False advertisement about ad-free premium accounts

[jani_pellikka]

Hi,

I will beging with saying I'm a man of principles. The ads Spotify sneak into the client do not really bother me, but they are still ads and I am, per their advertising paying to be ad-free.

Here is a cropped "Get premium" page at spotify.com in Swedish.

To me, that clearly states, there will be no ads when you get a premium account.

So, I contacted support about this and here is the mail conversation:

(The initial contact with support was done through their website and I do not have that text anymore, but it basically said "Why am I seeing ads as an premium?")

Hi!

I have a premium account as you have noticed, I am seeing/hearing all the premium features, but that is not the point.
The point is that I am a paying customer and should NOT be bothered with ads, right?

I have attached a partial screenshot with some hints.
"Erbjudanden" in the picture mean "Offers", which are in other words, ads.

Best Regards
<my name>

Proof of ads

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Hey there <my name>,

Thanks for the reply.

The offer you're seeing is for merchandise for the band itself, not an advert for Spotify. This isn't removable from the desktop client, unfortunately. We have the same with concert tickets, too.

Sorry there isn't more we can do about this.

Please let us know if there's anything else we can help you with.

<support personel name>

Senior Advisor | Spotify Customer Support

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Hi!

So, to avoid any further confusion, I changed the language of my Spotify to English.
What I am referring to is not music suggestions, but ads to buy items such as hats,scarfs and what not.
See the attached image for clarification.

Clicking the _BUY_ button, brings me to http://www.indiemerch.com/devildriver/item/37596?bp-remote-id=575635014620819456
Which in turn is a merchandise online shop. Which proves it yet again, there are ads embedded in Spotify I am paying NOT to see.

Best Regards
<my name>

Proof of ads 2

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Hi <my name>,

Thanks for getting back in touch.
The No-Ads bit is for any ads that we would usually play in between songs. As a premium user you won't hear those. I'm afraid that in this case there isn't much more we can do.
If you have any other questions, please let us know

<support personel name>

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Hi,

So basically what you are saying is that the company Spotify is falsely and knowingly advertising their Premium subscription to be ad-free ?

Best Regards
<my name>

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Hi <my name>,

Thanks for getting back in touch.
The offers that you're seeing aren't really ads. They're just a way for users to check out merchandise of their favourite bands.
Spotify Premium is ad-free as in that you don't get any audio or video ads in between songs as you would with Spotify Free.
If you have any feedback regarding the offers that you see, I'd suggest to leave it on our community. If there are more people complaining about it, we will definitely look in to changing it. You can access the community here: https://community.spotify.com.

For now, there isn't much more we can do for you I'm afraid.

Best Wishes,
<support personel name>

Email conversation ends there and what baffles me is, "The offers that you're seeing aren't really ads". I do not really care what you call them, but they sure hell are ads.

Since I've made it pretty clear, and I know they know I am right, there are ads in the client which are served to paying premium subscribers they don't know how to handle the situation and decided to end the discussion by sending me here.

As I stated in the begining, I am a man of principles, if I pay for rot-free bananas, I want bananas that are free from rot, even if it is only on the peeling itself, it is still there.

Whats your take on this?

[user-removed]

@jani_pellikka

Hello:

What I will do is escalate your post so the information can be sent along to the teams. They collect feedback like this all the time and look for ways to make the app more user tailored if possible. There currently is an option to turn off what is called show announcements about new releases, even premium users can turn these off and on if they wish, these could be seen as "ads" for releases being offered by other artists, these show up by default with the first install of the desktop app as a banner. Free account users usually see these banner announcements at the top of the desktop app page off and on throughout playing music.

Sadly there is a balance all music streaming services will have to find, they have to find a way for users to be happy, the artists, and then those in the industry trying to get their products to market on the service. Probably not an easy task by a long shot, but in depth posts like this can help.

[jani_pellikka]

I'm guessing all of this got swept under the rug ...