Without pretending I understand the psychology of strangers I’ve never met….
I think generally people don’t become angry and upset if someone tells them they’re wasting money. If someone told you you could save money on your electricity bill by switching to a different provider, you’d probably just say “huh, that’s interesting, I’ll think about it”. I think that people got upset because you’ve treated music streaming as just another utility that has upsides and downsides, when they have an emotional attachment to Spotify (and streaming as a format). Spotify and other streaming services have thrown loads of money at marketing to create a brand and then make music listeners feel emotionally attached to the brand. It’s been so effective that now trying to suggest an alternative makes you seem “weird”.
There’s a book about the rise of Spotify & streaming called The Mood Machine which is meant to be very good, although I haven’t read it.
deleted my spotify account after beta testing using bandcamp with 7digital (for bands that aren’t on bandcamp).
My general strat is:
Wait for bandcamp fridays, so that 100% of the proceeds go to the artist (unless I’m dying to listen to something right this second)
otherwise if I can’t find the song, buy it on 7digital which seems to have everything else I need
Download the FLAC versions instead of the mp3s. Honestly, I don’t think my ears can tell the difference, but I’m committed to having high-quality songs
Use the FooBar2000 iPhone app as my player (because this is the only app that I’ve found that has seamless transitions between songs. Even apple music’s play sucks at this)
Back up all my music to my external harddrive every so often, so I can take it from laptop to laptop
The only con I see is that foobar200 doesn’t have a good CarPlay app and can’t queue songs, so you’ll have to pull your phone out while driving if you want to play something else
I took a look at Qobuz, but yeah that honestly makes no fucking sense to switch from one streaming platform to another, you’re just kicking the can down the line
First post here! It’s been really interesting reading this thread, as I have never engaged with Spotify or any other streaming service. That is primarily because I pre-date all of them; vinyl was all there was when I was a kid… I’ve watched it be superceded more than once, and yet it still manages to survive.
I would echo all the comments I’ve read up to now about how music was something you actively pursued and enthused about, and sometimes had to go to a lot of trouble and expense to acquire (buying records from New Zealand when you lived in the UK in the 1990s was not easy!). I feel like the ease and convenience offered by Spotify devalues the art and reduces it to background noise in many cases. But maybe that’s not what it looks like to the generation that came after mine? I dunno…
Currently I like CDs because they can be had for peanuts these days; I got an amazing charity shop haul of world music (it’s a lazy term, I know, but superficially it serves a purpose) the other day for like 50p/disc. Still playing vinyl, though, and still buying physical media, ideally from bands’ websites or their Bandcamp so that all the cash goes straight to them. I can download bootlegs from Soulseek (only ever stuff that isn’t commercially available) and I can play them, and my vinyl/CD rips, around the house on my network of ancient Philips Streamium devices. My car has a Bluetooth stereo, with a DAB+ walkman plugged into the line jack, and I play BBC podcasts/radio shows off my phone though it. This is the extent to which tech has reached my listening habits!
As I write this I’m listening to Horsegirl on vinyl; not because I’m the Format Police, but cos that’s where I come from, I guess.
I’m so glad to see Brian Merchant’s work shared! I loved his book Blood In The Machine, discovered it last month through the library. I stopped using Spotify a few years ago.
