Paying for a premium service is the absolute best way to stream your favourite songs — you’ll get a better selection and more importantly, few, if any, frustrating ads. But Spotify is still pushing its free streaming option to keep growing, despite that being one of the biggest, dumbest sticking points in Spotify’s tussle with the music industry.
Though its free service comparatively sucks, Spotify has improved it this year, giving listeners more choices for how they stream songs on their phones.
Free Spotify may have another upgrade on the way, too: The company is currently testing letting users “skip audio and video ads any time they want, as often as they want, allowing them to quickly get back to music,” Ad Age reports.
This test is only live in Australia for now, and only for a few users, but Spotify aims to one day bring the option to everyone, according to the report.
The move could make Spotify more money per ad for the ads users don’t skip, but hopefully the average listener will also have to deal with fewer ads overall.
A Spotify spokesperson tells Gizmodo that the company “will consider expanding” its ad skipping experiment “to additional markets in the future”. They added, “We are committed to our freemium model and will continue innovating our products to ensure the best experience on both our free and premium tiers.”