Drake recently released his sixth studio album titled Scorpion and proceeded to break just about every single streaming record out there. He’s the most streamed artist in the world right now, be it on Apple Music or Spotify. Drake’s new album has heavily been promoted by Spotify which even used his image on playlists that didn’t even contain his tracks. This has obviously irked Premium users who pay a monthly fee to enjoy an ad-free experience. They felt they were being subjected to ads even though they were promised an ad-free experience. As such, some of those users have pushed for refunds.
Spotify’s promotional efforts for Drake were called Scorpion SZN and they were the first global artist takeover of Spotify ever. It was also the first time that an artist took over several Spotify playlists on the same day.
It’s not unusual for artists to get some promotion on Spotify but many have felt that Spotify took it too far. Users kept seeing the album and Drake’s image everywhere, even in sections such as Playlists and Browse.
One Premium user shared on Reddit how they were able to get their month refunded from customer support after claiming about the incessant promotion. Others have also replicated that to get refunds as well but Billboard reports that the refunds were minimal.
This doesn’t show that there’s a Spotify policy to offer refunds to subscribers who want to leave due to the over-the-top promotion of an artist but does highlight an effort on the part of its customer reps who are trying to retain users. Spotify has since confirmed on an official Twitter account that the Browse and Playlists sections “will be back to normal soon.”
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