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Spotify Bans Ad Blockers In Updated ToS (theverge.com)
In an updated Terms of Service policy sent out on Thursday, Spotify is now explicitly banning ad blockers. "The new rules specifically state that 'circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service' can result in immediate termination or suspension of your account," reports The Verge. From the report: The service already takes significant measures to limit ad blockers. In a DigiDay report from last August, a Spotify spokesperson revealed that the company has "multiple detection measures in place monitoring consumption on the service to detect, investigate and deal with [artificial manipulation of streaming activity]." After it was reported last March that 2 million users (about 2 percent of free Spotify users) were dodging ads with modded apps and accounts, Spotify began cracking down by disabling accounts when the company detected abnormal activity. Users were sent email warnings and given the chance to reactivate their accounts after uninstalling the ad-blocking software. In some rare cases where the problem persisted, Spotify would terminate the account. The new Terms of Service, which go into effect on March 1st, will give Spotify the authority to terminate accounts immediately, without warning.
And is the last gasp of a company that is destined to die. People will not put up with ads in the locations and quantity that publishers and marketers want. Nor should they have to.
Corporatism != Free Market
You heard me.
Ban my adblocker, and you can kiss my ass goodbye.
Q: Guess who won't be using Spotify?
A: Everybody.
Sorry, but if you prevent me from using an ad blocker you're basically preventing me from visiting your site. That's just how it works, nothing personal.
So long, Spotify, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Provided that the pay service performs demonstrably better. I don't have anything against advertising, but I think it is irresponsible that businesses outsource advertising. Not only have they handed over their revenue generation to someone else, but they have no control over the buffoonery in the ads.
I barely use Spotify, and I don't block their ads. Now I need to decide whether to terminate my account immediately and without warning, or just to put up with the new ToS because I wasn't blocking ads anyway.
A web site detects an ad blocker.
Content is not shown.
Return to the site with a new ip and no blocker, the site loads.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I bet people would be much more likely to disable their adblocker if they're kindly asked beforehand than if they are banned and maybe given the opportunity to have the ban lifted. Spotify doesn't seem to like investing in their tech at all, though, as evidenced that shuffling a playlist only shuffles a certain number of songs rather than the full playlist.
If it stops it from playing, then you get a few seconds of silence, which can also be annoying. Do they tell the stream the ad is over, a tactic that should be easy to detect given the sender knows the how long the ad should play? The most annoying thing i found was it insisted on playing ads for jobs, colleges, etc., for a town I have never been in and is hundreds of miles away form where I live; I guess my cellular provider gave them bad location data based on where they connected me to the internet.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Are you going to ban me for closing my eyes?
A long time ago, a founder of a very large software company (still in business BTW but not with him) told me
he was against copy protection (and banned the use of it in the company) because you owe everything to your
customers that pay and should disregard people that don't pay you anything.
I thought that was an enlightened approach, and still do.
That company is now neck deep in the software-as-a-rental model and the long paying customers feel screwed.
I think they auto find another cad package...
I'm on a network where the admins have blocked many/most ad servers for security reasons (ad companies have historically been tricked into serving malware with the ads).
I wonder how Spotify will deal with that. This is not a block on the app, or the device, or even the computer, but rather at the network level. If their ads are served by the same servers as their content then it should be fine, but if their ads are served by separate servers that are already on a blocked list then it could be an issue. And not one the user can control unless they switch to a different network, if available, or disable wifi and use mobile data. If they shut down my account for this then so be it, because I won't use my mobile data just for them when wifi is available.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
dont use them, dont need them, dont care.
You block me,
I ban you,
we just roll around in poo,
singing "Pay for it or don't block ads,
as we are a bunch of cads..."
It's our right,
even if it's wrong,
So get it on and bang a gong,
If you wanna listen to your favorite song,
You are forced to suck upon the corporate dong,
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
I don't need no stinking advertisements. I paid for 95% of it over the last 30 years, so I'm not freeloading on Natalie Merchants Music.
No Confidence in the Terms of Service then.
So much vitriol against ads here. We're talking about a service that provides a TON of songs. Anyone remember how hard it was listening to music 20 years ago? Waiting for a CD? Or the song to come on the radio so you can record it?
I'm happy to pay spotify to not hear those ads. I've been a subscriber for more than 2 years. Everyone complaining about not getting their service for free is, basically, a freeloader.
Good riddance.
I'm not blocking their ads. I'm sinkholing their ads' outbound requests at the DNS level.
Your move, Spotify.
I'm not blocking ads, I'm blocking content I don't want to see.
You may call them ads, to me it is all content and I'm free to block anything I want.
I don't even like 'streaming' services, especially for things like music, although so many of you here on Slashdot would argue that I should be -- but Spotify disqualifies itself entirely with this move. I'm not going to disable adblockers and NoScript and other things I have loaded just to access anyones' service, and I suspect I'm not alone in that. Enjoy going out of business, Spotify. And nothing of value was lost.
Network level blocking is the way to go - blacklist all ad platform servers and require that the one requiring ads pays for the bandwidth. Inline serving is the way to go, then they'll see how much bloat they're adding to the pages.
F**k you Spotify
Soon more and more big-name sites will start copying this, to the point where if you buy anything online / have a digital library of some sort you'll risk losing access to it *forever* just for going against their rules.
uBlock Origin is one of the few adblockers that can prevent most anti-adblock code from running at all, but with that about to be killed off (on Chromium-based browsers, at least, which makes up like 70%) I fear for the future of the internet.
Sorry, but ads are, unfortunately, a transmission vector for malware and compromise code.
I do not choose to open my systems to that.
And, even if I did, it's MY desktop real-estate, not the ad purveyor's.
If they wish to lock me out of their service? C'est la vie.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
or it just shows how many people are strapped for cash, which is a problem with the world in general and not with a music streaming company.
Ok, so I'm not allowed to set my browser to not download ads.
I guess I'm also not allowed to prevent ads from being displayed on screen?
Am I allowed not to look? Or must it also reach my eyes?
Am I allowed not to pay attention? Or must I let it into my brain? My mind? My soul? My very existence?
Why not just force me to buy the damn thing you're promoting and get this over with?
Thats easy to do. Just host the actual images on their own advertisement-company domain(s).
Using JS for the advertised sake of being able to know who sees what is just a thin-veiled attempt to get you to allow those scripts in, which than can, and often do pretty-much *anything* they please (how the hell would you know what the currently loaded script does anyway ?).
Personally I've, but for a very few selected domains, switched JS off. The not-so-odd side effect is that I do not see many advertisements anymore. :-)
Seems they do use dedicated ad servers. To be honest, this surprises me. I'd have thought that would add complexity to the app, and make blocking easier.
I guess that will be caught in the ad block test.
Your options are to stop using the service (a win for Spotify because they no longer need to pay for a user they get no advertising revenue for) or pay for the service (also a win for Spotify).
NEXT!
(and yes, I am yelling. That's the point)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Like ads in theatres. This is why I already have every note by every artist I ever wanted to listen to stored locally on my own hard drives
whats next ? wont allow virus scanners or fresh air ?
netflix doesn't have one, and they seem to be doing more then OK.
why couldn't spotify only have subscription based model?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
One of the ads in the free version suddenly opened a browser window to a poker site.
Fuck Spotify.
goodbye, never knew you!
I've been wondering the same thing. I used to manage the proxy at work and I used it to block ads, with a twist. The proxy didn't return a 403 code for the ads, since that would clutter up the pages with ugly block messages. I had the proxy just return an empty HTML page for the request instead. At that time, I never saw any of the 'you are running an ad blocker' redirects and I suspected there was some sort of code looking for a blocked or null response to an ad request, and my proxy returning a blank page instead fooled them. Good idea, I am going to try that at home this weekend and see how it works now.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
https://adnauseam.io/ clicks on all the ads for you. This add-on was blocked by Google, because they are more afraid of this than ad blockers. It must be great.
But still flush your cookies when you close your browser.
Me: Genious, I heard of something called Spotify, find me some new music on Spotify
Genius: There is no such thing as add free music on Spotify. Spotify is no longer relevant.
Me: Ok, Genious, find me some new music.
Genius: Ok, here are some new tracks in a genre that you like.
Or you could just, you know, pay for the service.
It's $10/mo. For dang near all the music catalog anybody could want. You can't buy one CD for that.
This service costs my bandwidth (which I pay for), time (which has a non-zero value), and convenience (which also has a non-zero value). It is not free. Four currencies, do they not teach this in basic economics anymore?
I will never pay for music again in my life. You can't make me. The problem for them is that the hoops they'd have to make their desired users jump through to keep me away would drive those users away too.
Beyond the terrible interface, the stupid social stuff, and the lack of anything by my favorite band (tool).
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Oh, right, same place I always have.
SomaFM.com
(some text to keep the filter happy, but really, the content is the subject)
the highest, um ,subscription. Yeah that's it. Good job world, we continue to support humans using technology for evil. So why pay for a service that pushes ads to you and spies on you. Microsoft steals your data whether you like it or not and you pay $200 for Windows so it can install programs you don't want and sell to you. How about that Samsung TV? Spies on you more so than an Onkyo Receiver. Paying for that nice phone? Google spies on your every which way. Damn, technology is being used to evil.
Say it with me: Orwell had a Tardis. Maybe a nice one, I'm guessing he used it a lot.