{"id":29221,"date":"2026-08-06T01:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T20:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=29221"},"modified":"2026-08-06T01:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T20:30:20","slug":"pod-save-america-host-accuses-spotify-of-trying-to-destroy-the-podcast-industry-with-latest-offer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=29221","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Pod Save America\u2019 Host Accuses Spotify of Trying to \u2018Destroy the Podcast Industry\u2019 With Latest Offer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5194538\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5194538\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5194538\" src=\"https:\/\/am12.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Spotify-e1603938766593.jpg\" alt=\"Spotify Lionel Bonaventure\/Getty Images\" width=\"1201\" height=\"797\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-5194538\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Spotify Lionel Bonaventure\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>Pod Save Americ<\/em>a host <strong>Tommy Vietor<\/strong> lashed out at Spotify Wednesday for attempting to &#8220;destroy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/youtube-drops-its-first-ever-podcast-chart-see-who-made-the-top-50\/\">the podcast industry<\/a>&#8221; with a new feature that will allow Premium users to skip ads entirely.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<span class=\"css-1jxf684 r-bcqeeo r-1ttztb7 r-qvutc0 r-poiln3\">Very cool of <\/span><span class=\"r-18u37iz\">@Spotify <\/span>to try and destroy the podcast industry. What a great partner!&#8221; Vietor captioned a screenshot that detailed the &#8220;Skip Ahead&#8221; feature.<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed_container\" id=\"f6d287b0913515d92f0c145d72dcf3ff\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Very cool of <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Spotify?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Spotify<\/a> to try and destroy the podcast industry. What a great partner! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/CDBHMI1izh\">pic.twitter.com\/CDBHMI1izh<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/TVietor08\/status\/2085073214968037428?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 5, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>The screenshot came from <a href=\"https:\/\/podnews.net\/article\/spotify-threat-ad-skipping\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>James Cridland&#8217;s<\/strong> explainer<\/a> of what &#8220;Skip Ahead&#8221; will be about. As Cridland pointed out, many Spotify users already skip ads \u2014 or at least, they have the ability to do so.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;However, while listeners\u00a0<em>can<\/em>\u00a0skip ads in podcasts &#8211; and regularly claim they do &#8211; data from podcast analytics company Bumper, looking at real-life behaviour rather than survey claims, suggests that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podnews.net\/update\/ad-skipping-podcasts-stats\">less than 10%<\/a> of ad-breaks are actually skipped,&#8221; Cridland pointed out. &#8220;This new Spotify feature would appear to make it\u00a0much easier to skip: requiring one button press to cleanly skip to the beginning of the next section of podcast.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cridland also noted his team &#8220;calculated that to skip one of the ad breaks would have otherwise required nine taps on the \u201cskip 15 seconds\u201d button, and then would have slightly overshot the break, needing a further tap backwards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Skip Ahead&#8221; is currently only available to Premium users in &#8220;selected markets.&#8221; In a test conducted by Cridland&#8217;s team, the option to skip an entire ad &#8220;appears on-screen as soon as an ad-break starts.&#8221; Users can move ahead of the full ad break with a single tap.<\/p>\n<p>Cridland also pointed out an aspect of the feature that&#8217;s been viewed as hypocritical by some: &#8220;The &#8216;Skip ahead&#8217; feature appearing within Spotify\u2019s own shows means that on the one hand, Spotify is selling ads, but is also marketing a &#8216;skip&#8217; feature to its own paying users, to enable those ads to not be heard.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Spotify told Cridland, &#8220;We regularly conduct tests at Spotify \u2014 some tests become permanent features, while others help inform future product development. We\u2019re exploring ways to make podcast listening and viewing more intuitive for Premium subscribers based on how people use the platform, with the goal of helping listeners spend more time enjoying podcasts. We\u2019ll continue to evolve the experience as we learn.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/pod-save-america-host-accuses-spotify-of-trying-to-destroy-the-podcast-industry-with-latest-offer\/\">\u2018Pod Save America\u2019 Host Accuses Spotify of Trying to \u2018Destroy the Podcast Industry\u2019 With Latest Offer<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\">Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spotify Lionel Bonaventure\/Getty Images Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor lashed out at Spotify Wednesday for attempting to &#8220;destroy the podcast industry&#8221; with a new feature that will allow Premium users to skip ads entirely. &#8220;Very cool of @Spotify to try and destroy the podcast industry. What a great partner!&#8221; Vietor captioned a screenshot that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/am12.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2020\/10\/Spotify-e1603938766593.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}