Spotify breaks its silence on Premium users hearing ads (Update: Issue fixed)

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the patience while this was being investigated! We have good news from our teams – a fix for the instances where Premium users noticed ads when listening to music has been deployed and you should notice a difference right away. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that it is expected that both free & Premium users may still see ads when listening to podcasts.

Cheers!

Hopefully, this should mean that Spotify Premium users should no longer see ads interrupting their music listening experience.

Original article: February 11, 2025 (6:37 AM ET): There are several benefits to paying for Spotify Premium, such as the ability to download music for offline listening and ad-free playback. Unfortunately, some subscribers are actually hearing ads after all.

Spotify Premium users have taken to the official community forum (h/t: Tech Issues Today) to report that they’re receiving ads. Affected users are apparently getting ads on Android, iOS, and the web.

“Our tech teams are currently investigating reports of Premium users hearing ads,” a company representative noted in the thread. The representative asked affected users to submit information like the device model and OS version, the app version (if they’re not using the web player), the type of ad they received, and whether they’ve tried any specific troubleshooting steps. The company has also asked users to upload videos of the issue, if possible.

Either way, it’s not a great look if paying users are seeing ads. But it certainly seems like a bug rather than a deliberate move on Spotify’s part. It wouldn’t be the first time subscribers have reported ads, either, as we’ve seen scattered reports of this issue over the years. We’ve nevertheless asked the company about this issue and will update the article accordingly.