Sick of Loud Ads on Streaming Services? New Law Goes Into Effect July 1.
SB 576, California’s ad volume streaming law, takes effect this week
Ads are annoying enough. They pull you out of whatever show or movie you’re trying to enjoy, forcing you to remember that we live in a society where everything is about consuming products until you die. And then they have the nerve to be way louder than your program, forcing you to scramble for the remote and adjust the volume.
I know this struggle because I’m always on remote duty when I watch TV with my family. I have to turn the volume down for ads and back up when the show comes on—which is made a lot more difficult when watching “Saturday Night Live,” which often fools my family with fake commercials.
Cable TV doesn’t have this problem. The CALM (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation) Act of 2010 makes sure that television channels maintain a certain volume level according to the FCC’s guidelines. But the FCC doesn’t regulate streaming services in the same way, so one state took to regulating them itself.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill No. 576 into law in late 2025. According to the new law, starting July 1, 2026, streaming services are no longer allowed to dramatically raise the volume during commercials. If you want to wreck your eardrums with the Ozempic jingle, you’ll have to do that yourself.
Want to learn more? Read more to learn about the bill’s contents and repercussions.
What exactly does SB 576 say?
According to the California state government website, Senate Bill No. 576 “would prohibit […] a video streaming service […] that serves consumers in the state from transmitting the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany.”
Governor Newsom signed the bill into law on October 6, 2025, but it goes into effect on July 1, 2026. That means streaming services have had plenty of time to comply with the new regulation.
Does this apply outside of California too?
Technically speaking, this law only applies in California, although TV watchers in other states are welcome to contact their local representatives in favor of stricter regulations. Lawmakers in Illinois are already working on a similar bill.
But there’s precedent for one state’s regulation to dictate how things work in the whole country. For example, California’s Proposition 65 requires products to put a warning if they contain certain toxic chemicals. It’d be really inconvenient for companies to make separate labels just for sales in one state, so they just include the warnings on products for the whole country.
A streaming service is a bit different than a physical product, and services could easily provide different content for different regions without worrying about manufacturing costs. But they’d still have to check customers’ location data to see if they’re in California before serving ads. And having to turn on your location just to watch TV feels like a real privacy issue.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if, to avoid controversy from another invasive data request, some streaming services simply comply nationwide. But if you really want to avoid those loud commercials, I’d suggest you consider moving to The Golden State.
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