Spotify, advertising, and The Widget
#spotify, advertising, and The Widget
A small - but very vocal - minority of Spotify users are currently up in arms about Spotify's decision to drop their Android widget. A lot of the complaints are in the form of a question: infuriated users are asking why Spotify would choose to regress the functionality of their product.
I think I have the answer: advertising revenue.
Spotify has started serving advertisements to paying customers of late. Sure, that's not what they call it. A Spotify rep told me:
An "advert" promotes products and services from mostly an outside party in an attempt to build their own customer bases. An "announcement", on the other hand, provides recommendation to contents already available thru Spotify ... we also help the industry by allowing them to promote their contents via our platforms.
So, they're not ads because Spotify says they're not ads. Paid promotions aren't ads. They're announcements. Gotcha. Right.
With the ads in mind, Spotify's decision to remove the widget makes perfect sense. Without the widget, I need to open their app to start playing my music. So now, I can't launch music without being exposed to ads (sorry, 'announcements').
As I told the Spotify rep in my reply:
I also think you're aware of how this will be perceived, hence the "announcement" weasel-word to describe that advertising. If you weren't self-conscious about the perception of serving ads to Premium subscribers, it would never occur to you to use that terminology. I can almost imagine the brain-storming session with legal and product managers sat in front of a whiteboard, trying to come up with a 'more acceptable' term for banner ads.
I have to admit that I'm embarrassed that I didn't anticipate the next step: nerfing the Spotify UX to ensure that customers are forced to view the ads, including those who are paying to, supposedly, enjoy an ad-free experience.
Not cool, Spotify.
RISC-V CPU designer and community contributor in Nordic Semiconductor
5 年They brought the widget back in the latest update, but I think their reputation will take a while to rebuild.
Director of Social Impact at Queryon | Microsoft Azure Certified | Google Analytics Qualified | Tableau Qualified |
5 年The analysis astute, but I think the community of angry Spotify customers may be somewhat more than "small". In one week this issue has raised enough support to climb to #6 most-voted-for-of-all-time in Spotify's idea exchange. The only items with more support have had years (the newest one is from 2016) to amass votes.
Principal Full Stack Engineer
5 年Let's see how long Spotify will continue to exist with the?arrogance of their product managers. Clearly they don't care at all about their users, we're just dumb wallets for them, so let's see how they'll do without our money.
RISC-V CPU designer and community contributor in Nordic Semiconductor
5 年Well, they lost me there as a paying customer. If the widget had been an isolated event I might have held on for a while to see if they realized their mistake and brought it back, but sadly it isn't. Spotify has been removing features like this one (although not as high-profile) from time to time the last years, for example the legacy device support (that let network-connected amplifiers and home cinema systems play musing via integrated clients) and various user interface features that were minor but handy...