Spotify tests advertising skipping by users without Premium subscription

Spotify is testing a new feature that will give users listening through the free version the ability to skip ads. They can do this as often as they want, so it is no longer mandatory to watch or listen to commercials.

The new functionality is currently being tested in Australia and will be rolled out worldwide if successful, CEO Danielle Lee confirmed to the website AdAge. Spotify calls it Active Media, and users of the free version can skip ads as much and as often as they want. Advertisers don’t have to pay for skipped ads.

With this, Spotify hopes to make the free version of the service more attractive, while at the same time hoping that enough users will hear interesting ads that they don’t necessarily want to skip. However, the preliminary results of the experiment have not been disclosed. The test started last month and according to Lee the global rollout should follow ‘soon’, but that timeframe was not specified.

At the presentation of its quarterly results last month, Spotify said that less than five percent of users who listen via the free version are attempting to circumvent the ads. In the numbers, Spotify reports that it now has 180 million monthly active users. Of these, 83 million are with a subscription. In the previous quarter, there were 75 million paid subscribers. Revenue for the quarter was $1.27 billion, 26 percent more than in the same quarter last year. Spotify is still not making a profit: the loss came to $ 90 million.