Leaving Spotify

[DrGonzo]

This will trigger some people, but that's not the point of this thread. I want this thread to be a constructive resource and discussion about practical steps to take when you want to leave the streaming platforms behind.

After have been a paying subscriber of Spotify since the early days, I am after all Swedish and by law anyone who consumes furnitures outside IKEA will eventually be burned at the stake. The same more or less goes for Spotify.

Problem is that my love for music has slowly turned into a mindless consumption of a stream of middle-of-the-road slop. Oh, I do find gems, but those are rare and I have to wade through maybe 100 tracks before I find anything that I really like.

I'm fed up with being fed mediocre slop. I don't mind digital music or streaming as a technology. But I do loathe the business model and in the best of worlds I would like to know that me being a fan of a band would actually generate income for them.

I doubt I am the first who feel this way. So I am curious on how others have solved it.

And anyone who says Soundcloud will be deported to the remote borderlands of Scandinavia. That place is beyond toxic.

/C

[BertKoor]

> in the best of worlds I would like to know that me being a fan of a band would actually generate income for them

Create your own curated playlists featuring only the bands you endorse?
But what do I know, I never was a Spotify customer.

[Bunny_boy]

But the bands' albums from shops and rip them / Buy the digital files from the record labels' websites / bandcamp for similar, maybe?

As for being played endless mor slop, do you subscribe to any magazines / websites / record label mailing lists?

Radio stations as well

[funky lime]

Most of the cool music I've found has been from hanging out with musically-minded friends... couple of friends owned a record store, friends in bands, friends who go to all kinds of shows and festivals, and just friends with good taste. You still gotta dig if you wanna find gold, that's life generally, but it can be a bit more fruitful as a team. Yeah there's a lot of slop out there, but that's been the case as far back as I can remember.

And yeah... if you like a band, buy their albums/merch, and go to their shows if you can.

[ksandvik]

When I worked for a radio station (kfjc.org), that's where I learned most of interesting artists/musics thanks to the curated library of over 100k albums. Wish there were more radio stations that dared to play just anything. As for Spotify, no account thanks.

[metamorphosis]

I articulated my reasons for taking my work off spotify recently:
Full post here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/quake-epsilo ... om-spotify

(a) They've been caught putting out ads for ICE recruitment
(b) CEO invests in military AI developers
(c) CEO earns more money than any musician in history despite not having any talent
(d) Payments to artists, if they do get paid, are pitiful - about $0.0007 per full stream
(e) Developers at Spotify earn 6-figure salaries but supply no content (I've met some)
(f) Spotify has in the past paid artists to develop terrible milquetoast music to fill playlists, so that they earn money off the tracks without paying royalties
(g) Spotify is now using AI to do the same
(h) Spotify is ignoring obvious AI music uploads, which destroys indie artists and propagates milquetoast rubbish, masking exciting artists who might get attention otherwise by flooding the market
(i) Their UI is bizarrely bad and has been for years
(j) Their sound quality is the worst of all platforms, even at the highest quality settings
(k) Their ad delivery is terrible - you get ads for pop albums while listening to Meshuggah - it's like they're not even Trying

[DrGonzo]

I articulated my reasons for taking my work off spotify recently:

With all respect for your reasons, and I mean that. Bashing Spotify is not the purpose of this thread. It's for constructive ways to get out of it and find other ways to connect with music and bands.

[Bunny_boy]

When I worked for a radio station (kfjc.org), that's where I learned most of interesting artists/musics thanks to the curated library of over 100k albums. Wish there were more radio stations that dared to play just anything. As for Spotify, no account thanks.

https://www.resonancefm.com/

[metamorphosis]

I articulated my reasons for taking my work off spotify recently:

With all respect for your reasons, and I mean that. Bashing Spotify is not the purpose of this thread. It's for constructive ways to get out of it and find other ways to connect with music and bands.

Fair enough. Though some might question why leave - so it may provide some clarify.