Hicks's dashboard

I'd like to see this option too. Although my account is not an under 18 account, there are times when children are within earshot, it'd be nice to filter out any advert with bad language or inapproriate content. A check box would be great as the rest of the time or when listening with headphones, bad language isn't an issue.

Same applies to songs, would be great to be able to avoid songs with explicit lyrics based on a tick box. On a similar note, it'd be nice to have the option to avoid censored songs too playing the explicit version. Depends on the user, who's around and whether they're using headphones or not.

Having the same issue. Playing tracks I've played many times in the past and now they fail to play, the bar at the bottom never shows the track as starting.

Skipping 3-4 songs and it'll finally start to play then after a few songs it happens again. It isn't any one particular track either, what plays today I was having issues with yesterday and some of what played yesterday I'm having issues with today.

I'm on Windows 7 is that has any relevance. Also, an advert started a minute ago only no audio ever came through. Unable to click onto another track as I just got the "blah will play after this advert finishes" message (paraphrased). Just restarted the client and noticed a new weezer albumn, tried to play buddy holly listed in the Weezer top songs and it's not loading the track at all.

spotify:track:3zBZuuFtIHf2WYPli8KzOU

Clicked on several other tracks until one started to load and then buddy holly now works. Doesn't seem to matter how many minutes you wait for the track to play it just never starts.

Yrokio: I read the 50% subscription in a post the other week and went straight to spotify.com to sign up, only to find it was still showing at £9.99. After a bit more searching I found the news items about it been a promo and only to certain customers :(

As with you, I'm sticking with the free version for now, hoping that they'll drop their price to £5.

On the subject of pricing, why is it they offer 12 months for £119.88, who would sign up for a 12 month contract when you get exactly the same for the same price on a 1 month contract. If the catalogue or service goes down the pan in a few months, those on the 12 month plan are screwed. Usually when you sign up for a monthly service with a bulk X month payment, you do it to get a discount as a reward for your loyalty. They should do something like 12 months for the price of 10 or 11.

It sounds like the promo codes were only sent to a sub-set of the free and premium subscribers that had opted in to the newsletter.

Annoying really as I'd subscribe right now if I could get spotify for £5. Maybe they'll do a second round of promos? We can hope :)

Cache settings don't help all the time though. I have a 30GB bandwidth limit (most people in the UK will have roughly similar limits even those on unlimited* packages)

So although reducing the cache settings will prevent the p2p aspect working and keep uploads to a minimum, it means we're now downloading every track every time we play it which also eats up a load of our monthly bandwidth.

I'd like to see the option to limit the p2p upload speed to something like 3-5KB/s and have the option to increase that in 10KB/s increments + an option to not limit at all, that way users can select an appropriate level based on their bandwidth allowances and usage of Spotify.

We really need this kind of option in the client as running the client on more than one PC can play Havok with ping for other PCs (i.e for gaming) and eat through upload allowances.

I'd be happy for spotify to use _some_ of my bandwidth for uploading, after all I'm not paying for the service, it's only fair. However, until there is an option to limit the bandwidth Spotify uses so that it doesn't impact other PC connections, I've just blocked all p2p uploads. This is not really an ideal solution for spotify imo.

Even having spotify limit its upload usage to 1/5 of your detected upload speed (run a test the first few times spotify runs) would really help with this, especially if you want to restrict exact KB/s management settings to premium subscribers (who really should have the option). At least that way running a few spotify clients on a home network will not have any impact on other pcs until you run at least 5 AND all 5 happen to be maxing out their p2p upload at the time.

I don't care what the final solution is, so long as we can run a couple of clients and not have it cause a problem with upload rates.

*fair usage blah blah

RoMeO: There are many ways to implement a family pass if Spotify should desire to do so, as the system is server based Spotify can prevent others getting a free ride.

I do not think technical restrictions are why spotify do not do this, the reason is cost. They'd rather we pay £40 per month for 4 accounts than £9.99 for a family plan account. I don't place a high enough value on music to make that worth doing. Maybe others do and maybe they make up for the number of customers spotify might snag on a family plan, I don't know what their customer base is like nor how many premium subscribers they have.

As i know of. Spotify has no plans on removing ads or putting less on

No one is asking for ads to be removed. If you want that, then you pay for the premium service, that's not what is been debated here.

Spotify are probably playing with the ad frequency and likely have done so since the start of the service and will continue to do so in the future, they're looking for a balanced point between maximising the number of ads played and thus revenue generated from it and not losing listeners in the process

What we're discussing here is the frequency and repetative nature of spotifies OWN ads, not adverts from third parties which are pretty balanced. At some point they'll realise they're playing their own ads way too often and risking losing listeners.

But in fact you did agree to the ads when you first signed up
its like saying
i sold a bike for 130
but told him i want the kickstart back everytime hes not using it

yes we agreed to listen to ads, again that is not what we are debating. Since the service began the ad frequency has increased, again that isn't too big an issue, spotify have to make money after all and you can avoid all ads by going premium. However, that is not what people are having a problem with. Please re-read the posts in this thread. It's the repetativeness of spotifies OWN ads that are causing concerns.

RoMeO: The problem isn't that there are ads on the free version. Read the original post again. It's that _some_ of the sptoify ads are repeated way too frequently that they become annoying.

Some users have no intetion of signing up to premium, perhaps they can't justify the cost at this time, already paying for other services or just can't afford £10p/m. Not everyone listens to spotify 24/7, if you're a light user just listening now and then, then the free version makes more sense at this time.

Those users will listen to the adverts knowing they're the reason the service is free in the first place, however if the ads are too frequent or very repeatative (i.e having heard the same 2 spotify ads 8+ times in a row made me switch spotify off; this has happened several times now) they'll have one of two choices:-

1) Upgrade to premium
2) Stop using spotify

Some may choose option 1, but not everyone will, and those that don't are now lost ears that no longer generate any revenue through ads.

Yet if the frequency was kept low (it's increased more and more these part weeks/months) and the repetative spotify ads were limited to 1 spotify ad per day or even 6 hours, those ears would at least still be listening to the ads and making spotify some money, even if might not ad up to what they'd get from a premium sub.

Aside from that, in the future those same free users may be in a different position financially, or spend more time listening to spotify in which case they may actually upgrade to premium. But if spotify keep forcing premium ads down their throats, they may have already left and thus never get around to upgrading.

Free users accept that it's an ad supported service, there's no getting away from it, you either put up with the ads or go premium or leave. Sptofy need to get the balance right to keep the most people on premium and free and minimise the number that leave. That balance for me was spotify a few months ago, which is why I log on less often now and tend to shut the app the moment I hear the 2nd spotify ad.

I'm not a huge music listener so paying to listen to music outside of my cd collection isn't really going to happen. Either spotify will get the ad balance right again or I'll go back to my local music collection and just spend the £10-20 per year buying the few new tracks or discounted albumns I fancy listening to. £120 p/y and not owning any of it is too much for me. Perhaps if it was £120 p/y for everyone in the house to use premium we'd be able to split the cost and it'd be worth it though.