Spotify Premium subscribers report hearing ads — here's Spotify's response

One of the benefits of paying Spotify for one of its Premium subscriptions is ad-free playback, alongside downloading songs for offline listening and organizing your queue. However, some subscribers are reporting that they're still hearing ads.

The official Spotify community forum (via Tech Issues Today) has seen an increase in reports that people are getting advertisements in their streams. Apparently, the issue is widespread, with reports from people using Android, iOS, and the web player.

A Spotify representative responded in the forums, "Our tech teams are still investigating these reports. However, we'll need to request some further clarification to continue with the investigation."

They went on to ask subscribers to turn in reports of the ads they're hearing. They want to know what people are listening to, what playlist, if it occurred in a playlist and the timestamp. They also asked for screen recordings.

For those who don't pay for Spotify, like myself, you generally tend to get between three or four ads in a row every three to four songs.

Based on complaints in the forum, it sounds like this is more of a bug with Spotify's system. One subscriber said that an Amazon ad got inserted into a playlist but failed to load.

It's unclear from the reports how often these ads appear for people or if they're all working properly.

"I hear them in my BMW that has Spotify connected, when using the Daily Drive. Slightly annoying and funny as they are from all over the world and completely useless to me," poster PTR73 wrote.

As with any bug, it appears to be affecting people differently. Some are reporting that they're only getting ads during podcasts, while others say they're only getting them during music streams.

Tom's Guide has reached out to Spotify for more clarity on the issue and will update this story if we receive a response.

More from Tom's Guide

• Spotify Wrapped 2024 controversy explained — what you need to know
• Spotify accused of pushing ghost artists into our playlists — here's what's going on
• Spotify Wrapped 2024 – the dark side of music personalization