Free Spotify users may soon have an unlimited advert-skipping feature
Time to cancel that subscription?
The main reason most people pay for Spotify premium accounts is because doing so gets rid of those pesky ads, doesn’t it? You can listen to your music, uninterrupted, blissfully unaware of the latest lawnmower or whatever it is that’s being flogged. It’s great.
So, surprising then, that Spotify have announced that they will be introducing an ad-skipping mechanism into customers’ free accounts. Yeah, you’ll be able to flick past as many ads as you like, and you won’t even have to pay for it. Better get cancelling those premium accounts!
Danielle Lee, global head of partner solutions at Spotify told AdAge:
“Our hypothesis is if we can use this to fuel our streaming intelligence, and deliver a more personalized experience and a more engaging audience to our advertisers, it will improve the outcomes that we can deliver for brands.
“Just as we create these personalized experiences like Discover Weekly, and the magic that brings to our consumers, we want to inject that concept into the advertising experience.”
This new strategy is being termed “Active Media”, and will essentially attempt to curate adverts to your personal taste. Advertisers won’t have to pay for adverts that are skipped - Spotify is banking on taking the risk that it’ll maintain ad revenue through ads that the listener will actually want to hear. Of course, this will absolutely not work in any possible way, because everyone will have hit skip before the ad’s even started - how are they going to know what it’s even peddling? Hear an ad coming, skip it - and skip it for free.
At the moment, it’s only being tested in Australia, but the plan is to roll it out in other markets, too. Until they realise it’s a bad idea and they return to the original model, anyway!
(Image: Getty)
