amusedAlas, the 'issue'(*) that meant that running the Spotify client under Wine resulted in no ads has been 'fixed'. I'm not sure who fixed it - restarting it after getting a new version of Wine(**) led to the client updating itself too.
* Amusingly, someone did actually report it as a Wine bug.
** If you've got a Debian-based Linux, add wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt to the repositories (Ubuntu calls them 'software sources' in the system / administration menu) to look at. The Wine developers are really busy bees and come out with many more worthwhile releases than get into the 'downstream' Ubuntu ones.
One day I might bother with Wine, but looking at the bug list reveals that few apps run well, apart from a few games and even then games compatibility is extremely variable and needs lots of workarounds.
Most of what I want runs fine. I'm pleasantly surprised at how many games do run given some of the stupid 'let's penalise the people who bought this' "protection" schemes out there.