spotify use chromium for video ad

[021hossein]

Spotify use chromium for videos ad, but the extension mutes just Spotify.

[bmaupin]

I just saw a video ad so I dumped the MPRIS data. Looks like the filter for mpris:trackid should still work, so it would just be the mixer sink filter that would need to be modified. @danigm Does it seem feasible to update the mixer sink filter to include chromium as well? I'm trying to think of what the unintended effects would be ...

Here's the MPRIS data dump:

$ dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.spotify /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get  string:'org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player' string:'Metadata'
method return time=1686840708.549485 sender=:1.438 -> destination=:1.444 serial=67 reply_serial=2
   variant       array [
         dict entry(
            string "mpris:trackid"
            variant                string "/com/spotify/ad/252fb46a7c740baa771dc45139abe654"
         )
         dict entry(
            string "mpris:length"
            variant                uint64 30054000
         )
         dict entry(
            string "mpris:artUrl"
            variant                string ""
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:album"
            variant                string ""
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:albumArtist"
            variant                array [
                  string ""
               ]
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:artist"
            variant                array [
                  string ""
               ]
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:autoRating"
            variant                double 0
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:discNumber"
            variant                int32 0
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:title"
            variant                string "McDonald's"
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:trackNumber"
            variant                int32 0
         )
         dict entry(
            string "xesam:url"
            variant                string "https://open.spotify.com/ad/252fb46a7c740baa771dc45139abe654"
         )
      ]

[danigm]

I don't know if it's possible to detect which chromium is the one related to spotify... In other case, muting all chromiums could be a solution, I think it's not a common user case to have music and something else in chromium browser, but to solve that user case maybe we can add a configuration to enable/disable the chromium mute.

[bmaupin]

I think it's not a common user case to have music and something else in chromium browser

I didn't think so either, but I use https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux and while on a call I saw that it had created chromium audio streams. In which case I could see a scenario in which a user paused Spotify during an ad (e.g. to take a call) but all chromium streams were muted. If electron uses chromium then I could see other electron apps potentially creating chromium audio streams as well.

I wonder if there's a way to account for this programmatically. My observation is that spotify seems to either have only one spotify stream or chromium stream. If that's the case, we could add logic so that, for example, we only mute chromium streams if there's a spotify player open but no spotify stream.

But maybe it's simpler to just add it as a configuration option.

[bmaupin]

The cleanest way to do this would be to see if we could somehow associate a particular stream with its application, then we would know which chromium streams belong to Spotify.

If you run pactl list sink-inputs it has some interesting properties that seem to link the stream with its application, for example:

                application.name = "spotify"
                application.process.binary = "spotify"

Unfortunately these properties don't seem to be available in the Gnome stream object. It does have get_application_id() but it always seems to be null. I also found get_description() but for the chromium streams it just returns Playback.

Maybe this information is available via another Gnome API? I haven't been able to find anything but I'm not very familiar with the Gnome APIs.

[danigm]

Unfortunately these properties don't seem to be available in the Gnome stream object. It does have get_application_id() but it always seems to be null. I also found get_description() but for the chromium streams it just returns Playback.

There's also the method get_icon_name, but I don't know if that will return the chrome icon or the spotify one, I haven't tested.

[bmaupin]

It took me a few days to finally get a video ad, but this is what I got:

name=Chromium
application_id=null
description=Playback
get_icon_name=chromium-browser

compared to a spotify audio stream:

name=spotify
application_id=null
description=Spotify
get_icon_name=audio

[danigm]

So, there's no way to block video ads, because everything identifies as Chromium so we can't differentiate from an actual browser playing a video.

[bmaupin]

While writing a response I found something! Apparently the information I found through pactl is also available through wpctl, which I believe uses the Wireplumber API for Pipewire instead of the Pulseaudio API:

$ wpctl status | grep -A 10 Streams | grep -i spotify
        79. spotify

$ wpctl inspect 79 | grep -i spotify
  * application.name = "spotify"
    application.process.binary = "spotify"
    media.name = "Spotify"
  * node.name = "spotify"

Better yet, Wireplumber seems to have Gjs bindings: https://gjs-docs.gnome.org/wp05~0.5/

I have no idea how to use the API but I'll play with it and see if I can get any useful information out of it.

[danigm]

I've been looking into the Wp gjs API and I didn't find how to use correctly.

But if it's too complex, maybe we can think about using wpctl directly with subprocess: https://gjs.guide/guides/gio/subprocesses.html#subprocesses

Using subprocess will change a bit the plugin, but it's another option to simplify and do not depend on the Gjs exposed API.

[bmaupin]

I don't get many video ads but I finally got one and grabbed the data from pipewire. It does seem that application.process.binary could be used to link a video ad to spotify:

wpctl status | grep -A 10 Streams | grep -i chromium
        78. Chromium

wpctl inspect 78 | grep spotify
    application.process.binary = "spotify"

   application.name = "Chromium"
   media.name = "Playback"
   node.name = "Chromium"

Using subprocess will change a bit the plugin, but it's another option to simplify and do not depend on the Gjs exposed API.

Wouldn't the Gjs APIs be better than subprocess? I would expect them to be more stable than the text output of wpctl but I'm not familiar with Gnome programming.

I played with the Gjs Wireplumber APIs a little bit without much success. But I think there might be some sample Lua code that might be able to serve as a reference.

[danigm]

Wouldn't the Gjs APIs be better than subprocess? I would expect them to be more stable than the text output of wpctl but I'm not familiar with Gnome programming.

@bmaupin yes, of course, it could be better with Gjs, but if it's too hard, maybe we can workaround with the subprocess idea.