Before its IPO on April 3, Spotify has highlighted an open secret in its United States Securities and Exchange Commission registration statement: that around two million people around the world have been using the service to listen to music without advertising but without paying, thanks to easily findable ways and alternatives to block advertising. Following the revelation, the company reduced the numbers of its users from 159 million users to 157 million, with a total of 71 million subscribers.
Beyond the implications for Spotify, which has undoubtedly contributed significantly through the convenience of its service to a decline in free downloading, for me, all this raises questions about the evolution of advertising: what is advertising for Spotify? Aside from representing over the last two years something like an additional 10% to its revenue stream, advertising is a highly effective way of annoying its users into paying for the service.
That is what advertising has become. If you work in advertising, congratulations: you create stuff for companies to use to hassle people into paying for their services. Awesome. We all know that advertising on Spotify is a losing game: your ad is being used to torture — and I can’t think of a better word — people who will hate your company for interrupting their listening pleasure. Think about it: advertising as torture. When two million…
