I Quit Spotify: 6 Months Later...

My listening habits have expanded since I quit Spotify. I’ve discovered more new music in this time, and I’ve delved deeper into my favourite genres...

In December 2023, I quit Spotify (read about it here).

I remember sitting on my bed, my cursor hovering over the big button on the screen which would cancel my monthly membership and limit my access to streamed music.

I didn’t wanna do it.

My playlists peered at me from the sidebar, all dewy-eyed. Pwease don’t leave us, Owivia. We need you! Who’s going to pair the One Direction deep cuts with Genesis now!?

But the thing was this: I was a songwriter on a journey to make my first album. At this point I had sunk about £3000 of my own money into it. When the time would come for this album to be released, I knew that Spotify would pay me 1/3 of 1p for each song streamed.

If I relied on streaming, it would take one million streams to make that money back.

That means someone would have to listen to my songs for the equivalent of 7 and a half years straight.

I know that musicians also make money through touring, and merch, and sync placements, and all that… but Spotify, you gotta be kidding me. Not being able to make money from the actual piece of art upon which everything is based?

It would be like if authors made zero money from book sales and had to support themselves from book tours and speaking gigs instead.

Make it make sense!!

So, I did it. I cancelled my Spotify subscription partly because of my ~musicianly principles~, but also because I was feeling so bored of the music I was listening to, and I missed the days of iTunes. Again, you can read all my reasons why here.

At the time of writing, I have now survived 6 months of no Spotify.

Did my world crumble? Nope.

Did I miss my old playlists? Nope.

Did I stop streaming music altogether? Ummm, no. But I did reduce it.

Did I spend money on artists and albums I love? Yeah.

Do I regret leaving Spotify? Not at all.

So let’s get into it.

🐣 Stage 1: Confronting My Music Collection

When I deleted my Spotify app off my phone and closed the program on my desktop, I felt free. Free! I unshackled myself from the bonds of brainless music consumerism!

And so I opened my iTunes, to gaze across my kingdom. Here was all the music I owned. Everything the light touches, Simba.

Unfortunately, I had a significant elephant graveyard. My own music collection had ground to a halt in the 2010’s, round about the time I opened a Spotify account. It was a time capsule, but I gotta say… it wasn’t great.

Yes, we had some classics: Regina Spektor; Marina back when she had ‘the Diamonds’ in tow; melodic metal songs my friends transferred over via MSN Messenger back in the mid-2000s… but we also had two whole albums of Mindless Self Indulgence that my iTunes shuffle KEPT INSISTING on playing (2006 called! it wants its edgelords back!). There was a fair bit of stuff which just didn’t vibe with me anymore.

My first thought was to go through all my old Spotify playlists and start making lists of albums which I needed to buy, stat. But then I held back.

What if I just took it easy, bought one album a month, and got reacquainted with my old music collection?

I found a new favourite Taylor Swift song from one of her older albums (how good is ‘This Love’? I could go on and on and on). I listened to loads of Depeche Mode and 🎵 enjoyed the silence 🎶. I got back in touch with my inner 15 year old with Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance (although I never really stopped listening to MCR).

But I had one more problem: my iTunes was STUFFED with old voice memos and demos of my songs. I would press ‘shuffle’ and then be greeted by myself, at 18 years old, singing a terrible Garageband-produced song about a man playing… backgammon?

I will never, never, ever share the backgammon song. It has xylophones. That’s all you need to know.

I decided to change my music library software. After some noodling around on the internet, I chose Swinsian (which you can read a bit about in my first ‘I Quit Spotify’ post).

I imported all of my music library minus the voicenotes and Garageband atrocities, and had a fresh start. Now, I thought, where do I go from here?

💿 Stage 2: Buying Music!

Here was the rule I made for myself: if I wanted to truly reconnect with the experience of having my own music library which I could build, album by album, then I had to go easy on the Apple Music Store. I restricted myself to spending £10-12 a month on music, which equated to one album and a few singles.

At first I was drawn to purchasing stuff that I missed from my Spotify playlists, like Beatenberg’s albums and Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love (I can’t believe this isn’t already in my collection). Plus, literally every Taylor Swift album, bar 1989 (which I purchased in 2014 because she refused to put it on Spotify for the first few weeks of release).

But as I started to listen to music from alternate sources (more on this later), I discovered new things I wanted to buy. This was a lot more exciting than restocking my back catalogue.

For the curious, here’s what I’ve bought so far:

❄️ JANUARY

Singles: ‘Cheater's Game’ by Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison | ‘Congratulations and Condolences’ by Greensky Bluegrass | ‘Francesca’ by Hozier

Album of the Month: Joni Mitchell’s Turbulent Indigo (okay, this was a back catalogue purchase).

💕 FEBRUARY

Singles: Infamous Stringdusters’ Undercover Vol. 2 EP (I was going through a bluegrass phase earlier this year)

Album of the Month: Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom

🌷 MARCH

Singles: ‘Milwaukee’ by Wyatt Flores | ‘Like A Villain’ by Bad Omens

Album(s) of the Month: Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts & Richard Shindell's live album

☔ APRIL

Album of the Month: The Tortured Poets Department, duh

🌤️ MAY

Singles: I’M WORKING LAAAATE, ‘CAUSE I’M A SINGERRRRR

Album of the Month: Two Star and the Dream Police by Mk.Gee

📻 Stage 3: Alternate Streams

A girl can’t survive on a music library alone. Where should she go to discover songs?

During the last six months, I have fallen back in love with one of the few things that kept me sane during 2020 lockdowns: radio.

Dude, radio is amazing. It’s amazing! It’s like a little friend in your ear playing good music and surprising you all the time!

Spotify had a try at making their own AI radio DJ, cleverly titled… DJ. It was some robot man with a Brooklynite accent who would say things like ‘Hey Olivia! I heard you like Boygenius, so let’s listen to some Boygenius’ and start playing Boygenius.

Here’s the thing: you can’t replace radio. You just can’t. There’s too much good stuff on there. I have a Sanyo radio & cassette player in my bedroom and I’ve taken to turning it on in the mornings as I get ready for work. BBC Radio 1 is one of the few stations that I can get the perfect frequency for, so pop music is my wake-up call. At work I put on either BBC Radio 2 for some yacht rock and the pop quiz in the mornings, or MPR The Current which is Minnesota’s public radio station that plays great alternative music. In the afternoons I love to turn on KEXP Seattle’s Morning Show with John, who always crafts a gorgeous opener to his show each day.

Outside of radio, I do still listen to songs here and there with Youtube. I know! I’m streaming! I said streaming bad! I said pay musicians more! Youtube bad! Streaming bad!!!

Here’s the thing: nobody is perfect. I have significantly increased the quality of my listening by getting rid of Spotify and digging more into radio and my own music collection. But sometimes you have to listen to Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’ about twenty times before deciding to buy it.

One other thing I use Youtube for is to put on video game music playlists which help me work. Quite often these soundtracks aren’t readily available to buy, so Youtube it is.

🎚️ Stage 4: Physical Media

As I mentioned, my radio at home has a built-in cassette player. So I bought some cassettes. To be honest, I’d rather have a CD player or CD drive for my computer, because cassettes decay and my player is a bit wonky at the best of times. My Glen Campbell Greatest Hits starts getting wobbly halfway through ‘Galveston’ and my ABBA Arrival sounds like it’s being amplified through a mattress.

Cassettes are okay, but I think if I was going to go physical, I’d get CDs. Cheaper than vinyl, abundant in secondhand shops, and it’s the medium I grew up with.

👩🏻‍⚖️ So… What’s the Verdict?

Is it time to get back to my 200 playlists and Boygenius on repeat? Will I be re-opening my Spotify account?

No.

My listening habits have expanded since I quit Spotify. I’ve discovered more new music in this time, and I’ve delved deeper into my favourite genres. Thanks to radio, I know exactly what songs are up-and-coming, and thanks to my own music collection, I am creating an accurate representation of my music tastes. And the best part? I’ll own it forever.

If you are thinking of biting the bullet and cancelling your monthly subscription, I’d say, go for it. There is so much more music waiting for you on the other side.

And if you’re paying artists directly for the work they’ve produced, you’re helping more music be made.

The other week, Daniel Ek, my arch-nemesis and CEO of Spotify said this on X (Twitter):

Today, with the cost of creating content being close to zero, people can share an incredible amount of content. This has sparked my curiosity about the concept of long shelf life versus short shelf life. While much of what we see and hear quickly becomes obsolete, there are timeless ideas or even pieces of music that can remain relevant for decades or even centuries.

There was a whole second paragraph to this about Stoicism (because, he’s a tech bro, OF COURSE HE’S GOING TO TALK ABOUT STOICISM) which I am not going to quote. But it’s clear he’s including music when he says ‘content’, which kind of tells you all you need to know about his approach to this artform.

Friends, making good music does not cost ‘close to zero’.

Bad music costs close to zero.

If good music costs close to zero, it’s because:

a) someone has literally taken the longest amount of time to make it with their own resources

b) someone is in a financial and societal position to call in a lot of favours from other people in their circle

c) it’s being funded by someone else like a label or a funding organisation which means the person creating the music has spent a very long time building up their talents, project-management skills and connections (which will have ultimately cost money, in one form or another. you can’t really escape it)

Music has value. Even though I still distribute my music on Spotify (as well as other platforms), it’s more of a marketing thing than a financial avenue for me. The real difference is made when someone goes on to Bandcamp and buys my EP there, or contributes to something like my debut album’s Kickstarter (which I successfully funded last month).

You’re not locked in to anything. Music won’t go anywhere if you stop paying Spotify £11 a month.

What’s stopping you?

🪄 JOIN ME IN THE COMMENTS!

1. Whaddaya think! How do you listen to music at the moment?

2. What’s that one album which is a music library must have?

3. Is there any other tech habit or app which you want to quit?

4. Do you miss your iPod because I miss my iPod

5. Do you remember the first piece of music you ever owned? I think mine was a Steps CD…

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Want more? Check out some ways you can support me & my music:

• buying my music on Bandcamp

• forwarding this newsletter to a friend!

• and if you haven’t already, subscribe:

Til next time! Be good,

Olivia 🌈✨🏔🎶