Another random post. This one’s about Spotify, the latest music website/program/thingy that everyone’s talking about. Let me just start by clarifying that I love Spotify - it’s a great idea and I’m a big fan. But the reason I’m writing this post is because I just had to have a good old rant. Not about Spotify itself, nor the fact that you have to put up with ads if you choose the free option, but about the ads themselves.
I don’t know how much money Spotify are making but it seems to be taking off somewhat, judging by how much I keep hearing about it all over the place. So I’m going to assume that they’re doing ok for cash. In which case, could they not afford to have their own ads done a bit more professionally? I find the ones that start with “Hi, I’m Joe Bloggs from Spotify, we hope you love Spotify as much as we do”, and finish with “everyone loves music”, pretty annoying and borderline patronising. But I can just about tolerate these. It’s the latest batch that have irked me.
First off we have Dave Berry - or at least it sounds like Dave Berry. He’s a pretty successful radio DJ from XFM in London. He’s done loads of voiceovers - I hear him on adverts all the time. And, as I mentioned above, I’m assuming Spotify are doing alright for cash. So why are both Dave Berry’s Spotify ads so unbelievably rubbish? They’re poorly scripted, poorly voiced and the audio quality is AWFUL. Seriously, they must have got the microphone in a Christmas cracker and then said “just make something up for 30 seconds Dave, anything will do”.
And secondly, the voicemail adverts. Ah yes, phone Spotify’s voicemail and leave a message - tell them what you think of Spotify. That’s all fine, the idea itself is not overly offensive. But what occured to me when hearing one of these ads just now was that each advert is the same duration - around 30 seconds. The Spotify bit (the guy saying “leave us a voicemail on 0207…” etc) is the same duration every time - it’s the same recording. And the adverts are always the same duration. So the first half of the advert - the voicemail left by a Spotify user - has a set duration. My question is, does everyone who calls their voicemail just happen, by coinsidence, to speak for exactly the same duration of time? And, by another freak coinsidence, is this duration of time the exact same duration of time that the voicemails in their adverts must last for? The cynic in me suggests that this is more than a coinsidence and that the ‘voicemails’ they have put in their adverts are faked.
Like I said, I’m all in favour of Spotify - it’s brilliant. I just find Spotify’s own adverts to be pretty irritating in various ways - I just wanted to have a quick rant about it.
Ah, now I feel better 
Hey there, the adverts for the phoneline are indeed done inhouse, merely in this case to let everyone know about the phoneline and the kind of format your message is meant to have. The plan is to edit them to the intended length when they’re coming in.
Thanks for the input however! some interesting points. I’m tired of hearing about how people are pissed off about there being adverts, thats the business side of it! If there were no adverts we would have no income and the whole thing wouldn’t be possible. Look out for new voicemail ads soon
Hi Will - crikey, thanks for the rapid and unexpected response! Glad you found my comments useful.
I did some Googling and found there’s quite a lot of people who share my dislike of the adverts (the adverts themselves, not the fact that we have to put up with them). I kind of understand that you have to create a few ’sample’ voicemails to get the ball rolling so I may have been slightly harsh on that one. The Dave Berry ones really get me though - why oh why are they just so poor?! I really think an improvement to your adverts could make a massive difference to your brand image.
One suggestion from me would be to see if you can get any popular comedians/celebrities who have dropped slightly off the radar to do some ads. Either just the voiceovers or even writing them as well. You could draw them in with the incentive of huge exposure, hence no need to pay them big fees. Then, from the users’ point of view, the adverts might come across as less annoying/irritating and could even be quite enjoyable, depending on who the celebrity is!
Another suggestion for the functionality side of things would be to restrict the number of playlists for free accounts - I have an absolute bucketload and it struck me that having the number limited to maybe 10 or 20 would encourage me to upgrade, while still being pretty fair. Hope I don’t regret suggesting that…!
Anyway thanks for reading my post and I hope you find my suggestions useful.
I work from home 3 days a week, and Spotify keeps me going. As long as they keep the adverts to ‘in between’ the tracks, I personally don’t mind the ‘voicemail’ slots - they make me laugh sometimes.
The voicemail ones are the best! I love the Irish guy “There’s not enough dance music, so I urhhh can’t get my dancing shoes on!”. Brightens my day each time I hear it!
The thing that tipped me off to the voicemails definitely being fake are that I’ve started hearing ones I recognise (”the only thing is- you can’t put it on your iPod”, “if you could have a little bar at the bottom to see who added a track” and others) with exactly the same wording as previous ones but read by different voices. I guess they might transcribe and re-record voicemails to avoid legal issues with replaying people’s voices, but making them obviously fake like this feels disingenuous.
Still, I can’t complain about the service- the only thing that made me annoyed is pressing Mute while adverts are playing pauses the advert, but not while music is playing. It could have been a useful feature but it just feels like those unskippable piracy notices on DVDs.