Ways to get around Spotify Ads

Tutorials
1

Hello!

I'm not a Spotify subscriber, I primarily use iTunes, but sometimes friends will send me Spotify playlists so I'll give it a listen. Naturally I hear the ads. I added a few lines to my Spotify now playing widget that will mute the ad and start playing iTunes until the ad is over (no break in the music!)

I'll post my script below but I'd also like to hear other opinions on how to deal with this. I'm thinking of making iTunes play a specific song first or a short 'song' that is a recording of me saying "Spotify ad break" so I know whats going on.

Duration is in ms

set sDuration to get duration of current track

--mute ads
if sDuration is less than 31000 then
tell application "Spotify"
set sound volume to 0
end tell
tell application "iTunes"
play
end tell

--umute
else if sDuration is greater than 31000 and sound volume is 0 then
tell application "iTunes"
pause
end tell
tell application "Spotify"
set sound volume to 100
end tell
end if

2

oh if anyone knows how to simply tell Spotify to Mute and unMute that would help

3

I use this at the start of my Spotify Now Playing widgets:

tell application "Spotify"
set myTime to duration of current track
end tell
tell application "Spotify"
if player state is playing then
if myTime < 51000 then
set volume with output muted
tell application "Spotify"
next track
repeat until myTime > 51000
end repeat
end tell
else if myTime > 51000 then
set volume without output muted
try

after try comes the part about setting track name, artist, etc.

Only issue I run into is that occasionally Spotify refuses to skip and makes me click on the app and press play on a video. Can't figure out a way around that yet.

4

I've noticed on my end I can't skip any Spotify ads, I have to listen through all of them. Is there some that I should be able to skip?

Oh, and I see you mute your macbook, it works well but I'd like to keep listening to music via iTunes. I don't think there is a way to simply have Spotify mute and unmute. I've done a lil thing where I log the volume level before the ad then after the ad I have Spotify return to its previous level

5

Strange, the next track part works for the majority of ads with mine. How often do you have your widget set to refresh? Mines every 2 seconds. I only added the mute part recently but even with out it I rarely hear more than a second of the ads, and usually don’t hear any of it. Not sure why it doesn’t work with yours.

6

huh, even if I open Spotify while ad is playing and try to skip, the skip is greyed out. I've tried on about 8 ads now, haven't been able to skip any of them. I added the skip part in the script just in case in the future I'm able to? Mine updates every 5 seconds but still

7

Not sure what's different with yours then. Does it at least give you the option to skip after 5 seconds? How often are you getting ads? Maybe Spotify ads are set to work differently in different countries? That's the only thing I can think of.

8

You're right about the different countries thing. My account was set to US but I'm living in Australia. I see that Spotify recently let Aus accounts skip ads (apparently they are making the most profit from users in Aus?) so I changed my location to Aus. Gonna test it out now

To answer your question, I couldnt skip ads at all, not after 5,10,30 seconds. I would get about 3 ads in a row after 10-15min listening

9

Wow. Sucks to be in the US then. I bad no idea that Spotify didn't let them skip ads at all. And I'm pretty sure I don't even get that many ads.
I only started using Spotify a month ago, so had no idea it was different.

10

Yep, now I can skip!

For anyone else, just change your location to Australia on your Spotify account; might require you to actually be there or use a VPN though

11

This is now what I do:

set sDuration to get duration of current track

--mute ads
if sDuration < 41000 then
tell application "Spotify"
repeat until sDuration > 41000
set sound volume to 0
next track
return "Skipping Ads"
end repeat
end tell

else if sDuration > 41000 and sound volume is 0 then
tell application "Spotify"
set sound volume to 100
end tell
end if

12

A little modification for those who listen to short songs that might be affected

set sArtist to ( get artist of current track)

--skip ads
if sArtist is "" then
tell application "Spotify"
repeat until sArtist is not ""
set sound volume to 0
next track
return "Skipping Ads"
end repeat
end tell

else if sArtist is not "" and sound volume is 0 then
tell application "Spotify"
set sound volume to 100
end tell
end if

1 Like
13

I have found that some ads have the company as the artist, so you may still need the time limit to actually skip all ads

1 Like
17

@Andreas_Hegenberg can you just lock this thread or remove it? It is now being taken over by spammers

19

again, another spam post, lock or remove thread? @Andreas_Hegenberg

20

Thanks for sharing, I've been downloading Spotify to MP3 and listen offline without the app. This is the best way for me.

21

I recommend using Ublock Origin, IMHO the best ad blocker plugin out there. I'm not sure how they pull it off but I can use Spotify's web client (open.spotify.com) as if I were a paying user. No adds, no shuffle, yes skip, etc, full functionality except that I can't set the streaming quality to 320kbps. I've read warnings that Spotify can close your account if you're using UO but I've been doing so for years now and never had an issue.