When Spotify first launched on 7 October 2008, it began as a free service. Since then Daniel Ek, the Founder, CEO and current owner decided to start using Spotify to earn money. To do this he added advertisements to his software and then he added the ability to upgrade to premium. This new Premium feature allowed people that were willing to pay to enjoy an ad-free listening experience.
Then, the most annoying feature of them all was allowing unlimited skips. If you didn’t want to pay, you would have to listen to a song that you may not have wanted to listen to, and you’re stuck until you pay to upgrade for unlimited skips.
How can you get an Ad-Free Listening Experience?
Well, since you need to edit your hosts file on PC to do this, you’re not going to be able to do this on mobile without some extra steps.Since all of the adverts are loaded from other websites, you can edit your hosts file to block them.
To do this you’ll need to edit your hosts file.
Open Notepad as administrator. (Windows 10, 8, 7: type notepad in start menu > Right Click > Run as administrator)
Then open hosts file. File > Open > Paste this into your directory bar c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\ > Press enter > Double Click on Hosts
at the bottom of the file (Ignore the contents of the file, it’s not relevant) enter the following lines:
127.0.0.1 pubads.g.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 securepubads.g.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 media - match.com
127.0.0.1 adclick.g.doublecklick.net
127.0.0.1 www.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 open.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 desktop.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 googleads.g.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 audio2.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 www.omaze.com
127.0.0.1 omaze.com
127.0.0.1 bounceexchange.com
127.0.0.1 adeventtracker.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 spclient.wg.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 pubads.g.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 securepubads.g.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 media - match.com
127.0.0.1 adclick.g.doublecklick.net
127.0.0.1 www.googleadservices.com
127.0.0.1 open.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 desktop.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 googleads.g.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 audio2.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 www.omaze.com
127.0.0.1 omaze.com
127.0.0.1 bounceexchange.com
127.0.0.1 adeventtracker.spotify.com
127.0.0.1 spclient.wg.spotify.com
And that’s it, that’s how easy it is to block ads for Spotify on your computer, this also may mean that ads might be blocked on other apps or on websites, which I think is good?
Another great way that you could do this is by using a program that was made by an internet user. It’s called Blockify, which you can download on their site. As this wasn’t made by me I can’t say that it works the best or that it’s 100% safe, but I’ve used it myself and it works just how it’s meant to.