Spotify Just Pissed Me Off (NSFW)
I generally really like Spotify, and until now, I didn't mind that there was the occasional ad. It makes sense, and I appreciate that, so long as I don't pay for the premium service, ads are the burden I must bear.
Except that I hate how they are implemented. I really truly *fucking* hate how they're implemented. Why? Because I can't mute them. If I hit the mute key on my Mac, they don't play-on in silence, they actually PAUSE. That's right, they fucking PAUSE. To get past the ads, I have two options. Either I let them play in their entirety and suffer the indignity of some stupid bastard commercial that's not actually targeted at me at all, or I have to restart Spotify completely. If I listen to the radio and mute the ads, they play regardless. That station's programming doesn't fucking STOP until they're satisfied I've listened to some stupid ad for a car I can't afford to buy anyway. If I'm watching a commercial television channel, I can mute the ads. The rest of the show I'm trying to watch isn't held to ransom until I've agreed to watch all the bastard commercials in their entirety (even though I'm not in the slightest bit interested in the products they're selling). Put simply, if a broadcaster employs some insidious trick to MAKE me listen to/watch their commercials, I'll simply never listen to/watch that channel ever again. For that reason, I'm gonna uninstall Spotify. It's a shame; had they employed less draconian advertising practices - and, god forbid, actually tried analysing what I listen to, then matching & delivering ads to me based on my profile and the media I consume - I might have stuck with the service. I might even have listened to what their sponsors had to say, on the crazy understanding that profile-matched-ads are more likely to offer something the end user might want. But not now. Now Spotify can fuck off. In today's world of media-on-demand, consumers can't be forced to do something they don't want to do. You try that sort of bullshit and they WILL go elsewhere. Sigh.
