The recommendations will likely become worse over time, because they want you to listen to whatever makes them the most money and that might not be the same stuff you want to listen to. The same happened to tiktok recommendations and youtube subscriptions (people stopped getting notifications on creators they subscribed to).
Without this feature, I wouldn’t have known that Yeah Yeah Yeahs and PJ Harvey released new albums. So I’m torn. On the one hand, I’m happy artists I already love can still reach me; on the other hand, I hate that smaller artists I don’t know about yet still have to pay to play
Imagine not wanting to be recommended things you’d like lol
Ok Boomer lol
You asked for it when you signed up for an app that is built around recommending you music
Perhaps just consider purchasing music outright, if you don’t want features an app is built to provide.
Signed up for an app that plays the music I tell it to without having to buy every CD. Not recommendations, access to their library.
If I was on the free version, maybe. But on premium where I am specifically paying NOT to have ads, yea, ads piss me off.
Good thing I’m not on Spotify. Even if I was, I only want recemdarions on my terms, like maybe when I check out their recommended lists, not as an ad shoved in my face after hypothetically paying for their service. If not wanting ads, even helpful ones, is wrong I don’t want to be right.
And that’s exactly why I buy my music, you’re right.
But this is a sponsored recommendation. It’s an ad. Will I really like it or do they just want money?
Only one way to find out. If their algorithms are any good at all, you’ll like it.
No matter what, artists only seek to be on Spotify to get recognition/listens, so it makes no sense to be upset about this.
This is the boomeriest shit I’ve seen online in a while.
Not wanting sponsored content on a paid service?
You sad no one listens to your music or something?
Me listening to Joe Rogan in my car:
“This episode is brought to you by Athletic …”
“Aaaargh! I pay Spotify! They gave you eight and eight figure contract! Why the fuck are there ads??”
delete Spotify. it’s toxic
I haven’t had any issues with Spotify. I’ve discovered a bunch of new artists since joining a couolr years ago. I even remember the very first. I had no idea who Token was. Now I’m a fan. What’s wrong with this kind of thing? I’ll admit it’s not as good as old fashioned radio used to be but it’s still great, and being ad-free when paid is pretty amazing.
Nothing wrong with discovery, though masquerading an ad as an algorithm recommendation is super shady.
That said, Spotify has a track record of treating artists horribly. It also has atrocious sound quality compared to every other service out there.
I’m using Tidal. Has one of the highest artist pay out rates, and top notch quality.
You happen to know of a nontoxic alternative that doesn’t involve torrenting?
Modded Spotify Premium w/ gold theme by RockMods, download from Mobilism. Works really well, been using it for months. Checks out with all the antivirus scanners I use, and most stuff on Mobilism is safe (there’s exceptions of course, but I’m sure you know how to be safe if you mention torrenting). Create a separate spotify account for it just in case it gets “fixed” though. Seems well supported by updates. Much better to the alternative - torrent client for downloading ‘Linux ISOs’…
Might I add, I hate the way every user-facing UI has devolved into the Youtube Shorts / TikTok “doomscrolling” swipe-UI now. There seems to be absolutely not a single braincell left in UI development to even consider the actual use case of the interface.
It’s all just:
- Monkey see UI to build.
- Moneky see TikTok big.
- Monkey do.
Not sure what this has to do with the post. You don’t need to swipe to dismiss that modal.
Hold on! This is a modal?! That’s even worse, I had these card-style things as scrollable cards before! 😧
