Spotify has secretly built a button that tells your listener which bits of your episode aren't worth hearing.

It's called Skip Ahead. It's in testing, they haven't announced it, and the excellent podcast industry journalist James Cridland broke it on Podnews. One tap and you're past the entire ad break — not fifteen seconds, everything.

The ad still gets delivered to the device, so the impression still counts and the advertiser still pays. They're just encouraging nobody to hear it. Including, in some cases, ads Spotify sold themselves.

That's the industry story and it's been well covered.

This episode is about the bit that hasn't.

This isn't an advertising story. It's a platform applying editorial judgement to the stuff you made.

And then there's the part where I have to be a little bit honest with you - you might have brought this on yourself.

In this episode:

— What Skip Ahead does, and why "you could always skip" doesn't hold up

— Why "we're not affecting ad delivery" is technically true and completely dishonest

— James Cridland on the terms and conditions nobody read

— The membership pitch that got flagged as skippable

— Why your intro is on the list too

— The one thing a machine can never skip

Clip from Podnews Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi, used with thanks. Subscribe at weekly.podnews.net — he does the reporting, I just have opinions about it.

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