Spotify reveals 2M free users are dodging ads | Hacker News Reader

Spotify reveals 2M free users are dodging ads

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17 pointsel_duderino13 comments

It's always an arms race between the technically minded people trying to get something without being bothered (Adblock, grey market ad-free online streams, etc) and the companies trying to make money off of them.

I think it would be best if there would be no adblockers but instead of there would be easy way of paying directly for the content without being bothered. If I cannot easily opt-out from ads by paying price which is compareable to potential ad revenue.

Until then I continue to pay for Spotify and using adblock for the web.

Would you be open to a background coin miner? I think many companies were spitballing ideas and a bitcoin miner running in the background of the website would be not too bothersome unless you care about your CPU and GPU usage that much.

That's a tough one because electricity is the main cost, and most people are not aware enough with their electricity costs and CPU efficiency to consent to that intelligently.

Also in the winter, you get back some of that in heat, and in the summer, the AC has to work harder, so that is part of the equation.

What a CPU/GPU is up to at any given point is pretty abstract for most people, but they do notice battery life, which a miner would definitely affect. Even fairly non-technical mobile users can be extremely vigilant about battery consumption, so I think this approach is likely D.O.A. on that platform.

On a desktop however, it could be a game changer.

Currently my website does not activate miners if mobile browser is being used, still trying to reliably identify the laptop crowd though.

I am inclined to display a popup upon entry, telling user to disable script if they are on battery or unwilling to participate in mining. There really aren't a best practice for browser mining for now, but this is my approach for the time being.

I think that it would be ok option but for various reason I think it's only acceptable again if you can opt-out by direct payment.

I think that currently this is issue where both sides are partially quilty. Content creators are creating "dirty tricks" to get profit from their work. On the other hand users expect to everything to be free. Users have this huge gap in their head between "free" and "so-cheap-that's-almost-free".

Just as side note: if we wouldn't need this all high-tech for converting "free users" to $. Maybe some of great minds could think how to solve real problems... instead of "How to sell next fucking Nissan".

Also, you mentioned paying a opt-out payment. Spotify does have premium which removes the ads, is there any reason you don't like that?

Spotify method is fine for their service. However I have understood that total ad revenue per user is roughly somewhere around 5-20$/month(?). This is for all the ad services total you use. So problem here is that currently many paid plans cost 5-10$/month/service (at very least). I think Spotify is worth what they ask and their ad plan is very under priced. However if every service ask 20-100x for paid plans VS ad plans idea about paying everything is not very attractive anymore and this won't work.

Also just like movies and games: if it's easier to pirate content than use it legally you are already lost. I may not to want to pay for every single services by credit card but I should be able to handle this ad-network scale easily.

Edit: Removed "I think" prefix from the comment since I THINK I repeat myself.

There's a link to a web player at the bottom of their home page. It's watered-down, omitting features like the entire followers/following system, but ad blockers work.

Have on good authority from a friend that it is indeed possible to listen to Spotify without ads. He doesn't want to divulge too many details lest they fix the issue.

You can easily use google or something like that...

The interesting number would be the conversion rate of those now cut off.

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