How to Quit Spotify

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Why didn’t I go sooner? I justified staying by telling myself I’d use Bandcamp to buy the albums and songs I listened to a lot, which I did, while using Spotify for convenience. That, and the same reasons I still use Gmail: I felt locked in (all those saved songs and playlists) and that the costs of switching would be too high (I would surely lose access to countless songs by switching over). But I am here to tell you today that both of those counts are absolutely false.

Found via enchantedsleeper.

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Small world, a friend just posted on Mastodon about leaving Spotify, and it’s just one of many similar posts lately. I think this time they may really be in trouble.

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Great article, love to see others ditching the algorithm. I would have liked it if they’d included stats for SoundCloud, since that’s the one my family is on (mostly it’s for my kid, who doesn’t have the means to collect physically and all that), but instead I’ll just have to look them up myself. I’ve heard great things about Qobuz from everywhere, though, and I may switch to them once the kid has grown.

This article touched on just about everything except for one point I’ve noticed since building my own music library: a lot of people fear having less choice overall, but I’ve found it makes me appreciate the music I do have a lot more. That’s kind of the way we used to do things in the past, but when you’re not getting new songs everyday, it stops being background noise and and you get to really know your library a lot more intimately. I keep thinking back to the point I heard about Spotify saying that people don’t want “good music,” they want a “soundtrack” to the things they’re doing each day, and it just really rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t want to tune out most of the music I listen to daily, I want to know it really, really well. I don’t want it to be cheap and replaceable, and I don’t think the artists who make it want that either.

I hope that makes sense–I’m a bit cloudy and haven’t finished my tea yet today!

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Makes total sense! Especially this:

a lot of people fear having less choice overall, but I’ve found it makes me appreciate the music I do have a lot more

Buying a new album used to be an EVENT. I remember lining up outside music stores for midnight releases! Taking the album home, reading through the liner notes, blasting the album on repeat, figuring out which songs you loved and which ones would end up skipped… you just don’t get that experience anymore when you’re encouraged to treat the music you listen to like it’s 24/7 background noise on shuffle.

I may write a longer blog post about this, but IMO, ditching an evil streaming service (like Spotify) for one of the better alternatives Brian Merchant suggests (like Qobuz) still isn’t solving the core issues created by streaming services. I personally try to buy music on CD when I can. When I can’t, I buy through Bandcamp or iTunes (the latter only happens if the artist isn’t on Bandcamp). I only use streaming (Deezer’s free tier) for discovery purposes if I know nothing about an artist I’ve seen recommended.

I just don’t get it when people fret about having “less access” to music if they stop streaming, because they can’t afford to buy 10+ albums a month. You don’t … have to listen to so much new music in a month? We all managed just fine prior to streaming, back when we could only afford to buy a couple new albums a month (if that). We also arguably had WAY more appreciation for the music we listened to.

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With the full acknowledgement that I’m an outlier, from a very cursory glance I have 762 songs liked with the majority of them being from different albums. The biggest hurdle for me isn’t so much future purchases as it is that initial “buy in”, so to speak. I genuinely listen to and enjoy a wide variety of music and tend to struggle listening to one singular artist at a time. I also have ADHD, so connect those dots as you’d like lol.

Spotify has also helped expose me to a lot of foreign music that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to experience. Any time the wrapped mentions how many countries the music you listen to come from, I have never been under the double digits.

But, the algorithm has gotten significantly worse in the last few years. Early on it helped expose me to a lot of smaller artists, but now it only seems to play the same 10 songs. So, I’m not even getting the variety that drew me to the platform to begin with. Especially with the way it handles shuffling playlists.

I will disentangle myself from it eventually, but it’s looking like it’ll be a long way down the line. Especially, because I just don’t feel super comfortable buying songs digitally. I prefer physical media, and a lot of the bands I listen to are so small they don’t actually have any physical media.

Only tangentially related, but I hate how the article doesn’t actually link to most of the services it recommended (or at least not in a way that’s super obvious to me). Makes it a lot more tedious to actually check out what they’re recommending.

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From an old VC funded streaming service to a new VC funded streaming service. I think people are better served questioning the model here, instead of an individual service.

To wit, this comment on the piece from someone with experience from the music streaming industry:

Low per-stream royalties are usually a signal of a service’s success.

Streaming services commit to paying roughly the same % of people’s subscription money out to rightsholders. When a service is good, people listen to more music, which lowers the per-stream royalty rate. But time spent on the service is also one of the most important indicators of subscriber retention: the less time spent, the more likely people are to cancel their subscription.

This is embedded in all of music streaming. If Qobuz were better at getting people to listen more, their per-stream royalties would drop, but their overall payouts would likely rise, as they’d hold on to more subscribers (!).

The good thing is that people are questioning the status quo at all. I think that eventually there will be room for a service that makes it super easy to play your own music collection across all devices. Kinda like the old iTunes, without DRM and the need for manual syncing.

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ive been in the process of quitting spotify in favor of local files but now that its wrapped season i will definitely miss getting a fun summary of my yearly listens… it feels a bit silly that THIS is the 1 thing ill miss :sob:

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If you sign up for a listens tracking service like Last.fm or ListenBrainz, they can generate the summaries at the end of the year (or in the case of ListenBrainz, whenever you feel like it based on custom time criteria). Here’s mine so far:

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unfortunately my mp3 player has no way to track what i listen to and adding them manually wouldnt be as exact since i tend to loop songs a lot (so much so that youtube told me i was in the top 1% of an artist with 4.2M listeners in november just because i looped 1 song for a bit over a week :sob: )
i will just have to make peace with not having a recap anymore…

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Another alternative: Subvert.fm, a co-op platform for musicians and music buyers. It’s early days yet though.

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More thoughts on this topic from Stephanie Vee: “Delete Spotify? Sure, But Don’t Just Replace it With Another Subscription”

(Found via prismatic pink’s bookmarks)

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Thanks for sharing my post. :slightly_smiling_face: I generally try to avoid “unsolicited advice” blogging, as I don’t like to come across as seeming overly preachy… and on re-reading that post, I kind of feel in retrospect like I should have phrased things a bit differently to make it clearer that I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do, haha. I don’t want to ruffle feathers – just want to offer an alternate perspective.

On a related note, one thing I’ve noticed while discussing this subject on Reddit is that people get quite defensive and personal over the decision to stream versus not to stream. I was recently accused of being a Luddite because I disagreed with someone over their opinion that: (a) streaming music is the only music payment model that makes financial sense for everyone, and (b) we should all be thankful that streaming exists, because it has apparently made music “more accessible for everyone.” They insisted I was “stuck in the past” and obviously “reluctant to embrace new technology,” simply because I informed them that streaming music doesn’t make financial sense for me personally at all. A number of other users agreed loudly and nastily with this individual’s assessment of my failings. I found it so odd that these people took it personally that I’m no longer interested in streaming, that I don’t think it’s the most cost-effective sort of deal that the streaming companies want us to believe it is…

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Well, it is cost effective, if you believe the gospel that the goal is to listen to as many different tracks as possible.*

*For the majority of users this means giving in to “dark” UX patterns and relinquishing music curation to the platform. Guess which parameters they optimise for! Hint: $$$

As to your other point, music is highly personal for many people. I’m not surprised that people take personal offence when someone questions their choice of platform. Especially on a platform like Reddit, which isn’t exactly known for thoughtful discourse.

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I was just reading your article a few days ago and read it again today thanks to this reshare. I’m grateful for it, thank you.

It’s very timely as i’ve been following all the mp3 player chat here and, after watching a video where someone built their own media server, I’ve been pondering rebuilding my physical music collection in the coming year.

I’ve never been a music aficionado and poring over LPs in a record shop was never part of my childhood, but I still grew up with music and I have my particular tastes. I still have my favourite CDs and a tiny handful of LPs, yet nothing to play them on.

I’ve tried countless streaming services over the years but found that 1) either they don’t have a random artist I like or 2) they don’t have song lyrics so are not as accessible for my partner as they could be.

I think your point about streaming services encouraging us to treat music like background noise is a very prescient one. I think this is exactly what they want us to do. So much so that the actual music catalogue no longer matters, just that it’s always on.

Usually when I want to listen to music, I have a particular genre or artist in mind. However, streaming services seem determined to give me a bunch of things I’m not interested in, even if I’ve turned off smart shuffle. They almost rely on my forgetfulness of what I wanted to listen to in the first place. Recently I discovered that my Spotify likes includes a bunch of albums I’ve definitely never listened to in full before.

I don’t actively go looking for new music often enough to make streaming services cost effective for me. However, I do find the free plan restrictions irritating when I just want to listen to a specific album.

I’m currently on yet another 2-month Spotify trial because I thought it would be nice to be able to play Christmas music at will, without adverts or the inability to skip songs. However, in practice the soundtrack to my festive period so far has been Scandal’s 10 year anniversary festival playlist on YouTube :sweat_smile:

I’m sick of fighting the algorithm to get to listen to what I actually want to listen to. I’ll be investing in more physical media next year - LPs ideally - but also some kind of media server for home use and an mp3 player for curated playlists when I’m out and about.

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im so excited to set up my own media server when ive moved… i dont even want access to it outside of my house i just want my media collection to be in a nice library i can easily access

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i think my most mild of nitpicks with streaming services is that their shuffles are REALLY bad :sob: i use Tidal but even when i used Spotify i had this problem. my liked songs has almost the entire discography of lady gaga on it, but i rarely hear any of her songs when im on shuffle. i don’t think it’s a genre thing, given that i listen to mainly dance pop. it’s so strange LOL

i want to switch to a physical player, and i do have one (this player), but ive had problems where certain songs just would not appear in the album or artist they are meant to be with, even after correcting metadata. it also only supports three playlists which i don’t really like at all.

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Yes, exactly this.. and it was your threads about your Fiio Echo Mini that made me think I should invest in a dedicated mp3 player for when I do want to listen to some music out and about.

I’ve been gradually making my iPhone more basic this year - removing any apps I don’t need and trying to use websites where possible - to make it less of a distraction. A dedicated music player seems the right direction to go in.

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Oh hello, I didn’t know you were here!

I think Reddit is just like that. And also people are emotionally attached to the format they found their favourite music in, and they feel guilty and angry if someone criticizes that format. I know I still feel a weird attachment to my Spotify playlists, even though I know the platform a) pays most artists almost nothing, and b) uses the money it does get from subscribers to invest in dystopian technology and steal royalties payouts.

I had to switch from Spotify last year for practical reasons. I found it pretty simple, probably because I already had a lot of CDs and a fairly extensive collection of music downloads.

Yet more alternative streaming services:

  • minm, an Irish streaming service that promises to make payments to the artists you personally listen to the most, not the artists that most people listen to the most.
  • Freegal Music, a streaming service you can get through your local library system in some countries. Unlimited streaming and 5 free downloads a week. I’ve been using this and although it’s not pretty, it does work. And it’s free!
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When people do this I believe in questioning their familiarity with the actual history of the Luddites.

Regardless, though – I’m sorry you had to deal with that. Some folks are pretty easily threatened.

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I didn’t mention it in the post, but I expect this is also a reason why so much AI-generated music is sneaking its way into people’s playlist recommendations and creeping up in the charts… I have no doubt whatsoever that a lot of Spotify subscribers don’t even realize they’re listening to slop a lot of the time, as they’re barely even paying attention.

Glad you enjoyed the post, and glad to hear you’ll be making some changes in 2026! I for one am going to try to pick up more used CDs this year. I’m astounded by how cheap they often are; people in my area are practically giving them away for free.

This is true! I also wonder if some of them lash out because they realize (deep down) that they’ve wasted a lot of money on streaming over the years, and it’s a lot easier to belittle someone and call them names instead of acknowledging that they’ve been taken for a ride by yet another big tech company?

Right?! The Luddites were badasses, and it’s frustrating that they’re so often erroneously reduced to being “anti-new technology.”

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