Opinion: Spotify Now Decides Which Bits Of Your Show Are Worth Hearing
episode
Podmastery: podcasting insights and advice for indie creators
18 min
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is Spotify’s “Skip Ahead” button and how does it work?
So there's this button. It shows up on the Spotify playback screen and it's bigger than everything else in there. And it appears the second Spotify decides you've reached a bit of the podcast that isn't worth your time listening to. Tap it once, just once, and you're straight past the whole damn lot. Not 15 seconds a bit, everything. And the bits it's decided aren't worth your time include ad breaks, sponsor messages, and even intros where you might have shared some interesting insight that Spotify's AI just decided sounded a little bit salesy. Intros Your intro. Dead. Never heard. Even though you spent the time and thought Crafting it.
This is Podmastery Podcasting Opinions, our special spin-off version of Podcasting Insights. I'm Neil Velio, the Podmaster, 25 odd years in radio and audio, and I'm building the Podmastery community, including this podcast's mothership, so I can help creators like you get more from their own podcast. So this is a weekend bonus extra because this topic is not gonna keep until Monday. I'm gonna be quite rude about Spotify, which is really easy to be honest. But then I'm gonna be quite rude about you. Which is a little harder. But it is the more important point. Right, James Cridlin broke this on Pod News, Podnews.net, and then went through it properly with Sam Seffi on the PodNews Weekly Review, weekly.podnews.net.
And if you want the full forensic version, go listen to that because he's done the actual legwork on this one. Here's the shape of it. Spotify are testing a thing called skip ahead. They haven't announced it, it's just in the app. App at this stage. So here's how it works an ad break starts, you hear the sting, you know, the one like that little ACARS noise, the little chime that's basically Pavlov's bell for here comes a mattress sale. And instantly this enormous button appears on screen and it says skip ahead. And just one tap of that takes you to the end of the entire commercial break. Now. And people have already started doing the well, you've always been able to skip line.
Why does Spotify claim the feature doesn’t affect ad delivery?
And no, stop it. Skipping fifteen seconds at a time is nine taps and a bit of overshoot. Now hang on, is he still going? And that is friction to hitting the button. Friction is the only reason ad reads survive at all. What Spotify have built removes that friction entirely, and then, and this is the really important bit. Tells you. When to press it? That's not a skip function. That's a recommendation. And here's my favorite part for want of a better word. It's happening on ads that Spotify themselves have sold. So one half of the building is on the phone to advertisers going, yeah, we could put your messages in front of 300 million paying subscribers, and that'll be a lot of money to do that, please. And then the other half of the building is going, oh no no no no, don't listen to them.
Here's a Big button. And apparently, according to James's own analysis on this, he put that to them, and Spotify's line was that they're not affecting ad delivery. Which is technically true. Genuinely technically true. If you've decided that delivery means the file arrives on the handset, on the device, but nobody's ever bought an advert in the hope that it lands safely in someone's phone. They bought it, hoping it reaches a person's ears or eyes. Everyone involved knows that that's the entire transaction at play here. And answering Are the ads being heard with Well, yeah. The bites got there? Is the media equivalent of your teenager insisting they've tidied their room because everything's now out of sight, even if it is just tucked under the bed?
Now I want you to hear this next bit from James rather than from me, partly because he's the one who put the questions to Spotify and got the answers back. So it's his to tell, but mostly because there's a detail in here. But I don't think people have properly wrapped their thinking me around yet, and I'd rather you heard him say it than have me paraphrase it to you.
How are podcast intros and membership pitches being flagged as skippable?
Listen out for the part about the terms conditions. Here's James with Sam Sethy on this week's latest episode of the Pod News Weekly Review.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Spotify’s “Skip Ahead” button and how does it work?
0:00–2:32
2
Why does Spotify claim the feature doesn’t affect ad delivery?
2:32–4:51
3
How are podcast intros and membership pitches being flagged as skippable?
4:51–7:23
4
What does James Cridland say about the terms‑and‑conditions that allow skipping?
7:23–9:13
5
Why can a machine only skip isolated “detachable” audio blocks?
9:13–11:27
6
What practical step does the host suggest to prevent your content from being skipped?
11:27–13:58
7
How might podcasters protect themselves without abandoning Spotify?
13:58–16:22
8
What’s the one thing creators can do right now to defend their show’s integrity?
16:22–17:57
Speakers
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