Eff off, Spotify

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about ads in class but I still want to bring up that topic again. But instead of talking about how ads are personalised for the individual or how clickbaits are pretty much everywhere I’d like to talk about the seasonal adjustment of ads.

Let’s face it: I’m way too cheap to pay for music. I rarely ever buy some tracks unless I really, really, REALLY love that artist. Yeah, I’m not too proud either but I’m trying to be honest here. Be that as it may, I mostly use the free version of Spotify to listen to music – which in turn means that I have to regularly listen to all kinds of ads in between the songs. It doesn’t really bother me as long as there is some variation instead of the same ad being repeated over and over again. Those ads are more or less personalised as well (even though I highly doubt that I get those promos for Justin Bieber’s songs due to personalisation, but oh well) but it’s only logical to promote summer playlists in – guess what – summer and Christmas playlists in winter. But what really made me laugh out loud around Christmas was when all those fitness ads started appearing.

At first, I was seriously confused hearing several fitness ads in a row (4 different fitness ads in about 15 minutes). What are you getting at, Spotify? Seriously, f- you. But then it dawned on me: it’s not only Christmas time but New Year’s Eve is also right around the corner – and with it a whole lot of New Year’s resolutions. And one of those is the ever so famous resolution: “I’m getting really ripped in 20XY!”

Thanks to that, most fitness centres see a ridiculous increase of customers – only to see it drastically decrease around February and March. So much for that New Year’s resolution. No wonder, most gyms only offer one or two year subscriptions. And really, it does make sense to launch those ads around Christmas with all those delicious but fatty and sugary meals, preying on people’s self-esteem and food guilt. Not that it’s nice or fair, but I see where they’re getting at: “motivate” (or guilt-trip) people to sign in at a gym or fitness programme, they’ll lose interest after some time but you’ll still get your money from them.

Now that I think about it, I’ll come back to my initial statement (being sort of glad I’m too cheap to pay for that stuff): F- you, Spotify.