I Quit Spotify For One Year. Here's What Happened...
What apps I used, my favourite music from 2024, and how you can quit too.
✨🌈🎶 Hi everyone! Here are some things you’ll find in this bumper, end-of-year music email.
My favourite albums of the year
My favourite radio discoveries of the year
What I actually used to listen to music in 2024
How YOU can quit Spotify, too!
And my ‘Olivia Wrapped,’ in lieu of a Spotify Wrapped
💡 Want alternatives to Spotify? I got you: 50 Spotify-Free Ways To Listen To Music
📝 Wanna know my thoughts about quitting Spotify when I made the jump in 2024? Read all about it here: …So I Finally Quit Spotify
🪦 Deleting My Most-Used App
The funniest thing about cancelling your Spotify premium account is that, after the process of confirming you want to end your membership, they present you with a playlist.
The playlist is called Goodbye For Now :( and is the only playlist from the account ‘@SpotifyCares’. The picture for it? A sad puppy.
Oh, my heart! How can I disappoint this sad puppy! He’s so small and sad! Spotify truly cares!
This playlist is what popped up on my screen last year when I decided to cancel my premium membership and stop paying Spotify £10.99 a month. A last-ditch attempt to win me back.
DELETE.
I was sick of the platform for a few reasons. You can really get into it here, on the post I wrote about it 12 months ago. But let me sum it up for you if you want the short version:
I make music. Making music is expensive. To even put your songs on Spotify requires a payment to a distribution service. Not to mention the fee you pay to join a royalty-collecting society to get the money from people playing your music. There’s mixing, mastering, session musicians, all jobs done by talented people who, if they know their worth, won’t work for free. By the end of it, you’ve sunk thousands of pounds into making a piece of art to share with the world. And let’s not even touch the notion of marketing, radio plugging, press, etc. How much does Spotify give out per play, after all that? A third of a pence. Yep, less than 1p.
I like listening to different music. As good as Spotify is for having nearly every song at your fingertips, their algorithm tends to push you in a certain direction. At the end of your playlist, they’ll start playing songs they think you’ll like. I got really frustrated when I found that the same artists and songs were being pushed to me, time after time.
I didn’t own the songs I loved anymore. If the internet went down, what could I listen to? And why don’t we care about owning our music anymore? When I was a kid one of my favourite things to do was to play my parent’s CD collection. Prince, Erasure, the Oklahoma soundtrack and Steely Dan. I knew what music my parents liked because there was physical evidence: they bought what they liked and owned it. People’s CD or vinyl or tape collections used to be part of their houses, their decor, their living rooms. It’s the equivalent of the bookshelf. Come and look at the kind of person I am, it says.
So, with all that in mind, I quit Spotify. It was the least I could do.
Did I stop streaming music entirely? No.
Do I feel better about how I enjoy music? Yes.
And one year on, here are my observations.
I Listen Deeper
I don’t know about you, but 2024 for me was the year of Taylor Swift. I didn’t get a ticket to the Eras tour (instead I got scammed for tickets and ended up working on the merch booth, read about that here). But I listened to a LOT of Taylor, because it was all anyone around me was talking about. Okay, okay. It was all I and my Instagram algorithm was talking about.
My dudes. I listened to a LOT of Taylor Swift. Like, at some points, it was all I listened to. I bought The Anthology version of The Tortured Poets Department (her latest album) when it came out in spring. Yep, the one which is about 30 tracks in total. Swifties were well-fed this year! It was enough for me to dine out on for a while, and I really enjoyed slowly pouring over this album over the course of months, each song revealing moments which I’d missed or brushed off in earlier listens.
Do you remember buying an album and finding your instant favourite tracks? Then listening again and again and again and finding out that some of the songs you initially wrote off were now your favourites, too? That’s something I lost when I started streaming music on Spotify. If an album came out, I’d just add my instant favourites to my current playlist and be done with it.
Here are some other albums that I bought and enjoyed this year:
GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo
Two Star & the Dream Police by Mk.Gee
Imaginal Disc by Magdalena Bay
Imperial Bedroom by Elvis Costello
Black & Blue by The Backstreet Boys (lol)
This is The One by Utada Hikaru (I cannot explain this album to anyone you just have to listen to it and be prepared for the lyrical ride of your 00’s rnb pop LIFE)
Two ‘Greatest Hits’ albums: Celine Dion and Dido
📻 Radio is great!
I would like to give a big shoutout to Minnesota’s public radio (MPR) The Current for being one of my biggest music discovery places this year. I play this radio station in the office almost every day. I have come to adore listening to The Morning Show with Jill Riley. Same goes for KEXP Seattle and the shows Early with Eva Walker and The Morning Show with John Richards. Here are some of my favourite discoveries I’ve had listening to the radio:
Milwaukee - Wyatt Flores (great, simple country song that I had on repeat in the spring) ✶ Future Enemies - Yola (one of my favourite choruses to screech along to alone in my room… oh PLEEEE-HEEAAASSEEE, AAAAAAAHH!) ✶ Hey Joe - The Jerry Douglas Band (I had a bluegrass phase this year) ✶ Dirty Epic - Underworld (9 minutes of dark, 90s electronica. Kind of like Depeche Mode but less theatre.) ✶ Waiting for the Moving Van - David Ackles (oh my GOD. Do you want to be emotionally destroyed???? Listen to this song. It’s beautiful and devastating.) ✶ I Don't Wanna Grow Up - Tom Waits (Tom Waits is always good and this song is crunchy gravelly Tom Waits but singing about something that gets ya right there [points to your heart]) ✶ Sober - Bartees Strange (really liked the thrashing hits of the pre-chorus in this one)
🍊 How To Quit Spotify (I Believe In You)
So, you want to take the plunge? Here’s how I did it, and how you can do it too.
Step 1: Take one last, loving look at your account. Make a note of any music you seriously want to add to your collection.
Step 2: Accept that, unless you are incredibly dedicated, you will never be able to replicate your entire Spotify library in your own music library. Blow your playlists a kiss and say goodbye.
Step 3: CANCEL YOUR ACCOUNT. Spotify will try to hold you back. It will try to stop you! It will show you the puppy playlist. Remember why you are doing this and be strong!!! BE STRONG!!!
Step 4: You are free. Wheee! That was a thrill, wasn’t it? So… what now? Check if you have any music in local files on your computer by opening your dusty, old music library. For Mac users that might be the Music app.
Step 5: Use your default music listening app on your computer or download a new one. I like Swinsian because it looks like the old iTunes and doesn’t have any of the streaming options that Apple Music has. You can also use MusicBee or Foobar2000. Or do some of your own research to see what tickles your fancy. Hell, is Winamp still going!?
Step 6: Download a new music listening app and add some albums manually to your phone. I like Foobar2000’s phone app for this.
Step 7: Now you have £10 a month to buy music! Choose an album and a few singles you know you’ll miss from Spotify and buy them on the iTunes store, the Amazon music store, or Bandcamp. Savour them slowly until next month comes around.
Step 8: Enjoy your Spotify-free life! Discover your new favourite radio station. Buy a CD play or a cassette player or start a vinyl collection. Live free.
Where I Listened To Music in 2024
Here’s what I used in 2024 to listen:
At home: Swinsian Desktop app, Youtube videos (I use this to dabble and often as a precursor to actually buying an album or song), cassette tapes (ABBA’s Arrival is a favourite).
On the go: Foobar2000 app on my phone. I only keep a few albums on my phone and rotate things around every couple of months. It’s quite good for getting deeper into albums or songs.
In the office: It’s become an unspoken assumption that I am the office DJ. Foobar2000’s internet radio feature on my phone is great for this, and I play it through the office bluetooth speakers. MPR The Current is now my boss’ favourite radio station. We also listen to the BBC Sounds app: Pick of the Pops, and Sounds of the 90s are my favs.
🎁 Olivia Wrapped
This year was the first year that I didn’t get a Spotify Wrapped. Not gonna lie, I did feel a bit. left out. But that’s okay! Because instead, we have Olivia Wrapped! Here’s my summary of the year, in a way that makes sense to me.
MORE DIDO!!!! MORE DIDO!!!!!
You have to go watch it. Click here.
Listen here. It truly is a masterpiece of urgency in pop music.
We should have known. It was always Kevin. It will always be Kevin.
🌟 The Top 2
My album of the year was definitely The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift. There’s not even really room for a contest, there. Top song? ‘More Than That’ by The Backstreet Boys. And I’ll leave you with that.
Check out some ways you can support me & my music:
not ready to quit yet? then go ahead and listen to my music on Spotify and add it to your playlists
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Til next time! Be good,
Olivia 🌈✨🏔🎶
I so agree. Limits are good for creativity. They allow you to form uniquely personal tastes. Having access to too much can lead to not actually knowing what you like. I yearn for the days I used to carefully select which CDs to purchase and put into my 20-slot CD case. I feel like the costs of living have increased so much that it can be difficult to justify purchasing CDs or records, esp when the studio apartment I live in has so little storage space. But I've also decided to slowly build my physical library this year - music, film, literature! My art consumption does feel more meaningful this way.
Such an interesting read. At the moment I'm somewhere between. I have been collecting vinyl for over a year and must say my overall listening on spotify dropped a lot this year. One thing I will say is it feels good to own the music physically again. It's also more special when you have to take the time to really seek out what you want to listen to.