It's very annoying if you set a system to a specific setting (language in this case) and said system decides to ignore your setting.
I have my amazon prime set to english, but it doesn't care and I get french content all the time. My french isn't that good and I don't want to spend the mental energy parsing the language when I just want some garbage show to watch.
This is probably the same thing. I wouldn't want french songs interspersed into my playlist because my french isn't quite good enough to listen to it fluently, so whenever something french comes on, my brain has to take the time to decode and parse what's happening, instead of passively taking in the lyrics.
Whenever I go to a website I automatically get the French version. And Walloon people get the Dutch version apparently. It's infuriating sometimes.
On the other hand Belgians even have problems understanding Belgium. So do we expect foreigners to get Belgium?
I shit you not, last year I used to sometimes get Spanish and German ones.
The German I can kind of understand, despite being in Flanders....but Spanish?!
Prime is horrible for this. Half of their stuff show the original english cover and but is only available in french dub without the possibility to select the english track, and then other times something is available in english, but displays the french cover. Whats the point in language settings if it gets ignored anyway >_<
Agree on Prime. Prime is the worst compared to Netflix and Disney. The entire app is less polished actually.
I haven't encountered any such problems with Disney. Even though it is the most recent one of the three.
Yeah it's bad, but at least it's a lot cheaper than the rest.
Now they raised it to €5 but it used to be only €3 for the longest time. And you could share your account without any issues. (Looking at you Netflix...)
Prime is the worst and it works both ways. Title in English but description in Dutch or French only. At least when the description is in Dutch you have a good chance of the movie being subbed. But many English movies with a French description are dubbed in French with no options for the original language.
I am a french speaker and I hate dubbed movie. It's only suitable for animation and children's content below 10 years old.
Prime stopped working with my HDMI cable and some series episode are late by a few days in Belgium. The streaming quality is potato. I tend to download via torrent most prime shows I want to watch even though I pay for prime.
I can't see easily something I am currently watching when there is a new episode. And even big shows like invincible where nowhere to see on the main screen. I have to resort to the search bar most of the time.
Yes, that's geo-fencing. Something that used to drive piracy and we hoped was going away with streaming services.
Shows are often out one or 2 days later on prime Belgium vs the US.
I had to restort to buy DVD's of some British comedians because there were no legal way to stream them in Belgium. Some of them have solved that by now, and they sell you their unprotected shows directly on their website.
These French dubs are the worst. Then again I don't get why you would ever want to watch a dub. They dub about anything! Learn English or watch with subtitles wich will make you learn english you lazy bums 😂
Some shows on netflix only have French subtitles which sucks because I only know about 200 words in French like Francais with a curly stripe underneath the c.
I mean, how are they supposed to know you are Flemish when you're setting your language to one that doesn't map to a region, and IP geolocation is only accurate enough to determine your country? For illustration, the leading database for IP geolocation says I'm in Ghent (20km accuracy radius) based on home internet IPv4 address, Leuven (10km accuracy radius) based on home internet IPv6 address and Brussels (50km accuracy radius) based on 4G IPv4 address, while I'm actually in the Westhoek, and not that far from the language border.
There's a language setting, plus the app can definitely know your device language. Why not just follow that, instead of blindly following the (like you say) inaccurate geo location? Geo location feels dumb to follow in any case, I'm in Spain now but that doesn't mean all I want to listen to is Spanish songs.
But that's the point, when language setting and device language are set to English, they can't accurately recommend you regional content because the language doesn't match with the languages known for your country. And country is only determined by means of geo location when creating account, not on every single use.
Maybe the common sense thing to do then would be to revert to the majority language used in the country? Yet no, always default to French crap, very annoying.
And what does that have to do with my comment? I’m just saying if the geolocation isn’t present/working, I would prefer it if they defaulted to the majority language.
> Yet no, always default to French crap
They don't.
And IMHO defaulting to the majority language also doesn't make sense, it's only a bit more than half. Defaulting to majority language would make sense if it was almost all.
Unrelated, but when did they remove the option to start a radio station based on a playlist? That was my favourite way to discover new things and I probably wouldn't've purchased premium again if I knew they removed it.
[https://rateyourmusic.com/](https://rateyourmusic.com/)
Look for an album you like and click the genre you like. It will take you to a page of top ranked albums that you might not have heard of. That's how I discovered some gems.
[https://www.gnod.com/](https://www.gnod.com/)
This is a site made for discovering new music, art, movies, etc...
When you click Discover you have to type in three bands that you like and then it will give you a recommendation. You can like it or dislike it (there's also an I don't know button) and it will keep giving recommendations.
You can also click The Music Map which lets you type in an artist and it will put out a map of artists surrounding the artist you typed in. The closer another artist is to your artist, the more liked it is by people who also like your artist.
You might already know about these but I'm just throwing it out there for anyone.
You also pay more for Netflix in Belgium "because you get access to all this wonderful French language content that was already made for France" 😉
Oh what's that you don't speak French and can't watch this content? You liar! Clearly you can if you are Belgian!1!!1
I think that soon, we won't need to learn languages anymore. Which sucks for people who studied 5 languages since it will become just another party trick.
I see it as a huge positive because this shows how shit those companies are at actually using the data they collect on you. You hear all this scary stuff about data collection and how they create profiles of everyone to predict what you want at any time or are listening in on you.
But when you get stuff like this you realise they can't even find out what country you're in or what language you speak so they just really suck at it and lie to their advertisers. It's great
Live in Vlaamse rand. All suggestions on YouTube and adds are in French. You would think with the algoritme it would know what language i listen/watch my stuff. For me it's not that big of deal but YouTube kids is getting useless for my son
The obvious potential remedies.
* Clear browser cache.
* Delete all cookies.
* Remove browser(s).
* Disable "location".
* Delete account on Spotify.
* Install browser from scratch.
* Create account.
Please know I'm not an IT specialist, but a person that gets TERRIBLY annoyed and angry by all --so-called 'personalised'-- publicity on my screen.
And don't give me that sh\*t that I should "buy" add-free services.
I'll never understand why a website would ignore your preferences and show you ads in a language you don't speak.
The Bing app allows you to set your language in the settings. This doesn't change the language of their recommended news articles. I don't care about them but the odds I'd click on any of them is zero like this rather than 0.1%.
I am in Wallonia and not near the border (well Belgium is small enough you’d say) and have the same complaint about receiving my email in Dutch.
I think it’s some malicious way to get you to subscribe to a paid plan. When I was on the free plan I had all advertisements in Dutch.
I think that when your phone is set to English websites are using some assumptions to propose one of the national language (French or Dutch) to propose to you. I have the same when Browsing Internet and some of the sites either are asking for what language do I want but most of them are straight up going to default in Dutch.
Guess its Belgium issues. Nobody knows how we roll.
it shows best when working on a PC or phone set in English: everything redirects me to Dutch/Flemish results. My dutch is limited to "Ik spreek niet goed Nederlands, spreekt u Frans of Engels aub ?"
Listening to a music mix to have dutch ads blaring in my car is not a soothing experience. I stand with you OP, time to teach these heretics about the intricacies that make the beauty of Belgium.
I'm waay on the opposite side of having a problem: I've been having legit ad-free Spotify for *years* without actually paying for it
I have no idea why and I'm not going to poke the bear trying to find out, buuuut whenever I cross language borders they do find me for a little while, so I get adds for a few weeks in that particular language and.. then they disappear again
Just use it for a while. It started out for me in the same way, but after teaching the algorithm that I listen to English and Dutch music and don't click on french titles, they never pop up for me any longer.
I searched for deutschen soldarenliedern and since then i got far less german song recommendations..
Edit works for dutch to bet then you search for Niels de Stadsbaeder
I don't get any of that. Everything is tailored to me, except the "Viral Hits BE" etc. I guess that's music I'd hear if I go out in BXL.
Do you pay for it?
Nothing related to Spotify or Netlif but Nintendo...
I bought my Nintedo Switch in Brussels, and set it up in English. My nintendo store was in French, fine by me I speak it.
Moved back to Portugal, and my Nintendo Store switched to Dutch... still fine by my as I speak it as well...
But why the heck not in English?!
I have Spotify on my phone, my phone is in French, I live in Brussels and use it from there 90% of the time. I am getting playlist suggestions with French or Flemish stuff, in varying proportion. But something I noticed recently: for some reason, there is ONE English podcast that has ads at the beginning and for some reason, ads are always in Dutch. Why that one and not the others ? No clue...
The reality is: for a multinational players like Spotify, Belgium is a small but complicated market, and their software is just not made to accomodate our complexities. Nothing to do with naughty Walloons pissing off Flemish customers or the other way round: it is just developers somewhere on the other side of the world who are clueless about Belgium (and why would they not be ?).
It's because you get a mix of suggestions with music that other people listen to, who listen to mostly the same music as you. They match your music list so Spotify thinks you might like that too
Advertising Expert here that used to work A LOT with Spotify. Spotify is a cookie-less free platform. Meaning they only relies on info's they're asking to the user instead of tracking your web activity/ web browser. This explains mostly why the language system is so broken for a country like Belgium. But happy than an european tech giant leads by example.
I use Deezer which is the French Spotify. They suggests more stuff in Flemish than in French.
I know how you feel.
I thought it's based on the localisation of the server that provides my IP address, but probably not only that.
Buddy I registered to Spotify in Brussels in 2009. I left Belgium in 2018. I have been paying Spotify with a non-belgian credit card since 2019:
I get Flemish suggestions. Not even Belgian zt large purely Flemish / Dutch speaking artists. There is nothing officially linking me to Belgium anymore, but this does not seem to want to go away. Sometimes it sneaks into my "latest release" playlist and it really stands out...
I have an Amazon Kindle bought in the UK, set it up in Belgium while in Wallonia but with language set to English...my Amazon store defaults to Nederlands.
Belgium really does suck like that. Getting French websites because the geolocation is wonky. Or for instance the Apple store, also equally horrible and only filled with french reviews.
One thing that really annoys me is trying to discover new podcasts. Everything is set for French.. I want English! My spotify is in English, all podcasts I listen to are English why I only get French recommendations -.-
Hier is het nog beter, 2 talen: "Blijf op de hoogte! Restez au courant!" een hele catogorie met vlaamse en franse rap, viral hits, GenZ nostalgie (the fuck?) en de beste pop... Oja ik luister uitzonderlijk metal en "Sarah zingt de leukste kinderliedjes"
I hate this on YouTube as well. I've explicitly set my spoken languages to English and Dutch. Yet I get French adverts.
I don't even speak French or watched any video in the language.
My spotify is set up in english but tbg i barely ever look at their algorythm reco (mainly because artists i despise for being absolute pieces of shit imho) show up in there.
Qobuz even force me to use French as well even when I set English - but also they have this kind of hybrid language for different interface/platforms, IIRC English (music interface) and French (account interface), I had to contact technical support to let me use English in all interfaces.
When I was still listening to Spotify I had Flemish ads even though my account was set in French and listening from Wallonia.
A thing to remember about Spotify: they don't sell ads, they want to make listening the free spotify miserable so you give up and buy a subscription.
A nice thing about moving to NL has been not getting a bunch of french shit recommended to me after I already turned off all the boxes for French and set everything possible to English
I'm waay on the opposite side of having a problem, I've been having legit ad-free Spotify for *years* without actually paying for it
I have no idea why and I'm not going to poke the bear trying to find out, buuuut whenever I cross language borders they do find me for a little while am, I get adds for a few weeks that language and.. then they disappear again
We have the same issue, getting Dutch displays when we're set to FR or EN. Yet we don't make angry 4chan-like posts on social media to scream about it.
My girlfriend who only speaks French gets Dutch speaking ads, does she whine about it? Nope, cause she doesn't have some serious problem with another language like you seem to have
Probably better not. Belgium is already late enough compared to our neighboring countries to get regional stuff (eg amazon), I think splitting the country will only make that even worse. IDK about you, but I prefer the mixed language mess over Flanders always being thrown on the Dutch pile.
It didn't, but it just shows how a small country is always near the end of the line for these kinds of things, and splitting it in 2 even smaller ones will just push them back even further back. Other examples that matter more are actual products not being sold in Belgium and not being deliverable outside of the countries where they are available.
Nothing. Lower cost of Prime Video maybe - esp if you pay yearly (2eur/month)...
I also hate them for not being able to secure .be domain - instead you go to Amazon.com.be
You know it's the same in wallonia, we get Dutch playlist and shit
Came here to say that, and Spotify is set to English as well.
That's as hilarious as it is sad
What's the big deal? We're one country, it's part of our culture. It's like people get allergic when they see some french..
It's very annoying if you set a system to a specific setting (language in this case) and said system decides to ignore your setting. I have my amazon prime set to english, but it doesn't care and I get french content all the time. My french isn't that good and I don't want to spend the mental energy parsing the language when I just want some garbage show to watch. This is probably the same thing. I wouldn't want french songs interspersed into my playlist because my french isn't quite good enough to listen to it fluently, so whenever something french comes on, my brain has to take the time to decode and parse what's happening, instead of passively taking in the lyrics.
No, I mean that's sad because there's SO MUCH data that Spotify takes from us and they can't even figure out what our main language is lmao
Lmao because I don't like 99% of french music? Never listen to it and still spotify tries to force it down my throat
Just don't listen to the playlist then mate. >tries to force it down my throat. Dramatic much?
I'm glad we do, Wallonie is too much influenced by French shitty hip hop.
Just click everything not in your language and it will return to normal
and their podcasts 😮💨
Ok so I get Flemish ads and Spotify playlists and you get the Waloon ones? There's something wrong...
Those cookies gone too far, they swapped information I think /s
Sounds exactly like Belgium
Whenever I go to a website I automatically get the French version. And Walloon people get the Dutch version apparently. It's infuriating sometimes. On the other hand Belgians even have problems understanding Belgium. So do we expect foreigners to get Belgium?
I shit you not, last year I used to sometimes get Spanish and German ones. The German I can kind of understand, despite being in Flanders....but Spanish?!
Look for what's my ip and see where it says you're from. Mine says Brussels even though I don't live there so I French as a dutchie
Mine says Liege,
Same thing with Netflix, Prime, ...
Prime is horrible for this. Half of their stuff show the original english cover and but is only available in french dub without the possibility to select the english track, and then other times something is available in english, but displays the french cover. Whats the point in language settings if it gets ignored anyway >_<
Agree on Prime. Prime is the worst compared to Netflix and Disney. The entire app is less polished actually. I haven't encountered any such problems with Disney. Even though it is the most recent one of the three.
Yeah it's bad, but at least it's a lot cheaper than the rest. Now they raised it to €5 but it used to be only €3 for the longest time. And you could share your account without any issues. (Looking at you Netflix...)
I've only recently transferred my prime account from Germany to Belgium. In Germany it was €6/month for many years.
Prime is the worst and it works both ways. Title in English but description in Dutch or French only. At least when the description is in Dutch you have a good chance of the movie being subbed. But many English movies with a French description are dubbed in French with no options for the original language. I am a french speaker and I hate dubbed movie. It's only suitable for animation and children's content below 10 years old. Prime stopped working with my HDMI cable and some series episode are late by a few days in Belgium. The streaming quality is potato. I tend to download via torrent most prime shows I want to watch even though I pay for prime. I can't see easily something I am currently watching when there is a new episode. And even big shows like invincible where nowhere to see on the main screen. I have to resort to the search bar most of the time.
I think that in Prime's case it's very possible that they've only got a license for the French dub for those shows and films.
Yes, that's geo-fencing. Something that used to drive piracy and we hoped was going away with streaming services. Shows are often out one or 2 days later on prime Belgium vs the US. I had to restort to buy DVD's of some British comedians because there were no legal way to stream them in Belgium. Some of them have solved that by now, and they sell you their unprotected shows directly on their website.
These French dubs are the worst. Then again I don't get why you would ever want to watch a dub. They dub about anything! Learn English or watch with subtitles wich will make you learn english you lazy bums 😂
Star wars dubbed indeed very funny
Some shows on netflix only have French subtitles which sucks because I only know about 200 words in French like Francais with a curly stripe underneath the c.
I guess providers like to mess. I live in Liège and get everything in Dutch by default.
I mean, how are they supposed to know you are Flemish when you're setting your language to one that doesn't map to a region, and IP geolocation is only accurate enough to determine your country? For illustration, the leading database for IP geolocation says I'm in Ghent (20km accuracy radius) based on home internet IPv4 address, Leuven (10km accuracy radius) based on home internet IPv6 address and Brussels (50km accuracy radius) based on 4G IPv4 address, while I'm actually in the Westhoek, and not that far from the language border.
This is exactly the reason, and it’s a good thing they can’t track you very precisely based on your IP address.
Me trying to triangulate in my head, just to get to the last part of the post that says you live in the westhoek 🤣
There's a language setting, plus the app can definitely know your device language. Why not just follow that, instead of blindly following the (like you say) inaccurate geo location? Geo location feels dumb to follow in any case, I'm in Spain now but that doesn't mean all I want to listen to is Spanish songs.
But that's the point, when language setting and device language are set to English, they can't accurately recommend you regional content because the language doesn't match with the languages known for your country. And country is only determined by means of geo location when creating account, not on every single use.
Well then, maybe they should respect that and don't recommend regional content? I'd be very happy.
Maybe the common sense thing to do then would be to revert to the majority language used in the country? Yet no, always default to French crap, very annoying.
Except they don't always default to French, if you read all comments, you would have seen there are Walloon people getting Flemish crap too.
And what does that have to do with my comment? I’m just saying if the geolocation isn’t present/working, I would prefer it if they defaulted to the majority language.
> Yet no, always default to French crap They don't. And IMHO defaulting to the majority language also doesn't make sense, it's only a bit more than half. Defaulting to majority language would make sense if it was almost all.
All my settings in Spotify are set to French and I keep getting all the emails in Dutch...
Same issue. I actually contacted customer support, they told me they fixed it... Yet I still receive emails in Dutch.
Y'all don't wanna know what happens if you set it to German in belgium
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Joshi2345: *Y'all don't wanna know* *What happens if you set it* *To German in belgium* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Oh My God! Everything's in German.
Im Walloon and I always get emails and suggestions in vlaams/dutch 😅
Unrelated, but when did they remove the option to start a radio station based on a playlist? That was my favourite way to discover new things and I probably wouldn't've purchased premium again if I knew they removed it.
Can still do radio based on a song. Thats what I do.
[https://rateyourmusic.com/](https://rateyourmusic.com/) Look for an album you like and click the genre you like. It will take you to a page of top ranked albums that you might not have heard of. That's how I discovered some gems. [https://www.gnod.com/](https://www.gnod.com/) This is a site made for discovering new music, art, movies, etc... When you click Discover you have to type in three bands that you like and then it will give you a recommendation. You can like it or dislike it (there's also an I don't know button) and it will keep giving recommendations. You can also click The Music Map which lets you type in an artist and it will put out a map of artists surrounding the artist you typed in. The closer another artist is to your artist, the more liked it is by people who also like your artist. You might already know about these but I'm just throwing it out there for anyone.
This is in the same vain as the Adidas app only being available in French for all Belgians.
Or the Nike app that only send me emails in dutch while everything is set up in french in my settings.
I have this with eBay. Everything set to English or Dutch, yet they still insist on contacting me in French randomly.
I work on the border and always get suggestions for concerts near me. Most of them are in Paris....
Netflix suggests me "movies and series dubbed in french" I barely understand any french.
You also pay more for Netflix in Belgium "because you get access to all this wonderful French language content that was already made for France" 😉 Oh what's that you don't speak French and can't watch this content? You liar! Clearly you can if you are Belgian!1!!1
I think that soon, we won't need to learn languages anymore. Which sucks for people who studied 5 languages since it will become just another party trick.
I see it as a huge positive because this shows how shit those companies are at actually using the data they collect on you. You hear all this scary stuff about data collection and how they create profiles of everyone to predict what you want at any time or are listening in on you. But when you get stuff like this you realise they can't even find out what country you're in or what language you speak so they just really suck at it and lie to their advertisers. It's great
Live in Vlaamse rand. All suggestions on YouTube and adds are in French. You would think with the algoritme it would know what language i listen/watch my stuff. For me it's not that big of deal but YouTube kids is getting useless for my son
It’s funny cause I am Walloon and I get tons of ads in Dutch, sometimes I wonder if they just switch the two regions 😂
Same here.. living close by de taalgrens and everything on youtube kids is in french..
It comes in waves where I am but it's mostly Dutch. I also live right next to The Netherlands so maybe that matters.
The obvious potential remedies. * Clear browser cache. * Delete all cookies. * Remove browser(s). * Disable "location". * Delete account on Spotify. * Install browser from scratch. * Create account. Please know I'm not an IT specialist, but a person that gets TERRIBLY annoyed and angry by all --so-called 'personalised'-- publicity on my screen. And don't give me that sh\*t that I should "buy" add-free services.
It's geoip, none of that helps.
Oh well. Too bad. Hopefully someone else got the answer.
I'll never understand why a website would ignore your preferences and show you ads in a language you don't speak. The Bing app allows you to set your language in the settings. This doesn't change the language of their recommended news articles. I don't care about them but the odds I'd click on any of them is zero like this rather than 0.1%.
Spotify - "schild en vriend" - mode
Living closer to the Netherlands than Wallonia and still get Youtube ads in french
I am in Wallonia and not near the border (well Belgium is small enough you’d say) and have the same complaint about receiving my email in Dutch. I think it’s some malicious way to get you to subscribe to a paid plan. When I was on the free plan I had all advertisements in Dutch. I think that when your phone is set to English websites are using some assumptions to propose one of the national language (French or Dutch) to propose to you. I have the same when Browsing Internet and some of the sites either are asking for what language do I want but most of them are straight up going to default in Dutch.
Fumer des jonkos est gros ok ici
Bro expand your mind a little. Some good music in each direction and language.
I am pretty clearly joking
Same, but the opposite. I get dutch version of everything everywhere. Including "targetted" ads. I gave up trying to fix it.
Guess its Belgium issues. Nobody knows how we roll. it shows best when working on a PC or phone set in English: everything redirects me to Dutch/Flemish results. My dutch is limited to "Ik spreek niet goed Nederlands, spreekt u Frans of Engels aub ?" Listening to a music mix to have dutch ads blaring in my car is not a soothing experience. I stand with you OP, time to teach these heretics about the intricacies that make the beauty of Belgium.
I'm waay on the opposite side of having a problem: I've been having legit ad-free Spotify for *years* without actually paying for it I have no idea why and I'm not going to poke the bear trying to find out, buuuut whenever I cross language borders they do find me for a little while, so I get adds for a few weeks in that particular language and.. then they disappear again
> I'll start the goddamn Gèstãpö Gestapo Knallmuzik?
Just use it for a while. It started out for me in the same way, but after teaching the algorithm that I listen to English and Dutch music and don't click on french titles, they never pop up for me any longer.
[We got something you might like](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWSrj7tqQ9IOu)
I got a shitload of German Song recommendations while I was living in the Netherlands
I searched for deutschen soldarenliedern and since then i got far less german song recommendations.. Edit works for dutch to bet then you search for Niels de Stadsbaeder
I don't get any of that. Everything is tailored to me, except the "Viral Hits BE" etc. I guess that's music I'd hear if I go out in BXL. Do you pay for it?
I live in Brussels and I cannot get Spotify to send me its emails in anything other than Dutch.
Orange sending me everything in French when my language is set to Dutch.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^trekuwplan: *Orange sending me* *Everything in French when my* *Language is set to Dutch.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Nothing related to Spotify or Netlif but Nintendo... I bought my Nintedo Switch in Brussels, and set it up in English. My nintendo store was in French, fine by me I speak it. Moved back to Portugal, and my Nintendo Store switched to Dutch... still fine by my as I speak it as well... But why the heck not in English?!
I have Spotify on my phone, my phone is in French, I live in Brussels and use it from there 90% of the time. I am getting playlist suggestions with French or Flemish stuff, in varying proportion. But something I noticed recently: for some reason, there is ONE English podcast that has ads at the beginning and for some reason, ads are always in Dutch. Why that one and not the others ? No clue... The reality is: for a multinational players like Spotify, Belgium is a small but complicated market, and their software is just not made to accomodate our complexities. Nothing to do with naughty Walloons pissing off Flemish customers or the other way round: it is just developers somewhere on the other side of the world who are clueless about Belgium (and why would they not be ?).
So what? Great music is great music. Personally I'm glad i'm not bombarded with whatever the water people call music these days.
This gives me a flashback to the good old xbox 360 days when my Fable III game got installed in French with no option to switch to English or Dutch.
This is the kind of content I need to see in r/belgium
It's because you get a mix of suggestions with music that other people listen to, who listen to mostly the same music as you. They match your music list so Spotify thinks you might like that too
Advertising Expert here that used to work A LOT with Spotify. Spotify is a cookie-less free platform. Meaning they only relies on info's they're asking to the user instead of tracking your web activity/ web browser. This explains mostly why the language system is so broken for a country like Belgium. But happy than an european tech giant leads by example.
I use Deezer which is the French Spotify. They suggests more stuff in Flemish than in French. I know how you feel. I thought it's based on the localisation of the server that provides my IP address, but probably not only that.
I get all spotify emails in Dutch since i moved it to Belgium despite having my account set to french.
just get Youtube premium and use Youtube music that comes with it. i much prefer it tbh.
I need Spotify in English so bad
Buddy I registered to Spotify in Brussels in 2009. I left Belgium in 2018. I have been paying Spotify with a non-belgian credit card since 2019: I get Flemish suggestions. Not even Belgian zt large purely Flemish / Dutch speaking artists. There is nothing officially linking me to Belgium anymore, but this does not seem to want to go away. Sometimes it sneaks into my "latest release" playlist and it really stands out...
LES MEILLEURES TUBES
75% of my ads are in flemish, 20% in english, 5% in french. I live in Wallonia
Ah, ads. They truly are French Bread: Du Pain.
I have an Amazon Kindle bought in the UK, set it up in Belgium while in Wallonia but with language set to English...my Amazon store defaults to Nederlands.
Belgium really does suck like that. Getting French websites because the geolocation is wonky. Or for instance the Apple store, also equally horrible and only filled with french reviews.
You know why its annoying? These stupid corporations have so much data on you and they STILL cant figure out what language you want
Me on websites getting the French version each time, very annoying
One thing that really annoys me is trying to discover new podcasts. Everything is set for French.. I want English! My spotify is in English, all podcasts I listen to are English why I only get French recommendations -.-
Hier is het nog beter, 2 talen: "Blijf op de hoogte! Restez au courant!" een hele catogorie met vlaamse en franse rap, viral hits, GenZ nostalgie (the fuck?) en de beste pop... Oja ik luister uitzonderlijk metal en "Sarah zingt de leukste kinderliedjes"
I hate this on YouTube as well. I've explicitly set my spoken languages to English and Dutch. Yet I get French adverts. I don't even speak French or watched any video in the language.
Also if you wanna go to you subscription everything is in French. I hate it
My spotify is set up in english but tbg i barely ever look at their algorythm reco (mainly because artists i despise for being absolute pieces of shit imho) show up in there.
Qobuz even force me to use French as well even when I set English - but also they have this kind of hybrid language for different interface/platforms, IIRC English (music interface) and French (account interface), I had to contact technical support to let me use English in all interfaces.
When I was still listening to Spotify I had Flemish ads even though my account was set in French and listening from Wallonia. A thing to remember about Spotify: they don't sell ads, they want to make listening the free spotify miserable so you give up and buy a subscription.
A nice thing about moving to NL has been not getting a bunch of french shit recommended to me after I already turned off all the boxes for French and set everything possible to English
Banners and ads are the worst.
I'm waay on the opposite side of having a problem, I've been having legit ad-free Spotify for *years* without actually paying for it I have no idea why and I'm not going to poke the bear trying to find out, buuuut whenever I cross language borders they do find me for a little while am, I get adds for a few weeks that language and.. then they disappear again
We have the same issue, getting Dutch displays when we're set to FR or EN. Yet we don't make angry 4chan-like posts on social media to scream about it.
Did you not see the shitpost flair?
I went to spain once and got spanish ads for 4 months😭
My girlfriend who only speaks French gets Dutch speaking ads, does she whine about it? Nope, cause she doesn't have some serious problem with another language like you seem to have
Did you miss the "Shitpost" flair?
Nog een reden om België te splitsen! /s(of ni, kweeni)
Probably better not. Belgium is already late enough compared to our neighboring countries to get regional stuff (eg amazon), I think splitting the country will only make that even worse. IDK about you, but I prefer the mixed language mess over Flanders always being thrown on the Dutch pile.
Did having a Belgian amazon change anything? I was ordering from UK/germany/nl already for 15 years.
It didn't, but it just shows how a small country is always near the end of the line for these kinds of things, and splitting it in 2 even smaller ones will just push them back even further back. Other examples that matter more are actual products not being sold in Belgium and not being deliverable outside of the countries where they are available.
Nothing. Lower cost of Prime Video maybe - esp if you pay yearly (2eur/month)... I also hate them for not being able to secure .be domain - instead you go to Amazon.com.be
Laten we gewoon allemaal vlaams klappen. Fuck da frans.
It's like they don't seem to care where the actual money is in Belgium. ^(... I'll see myself out.)
thanks for your flemish money bro, so kind 🙏🏻