Spotify: Volume Sensitive advertising

Spotify is an online music streaming service that gives its users access to its catalogue of music with no buffering or delays. The concept is a way to provide people with music without them having to take ownership of the tracks. Instead the users are given access to the company's library of music, however they also have to listen to adverts in between songs, in a way similar to radio advertising. For a fee of £0.99 per day or £9.99 a month users can listen free of advertising.

Advertising is a big part of Spotify's revenue so it is important for them to be able to ensure that advertising on the site reaches their users as effectively as possible. Until recently when adverts were streamed between songs on Spotify it was possible to turn down the volume, to avoid listening to the advert. However after using the service recently I noticed that this has changed.

Now the advertising is sensitive to the volume of your computer. For example as seen below if I turned down the volume to just one bar the advert would automatically pause and I would not be able to listen to any more music until I have continued to listen to the advert.





One way to beat the volume sensitive advertising is if you listen to music through speakers, you can turn them off and turn up the volume on your computer. However if you were to simply use a lap top or the built in speakers in a computer then this method of ensuring advertising is consumed would be highly effective.

Methods such as these to ensure that advertising is consumed by internet users perhaps demonstrates how modern technology has changed our attitudes towards advertising, especially invasive advertising such as this and represents a consumer desire to avoid advertising. While Spotify is only available in six countries currently, this technology could obviously work all around the world where there is internet access.

I have seen examples of placing advertising before content that has to be consumer in order to reach the content in television steaming websites such as 4OD, but the idea of making advertising volume sensitive opens up lots of possibilities. Could this idea be expanded to radio and even television, becoming more and more invasive in our lives? Whether this would be effective is debatable but it would ensure the consumption of adverts which is something advertisers would be likely to be pleased by. This is an interesting innovation in the way we deliver advertising and it would be interested to see if it will be exported into other countries soon as well as other mediums.

http://www.spotify.com