Ear deafening ads

[JulianFilz]

Android, windows 10, xbox one (all the same loud ads) Location Netherlands.

Dear Spotify,

I have been using your service for a while now and i love it (but I am not able to pay for premium at this moment) and recently you have been hurting my ears with your commercials which for some reason get played louder then how I have put the music on my phone and my headphones. This leads to pain and possibly to hearing loss. Why would you play commercials on louder level if you know that a lot of people listen to music on headphones and you don't know how loud the music is playing already? Did I sign my right away when accepting your terms or are you going to pay for my hearing aids that I will need if I continue using your free service. And by the way this is not the first time that Spotify has increased the volume of the commercials. But I have only noticed a few months back. Since I am not able to post to your wall and get a direct reaction I hope my good friends will share this to get your attention. I will not try to get the ringing out of my ears from the last screaming I received on how SPOTIFY PREMIUM IS SOOOOOO much better, cause it doesn't give you Tinnitus and hearing damage.

Kind regards

Hope to get an answer and solution soon

[Jemi]

Hey @JulianFilz, help's arrived. 

We'd like to gather some info on this. Let us know the following:

• What the ad was about. 
• When this happened.
• What music/podcast were you listening to?
• Did it have disruptive sound effects like car noises?

Keep us posted and we'll make sure to let the right team know!

[kweichel]

I've just recently been getting one that is about 3x louder than what I'm listening to, I think it starts with "QUIT EATING YOUR BURGER" but I've usually ripped out my earbuds before I can hear anything past this. I've switched back to Pandora because the chance that this advertisment might happen again is triggering anxiety and making me curse in the middle of my office at work.

[BorisEnthoven]

Hey Jemi,

Most of the dutch ads that are deafening are not from Spotify but from third parties. It is indeed very annoying to suddenly hear a deafening volume while working. Would love to see this fixed.

The ad I currently know of is from FBTO but I know for sure there are more.

Shouldn't this be checked before the ads are published on Spotify? My Windows 10 volume is turned down to 15% and in spotify my volume is 100%. This means some of the ads are much louder then the music is, which should be checked before releasing them to customers in my opinion.

It could also be a nice addition to spotify when users have the option to blacklist a certain advertisement (limited ofcourse so that you cant skip all ads). This way we have some influence in the ads we recieve and you can also scan these blacklists to determine what ads are commonly marked as annoying/invalid.

Hopefully you can help us solve the deafening problem.

Boris

[Belgmeister]

There are rules concerning volume difference for actual radio.. why not for a service like this?

For me here in the netherlands I noticed the eardeafening ads are ALL from spotify themselves.. How about using your own volume normalizer setting for ads as well?