An Advertising-Free Zone

I’m one month into a three-month free trial of Spotify Premium, and I’m loving it. So far, my favorite playlists are:

R. Todd Webb’s Near to the Heart of God–Meditations for Piano, Jazz Piano for a Rainy Night, and Jazz Piano Classics.

Are you sensing a piano theme here? But the best. THE BEST. The awesomest most wonderful and splendid thing about this is that THERE ARE NO ADVERTISEMENTS. I’m not hearing “How Long Has it Been?” and suddenly being reminded that it’s been about six minutes since the last sports drink, amazing gambling opportunity, or diet pill has been thrust in my face. I had subscribed to Free Spotify for about three months and mulled over offers of one or two months ad-free trial of Spotify, but when the ADVERTISEMENT for three months free came along I couldn’t resist. Is there a paradox here? A contradiction? Yes, I embraced an ad for an ad-free product. I exchanged Free Spotify for Ad-Free Spotify and I haven’t looked back.

It is so wonderful to enter a room without clutter, a room where no one is present that I do not invite, where there’s no junk piled on the desk. And that is what Spotify Premium is giving me. (Despite appearances, this is not an ad for Spotify Premium). Like you, I’m constantly blasted, bombarded, bludgeoned, by advertising, even at the gas pump, and I’m sick of it. I didn’t realize how sick of it I was until I got Premium. When I watch YouTube videos about the golf swing or golf highlights or piano arpeggio technique or additional golf highlights or “how to play jazz from a lead sheet” videos I turn my head while the ad plays. I have my body tensed and trained to hit “Skip Ad” in 6.001 seconds. I hate all the advertising, but for some reason I’m more ready to put up with it on YouTube than on Spotify. Another thing I hate (ok, “passionately dislike”–I’m trying to save “hate” for extreme cases) is monthly subscription prices. No Netflix. No Amazon Prime. No cable TV. But Spotify Premium is worth it.

When I was a kid, maybe ten years old, our family got its first TV, a black and white job about the size of a small tote bag (and what’s up with the flood of tote bags these days, BTW?)  with two knobs on top, one for VHF and one for UHF. You had to jump off the couch, go over to the TV and turn a volume knob down to silence the advertising. My dad loved it when we upgraded to a TV with a remote that had a mute button. He could hit that thing with his thumb like Robin Hood splitting the arrow of Philip of Arras (Errol Flynn version).

I might say it’s a family thing, this ha . . . . passionate dislike of advertising, but it’s clearly shared by a lot of people, 210 million of whom subscribe to Spotify Premium, compared to 347 million people of free Spotify, as of earlier this year. Still accessible with a tight budget, which is good. When I mentioned my Premium experience to office colleagues they enthusiastically numbered themselves among the 210 million. I just crossed paths with a friend who told me he hates (passionately dislikes) the ads on Hulu, which he gets on top of paying a subscription.

Why do most of us passionately dislike ads? What is an advertisement? Because we are fish swimming in a sea of advertising, sometimes we don’t even realize what water is. An ad is something that is not part of the experience you are pursuing, but it is aggressively inserted into that experience (the increased volume of ads is maddening). It is an obstacle to that experience that you have to overcome in order to have that experience, and the experience of that ad degrades the experience you are trying to have. It’s peach season now in Michigan, and I’ve been eating two or three peaches a day. Incredible. But with most of the peaches, you need to trim out a few brown spots before you eat prime peach. But at least THE BROWN SPOTS AREN’T SINGING AND DANCING AND TELLING YOU TO BUY BUDWEISER. They just quietly lay there until you scrape them into the compost bucket.

Yesterday, I was at the doctor’s office. A dentist’s office shares the waiting room. I was sitting on the dentist’s side, trying to read a book while I waited for my appointment. The dentist’s office had a large screen TV next to its reception desk running continuous advertisements for different dental services. I got up from my chair, took a couple of deep breaths and asked God to help me to speak kindly to the receptionist. “I’m trying to read a book,” I said. “I’m in a public space. I resent that the dental office is encroaching on that public space by running these commercials for its services.” Maybe a dentist/doctor reception room doesn’t qualify as a “public space” by your definition, but still.

The receptionist blinked, perhaps taking a breath and asking God to help her deal kindly with this random annoyed person, and said “these are not advertisements. They’re educational videos about what services our office provides. Are you here for a dental appointment?”

“No,” I said. “I’m here for a doctor’s appointment.”

“Well,” said the receptionist. “You can go over there” (pointing to the other side of the room). I took her counsel, but could still hear the dental office TV every second, just like the princess with the pea. Except only the princess was sensitive enough to feel the pea under seven mattresses, while all of us feel the continual assault of advertising.

We live in a capitalist consumerist society, which means we have lots of businesses clamoring for our attention to buy their products. This gives us lots and lots of nice products, and many of them are good to eat, help us accomplish things more easily, are nice to wear. As I type, I’m enjoying wearing my Aerotech tall size windproof cycling jacket. It’s much nicer than wearing a gunny sack.

But still, I love living in an ad-free space.



Scott Moncrieff is a Professor of English and Faculty Advisor of the Student Movement.
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