Spotify disconnected me from music.
đź—“Music is really important to me. I'm always listening to it while I work, exercise, and drive. For the last 10+ years, I've been using Spotify exclusively for streaming.
There are a lot of things I don't like about how Spotify operates as a business, but as a service/app, I really haven’t had too many complaints -- most of them being petty, like holding out on making their macOS icon match, not offering a light theme, and having a name much too similar to Shopify.
For a while there, I couldn't see myself without Spotify (or a similar service), but recently I've had a change of heart. One of my favorite albums was removed from the service - and to make matters worse, the album was also removed from Bandcamp, so I couldn't even purchase it.
I started digging around on eBay to see if I could find a used copy (I didn't) and quickly realized that most of the music I listen to could be purchased for hardly anything. Thanks to sellers who offer bulk discounts and incredibly cheap Ex-Library CDs, I was able to snatch up albums for as little as $2.
As I started collecting CDs and rebuilding my personal library, I realized how much Spotify had disconnected me from music by making it trivial.
I used to be very aware when a band I like was releasing a new album. I could identify an album by its artwork, and I could easily name a few songs and call out what album they were from -- it all meant a lot to me. I was invested in it.
That's very much not the case with artists I've started following (if you want to call it that) since switching to streaming. There have been countless times I completely missed album releases (for months!) and I couldn't name most of their albums -- let alone the song names. Even some artists I've followed for years had album releases that went completely over my head. Likely because I didn't really have much of a library at all. For years all I've been doing was slapping on "Daily Mix" playlists.
Looking back, the biggest draw to streaming for me was that I would no longer have to manage music -- deciding what limited music I wanted on my 16GB iPhone, managing ID tags, etc. The ID tags are still very much an issue (why does Apple Music mark any album with a guest artist on a single track as a collaboration??) but the having of my music everywhere was pretty easily solved with Navidrome & PikaPods.
So, that's where I'm at now -- and it feels nice. I'm pretty much exclusively listening to music that I own now. Rather than throwing on a Daily Mix all day, I'm taking a moment to go through my library and put on an album that feels right -- rinse and repeat a few times a day. I've got a spreadsheet that's a wishlist of albums I haven’t found yet, which gives me something to do -- finding an album you've been looking for at a Goodwill is a kind of drug -- and I'm much more in tune with what's going on music-wise, despite having much less instant access.
Spotify made music so easy I didn't think about it -- meaning I didn't value it. I'm glad to not be doing that anymore.
NOTE: Some of the posts on my site are 10+ years old and it's quite possible the information is dated at this point. I don't actively go through my old posts and update them as this site is just a hobby for me. If something you've found here isn't working or you see a major issue with it please contact me and let me know.
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