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Spotify recently made some changes I disagreed with (doubling cost), and so I no longer have their premium service.

This means they play ads after every couple songs. These ads are often very obnoxious to listen to.

But when you hit mute or turn the computer's volume down past a certain level, Spotify auto-pauses. You can't mute the ad. Which infuriates me, it feels like some dystopian force-feeding method. Imagine if you couldn't turn your tv off during commercials, or mute it, or it just paused and wouldn't continue?

This happens on both my Windows laptop and my Macbook. I imagine if I had a separate speaker/headset hookup with its own volume dial, that would do it, but that's a poor solution.

How can I adjust the system volume in such a way that Spotify or other applications are not notified about the adjustment? Or, how can I deauthorize Spotify from receiving such notifications?

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    As obnoxious as their annoyware business model may be, those are their terms of service. They have operating costs and need to make a profit to stay in business. If you want their service, those are the choices (be annoyed or pay). You could vote with your feet.
    – fixer1234
    Dec 17, 2014 at 5:17
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    Or instead of giving me your opinion, you could participate in the site and help answer an actual valid superuser question, regardless of your moral qualms?
    – temporary_user_name
    Dec 17, 2014 at 6:08
  • It was intended more as a reality check than an opinion. I dislike annoyware as much as anyone else, the comment wasn't about the morality. What you're asking for is help to defeat the commercial mechanism for a service. Site users might be reticent to help with that. If you have trouble getting an answer, that would likely be the reason why.
    – fixer1234
    Dec 17, 2014 at 6:17

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Easy enough on the Mac using applescript...

# Mute the audio
set volume with output muted

# Spotify should be pause, so start it up
tell app "Spotify" to play

# Wait for ad to finish
delay 30

# Unmute
set volume without output muted

More ideas here. In my quick test, it paused whenever large drops in volume occurred, not only when muted!

PS: What is next? Spotify will sue every headphone manufacturer because they come with volume knob? Sigh!

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