"Sponsored recommendations": I pay for Spotify Premium, and yet somehow I'm still the product?

ojmcelderry@lemmy.one to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 1417 points –

I opened Spotify this morning to be greeted by a modal popup with a "sponsored recommendation".

Why am I seeing ads if I'm already paying for the premium plan!? 😑

388

You are viewing a single comment

Bandcamp hasn't changed at all since the Epic acquisition. Yet, at least. This is from an artist's perspective, too, as I use Bandcamp as essentially my website and main place to push people to if they want to purchase my music rather than stream.

Yeah I was real nervous when it first happened, but nothing has gone sour yet. I have held off some purchases until Bandcamp Friday though as a result.

Same, though I typically try to only purchase on Bandcamp Friday anyway just to further support artists. I mainly use Spotify and just make Bandcamp purchases for stuff that Spotify doesn't have, which is typically small bands, so it's worth it to wait.

And Spotify didn't advertise at paying users for almost a decade until, well, today.

Not that I'm a fan of the ridiculous "I tOlD yOu sO" posturing in this thread, given that it's been almost a decade of initially groundbreaking and later reasonably high quality service.

One thing those commenters are right about though is: these companies will pursue profit to the bitter end and ads are a virtual inevitability for any major media platform.