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Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

⁨457⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Beep@lemmus.org⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47428391

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  • HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And then they wonder why everyone is fixing the hulls of their ships and getting new sails.

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    • nymnympseudonym@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Or self hosting their own Jellyfin

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      • artyom@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s the same thing.

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    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      1.: I divide the payment of Family across 3 members.
      2.: I listen to so many songs individually, it would bankrupt me to buy every single song individually or the full album.
      3.: I’ll buy an album (2nd hand discogs (so good)/ebay, digitally on wherever or bandcamp). If I don’t like the music as much or the buying process is annoying, I’ll pirate the song.

      So yeah. It depends.

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      • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yeah, but Spotify is and always has been a really poorly designed app. Google sucks in a lot of ways, but YouTube Music is a great platform.

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    • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Well, not really. I’ve discovered a ton of music in the past couple years I never would have bought or even had access to, without streaming. But Spotify does suck, I much prefer YouTube Music, which comes with Premium.

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      • HuudaHarkiten@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I should really learn to not make these sort of ultimatum type statements.

        Of course there’s some good things about it. But I’ve never been a spotify user, I’ve discovered a whole lot of stuff through things like last.fm, youtube and just music themed internet forums and IRC etc. So I wont argue that you can’t find stuff through spotify, but I’ll say that there are other ways to discover things, making spotify not necessary but helpful in that regard.

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  • madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The minute I have ads in my paid subscription it’s a cancel

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    • W3dd1e@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Exactly why I canceled Amazon Prime. 100% would recommend canceling. I don’t miss it.

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    • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Likewise. I’ve been putting off satting up a Soulseek+Navidrome stack on my home server. I’m sure there’s a way to integrate ListenBrainz suggestions too. First ad I hear, I’m doing it.

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      • MunkysUnkEnz0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Soulseek for the win what is navidrome, i’m unfamiliar.

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      • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I think you can integrate lidarr into SoulSeek too.

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      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Can’t talk about navidrome, but jellyfin has a listenbrainz plugin :)

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      • Damage@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I use Navidrome and scrobble to ListenBrainz and Last.fm for suggestions. I’ve recently learnt about Sonobarr but haven’t tried it yet.

        It’s not as seamless as playing a song/artist station on spotify or just letting it decide what to continue with at the end of a playlist, but it’s also free (in both ways!).

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    • CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yeah same here, I’ve been procrastinating while I gradually build my collection of mp3s/flacs, but the second I hear an ad on Spotify I’m done.

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  • infinitevalence@discuss.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I buy my music from the artists as directly as possible via Band Camp.

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  • whaleross@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer.

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    • uuj8za@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Just recently signed up for Qobuz. I’m planning on purchasing albums as I go along so at least I’m left with something the day I decide to quit.

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      • cenotaph@piefed.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Fun fact, there are tools to rip FLAC files of music you stream on qobuz so you can build up your music hoard

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      • just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Worst mobile app on the planet with SO many bugs, but dammit if they aren’t a clean platform otherwise.

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    • pieberry@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Deezer was playing ICE recruitment ads last year. I think it’s important for people to know so they can make a more informed decision.

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    • FatVegan@leminal.space ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I’m using Tidal, but i can’t say i really like it. They seem to randomly decide what songs and artists are not available, and their search function is really bad.

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      • binarytobis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I used Tidal for a few months, then found out it had silently removed ~10% of my music from my “liked” list. Completely unacceptable. They should at least keep a list of titles so I can go back and fix it. People say all services do this, but I’ve been keeping an eye on it and Spotify hasn’t done it since I hopped back.

        Qobuz was painful to use and new music discovery was hopeless. No idea if they were removing tracks too.

        Bandcamp seems cool, but I prefer to listen to music via song-based-radios, so that’s a no go.

        Not sure what I’ll do if I have to drop Spotify again over ads.

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      • whaleross@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        That’s not up to the streaming service but the record company.

        Personally I switched from Tidal to Qobuz this year and I like it much better.

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    • Custard@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Nicotine+, qmmp

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  • XLE@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This is just the latest in a series of vibe-coding caused bugs, Spotify famously claimed their best devs were no longer writing any of their own code:

    https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/spotify-says-its-best-developers-havent-written-a-line-of-code-since-december-thanks-to-ai/

    I don’t know if this makes it better or worse.

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    • greenacres3233@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Worse. It makes it worse.

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  • sem@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    From HN comments:

    This is just the latest in a series of vibe-coding caused bugs, Spotify famously claimed their best devs were no longer writing any of their own code:

    https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/spotify

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  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I posted this when Youtube was doing it by mistake too…

    If you are paying to not receive ads, and you receive an ad by mistake, they should pay you whatever they earned on the ad. Now… I doubt they’ll actually pay you, but lets say at minimum 1 day of free extended service per ad, but if they earn more than 1 days worth via the ad, then it should be whatever that is.

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  • Brewchin@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s telling of this era that it’s impossible to initially know if this is corporate greed or vibe goonery.

    So… intentional or unintentional enshittification, I guess. 😬

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  • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I have heard this before from rando Reddit posts where it turns out they were listening to podcasts that just had the ads baked into the broadcast.

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    • Fermion@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They still serve personalized ads in the podcasts. They aren’t baked in.

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    • null@lemmy.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Love hearing about products and services as I’m listening to my podcast about genocides and warcrimes. Mustard gas really gets me in the mood Blue Apron.

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      • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Mmm… Mustard… 🤤

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    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Nope. Had it happen to me: lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25040771

      TLDR: I know it because the ads were German but the podcast is in English.

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      • cageythree@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        TLDR: I know it because the ads were German but the podcast is in English.

        That can still happen and happens to me too, despite using a no-ad FOSS player, so the ads are definitely from the podcast, not the player.
        Dynamic ad insertion is absolutely a thing in podcasts. If you access/download the MP3 file on the server from a German IP address, a German ad will be put in at the specified ad break before you/your player downloads the file.

        So a different language ad doesn’t mean it’s from Spotify.

        (PS: By the way, using a VPN connected to a country where not many companies make podcast ads works basically like a podcast ad blocker. I route my podcast player through an Albania VPN and have like 80% less ads than before. The remainder is “classic” podcast ads that are inserted as a static part of the MP3 file, no way to get rid of those.)

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    • Cavemanfreak@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They do serve ads on podcasts. Not all of them though. It used to be that they were separate, so that you were shown a different “now playing” screen. I first noticed when it happened on otherwise ad free shows, like Lateral. Not sure if that’s the case now? Some of the podcasts I listen to jump in length from the episode list to the “now playing” screen, which is weird. Don’t know if it’s because injected ads or not though, or if they’re even from Spotify. I haven’t seen those ads that are on a new “now playing” screen in a while.

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  • skisnow@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I went back to Winamp last year and don’t regret it at all.

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    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Where do you get the media from, though

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      • skisnow@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Remember CDs? Actually owning stuff?

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      • qaeta@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yarr matey!

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      • melsaskca@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Your local library should rent CD’s. Rent 'em and rip 'em into mp3’s and BOOM!, Robert’s your dad’s brother.

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  • Gork@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If I didn’t already cancel them, this would make me cancel them again.

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  • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Signs your business model has truly failed.

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    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They alll fail when forever gain growth is the expectation.

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  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Now I have a peoblem with this statement in a vacuum.

    Zero: I am based in Germany. So not as many dystopian laws and decisions as in the USA

    First: Yes, Spotify bad, Hooray Jellyfin, ripping CDs and owning the media you have. Also good for the artists.

    Second: I had ads played to me. But it only happened on podcasts.

    Third: I had talked to the Spotify support: imgur.com/a/Ulis7Oe
    (TLDR: Podcast publishers (e.g. LTT with their WANshow or Dallas Taylor with 20 Thousand Hertz) can decide if they want to play ads. They happened to me inbetween episodes)

    So yeah. Now it would be very interesting what this random person encountered where.

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    • zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      My wife and daughter had heard ads sparingly and they only listen to music. I assumed it was some sort of bug because it is very infrequent, but with today’s corps I should probably invoke the inverse of Hanlon’s Razor and just assume malice.

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      • FEIN@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Hanlon’s Razor Whose Hanlon and why do you need his razor? It’s more hygienic to buy one from the store

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  • Ganymede@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Why do people even use Spotify at this point?

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    • 666dollarfootlong@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Convenience of instant access to gazillion songs, though i’m not sure if the average spotify user even listens to anything other than top-lists

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      • _g_be@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I used to use Spotify but got sick of their recommendations. Vastly different genre playlists would still get top100 songs recommended. Sabrina Carpenter in all my playlists.

        I moved to Pandora, their recommendation engine is way less biased. Fewer features in the app, tho

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      • Ganymede@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The Convenience aspect kind of goes away when you factor in alternatives like YouTube music, apple music or soundcloud

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    • Samskara@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Sharing and creating playlists with friends. Discovering new music. Endless playlists of high quality.

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    • Tonava@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s still been cheaper than the alternatives if you buy for multiple people, and has most of my native country’s artists at this point. I’d like to switch, but I’m worried the other services don’t offer enough finnish music, and just couple euros more is a lot of money when you are poor.
      Of course you could say “don’t pay for these if you’re poor”, but it’s the only subscription I’m paying for, and I feel like abandoning every single thing that can still bring me joy is kinda asking for my depression peak so I’m back to trying to hang myself again.

      Though the moment I hear adds or the price increases again, I’ll obviously switch immediately

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    • Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      They have far more niche music than anyone else. I mean that from a Finnish perspective.

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    • FatVegan@leminal.space ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Their search function and recommendations are really good. Other than that, no idea. Convenience

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    • binarytobis@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Song-based radios for new music discovery on a service where they don’t silently drop huge swaths of music from my curated “liked” list. Tidal, Qobuz, and Bandcamp failed to meet this requirement in different ways.

      Spotify isn’t even good, but I don’t have another real option yet.

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    • greatwhitebuffalo41@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Me personally, just because someone else is paying for it. The second they stop, I’ll go somewhere else.

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  • Barracuda@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Time to switch to Qobuz then. Goodbye Spotify.

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  • blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Ah no! The first company to play ads for paid subscribers

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    • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Haven’t Amazon and Netflix been doing that for a long time already?

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      • felbane@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        thatisthejoke.meme

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  • deacon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I would have to go and download an ad, and then upload it, and then select it from new additions in order to hear an ad on Plexamp.

    But the subscription model is the framework for fuckery here.

    It wasn’t long ago that subscribing to something, implied a consistent (usually periodical) delivery of actual goods or services that were in some way distinct from the previous periods good or services. Issue #33 is different from #32. March’s soup of the month is different than February’s.

    And you could hold issue #33 in one hand and #32 in another hand and directly interact with two months worth of that subscription.

    The tech bro idea of innovation is to get two revenue streams from each customer; keep us paying for the same thing over and over but never owning it, and sell our data to advertisers. The fact that they are also showing ads to subscribers is just dripping lemon juice in the paper cut because they can. They were already making money off that data.

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  • Imaginary_Stand4909@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’ve been using YT music anyway, but I recently started using my Navidrome server by just yt-dlp’ing albums + tag with MusicBrainz picard and boom. A bunch of songs I can own until my server burns down.

    I feel a little bad about pirating, but I’m a college student who hasn’t even gotten a job yet… But I will be buying merch or music off bandcamp in the future when I know I have the budget for it!

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    • Minizarbi@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Bandcamp is very nice!

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    • Samiaouuu@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I recommand monochrome(.)tf, it’s basically Tidal for free so it has much better quality than YouTube

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      • SuspciousCarrot78@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Thank you for this!

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    • qaeta@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I will never give YT music money since they killed off Google Play Music (a far superior music app) to make it.

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  • 0oWow@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Again? Lol

    Just a heads up, Deezer has been working hard to improve their UI a great deal. It is so much less stressful to navigate than Spotify. Sound quality is also better to me. And not being forced to mix music with ad-infused podcasts is so very nice.

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    • pieberry@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Deezer played ICE recruitment ads last year on their service.

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      • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Didn’t the creator also dox a customer for criticizing them?

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    • kepix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      why is it stressful? you search for the track, and you click play.

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      • DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Don’t support fascist enabling bootlickers

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      • 0oWow@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Yeah, I do that… On Deezer. 👍👍

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  • qevlarr@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s a bug, not a change of policy

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  • billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    It’s why I cancelled SiriusXM a while back. I’m paying for the service so atop playing ads. And at the time it was like the same ad over and over. God it was infuriating.

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  • chortle_tortle@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Spotify has ads? I’ve never paid, I thought it just had to take little breaks after some songs because they were harder to play 🤔

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  • Kkk2237pl@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Is that confirmed? My whole family use Spotify and we didn’t have such issue…

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  • sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Tidal is better

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  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Amozon does it, YouTube does it. Everyone will do it eventually. Greed has no threshold

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  • Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Is this news site Peter Thiels?

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  • Trilogy3452@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    community.spotify.com/t5/…/7378835

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  • MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    (En)Shittify

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  • jjlinux@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Took them longer than I expected.

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  • Nebulous_Keito@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Lol, I’m glad I never signed up for Spotify

    Image

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