Following the announcement of Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek’s $693.6 million investment in AI military drone company Helsing, I can’t say I’m too jazzed about my monthly subscription. I’m not the only one.
In response to this explosive spending spree, artists like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Deerhoof have begun pulling their catalogs from Ek’s ‘Neon Green Song Machine.’ In times like these, one can’t help but laugh at Spotify—a company that has the majority of the world’s music in a headlock, but can’t seem to get out of its own way. Even if you ignored Ek’s Lex Luthor-isms, you’d still have to contend with the app’s willingness to boost AI-generated music, unwillingness to pay artists more than $0.003 a stream, and unsavory history with podcaster Joe Rogan.
In response to Rogan’s rampant platforming of COVID-19 misinformation in 2022, folk legend Neil Young removed his music from Spotify and began championing competitors such as Amazon and Apple Music. Merely two years later, after Rogan’s podcast started appearing on those competitors, Young’s music would return.
“I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify,” Young wrote in 2024, “because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all, so I have returned to Spotify, in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it.”
In hindsight, Young’s attempt to lambaste Spotify and champion other bloodsucking monopolies was silly, but it’s even sillier to think the entire 700-million-person user base cares about morals over music. Think of your grandfather, with his grumbling disposition and threatening bumper stickers, who hates talking about politics but always makes everything political. He doesn’t give a rat’s behind about people suffering through foreign wars (nor does he know who Deerhoof is), but he loves listening to Steely Dan, he loves Spotify’s simple interface, and he loves his routine. So does your mom, who listens to Spotify’s AI ‘DJ’ in the car because it “knows her tastes suspiciously well.”
Let’s face it: the music streaming business has become so adept at hooking us, strapping its algorithms to our recommendations, and issuing attractive “end-of-year listening reports” that we’ll never leave. Most of us will never even know we want to, especially when monthly premium subscriptions come at the price of a Happy Meal. So, instead of the usual ways of trying (and failing) to boycott the app, I’d like to propose a new radical plan that will destroy streaming entirely, person-by-person.
I call it, “Spoti-bye-bye.”
I’ve canceled my Spotify subscription several times in the past, only to return again and again on the back of one lone factor: my playlists. Nobody wants to be the jerk transferring five years worth of playlists over to Apple Music—especially when playlists, in their mixtape-y glory, are designed to represent a certain time, place, or person in one’s life.
So, Stage One will go as follows: stop making Spotify playlists. If you really want to make a mix, you’ll have to drive to Best Buy, buy a $30 pack of blank CD’s, pay $20 for 10 songs on iTunes, and burn those songs. Granted, you’ll need a laptop that includes a CD port (and probably runs slower than molasses), but that shouldn’t be too hard to source!
Stage Two is where things get good. Once you’ve weaned yourself off of playlists, you’ll start listening to full albums. You’ll still have Spotify, but now, you’ll be sitting there, trapped in the flow of a whole project, forced to experience song after song after song like some demented art project. You’ll hate it at first, realizing a lot of albums are redundant and overlong and have interludes and skits and failed attempts and laziness and filler. In fact, realizing how few great start-to-finish LP’s there actually are—and how little patience you actually have—you’ll start reading Pitchfork, and finally visit the rotting corpse of Rolling Stone and people who secretly believe “Tusk” is better than “Rumours.” Your friends will call your house, leave questions on your answering machine, and ask asinine questions like, “What ever happened to just listening to music for enjoyment?” or “Are you still alive?”
Who needs friends like that anyways? You’re a lone wolf now.
By Stage Three, you’ll realize that now you only listen to albums, and your Spotify subscription is moot. Like a jubilant missionary, you’ll go door-to-door advocating for people to delete the app and buy vintage cassettes alongside other ‘physical media’ (which sound horrible unless you buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of equipment). You’ll hang out in record shops, lingering just long enough to make the employees uncomfortable, waxing on about which pressing of “Electric Ladyland” elicits the warmest crackle. And when people have the gall to complain about the crushing price of vinyl and tell you Spotify is way cheaper, easier, more convenient, and flat-out better, you’ll unsheath your katana, strike them down, and ascend into a faraway galaxy to claim your kingship!
You’ve reached the final step: superiority of body and mind.
And yet… emptiness persists. The other 700 million inhabitants of this faraway galaxy use an app devoted to playing music, and they seem plenty happy. In fact, with a few small tweaks, the CEO of the app has come to a happy medium with artists, raising subscription prices by $7 to carve out higher royalty payments and donate a portion of profits to feed the hungry. These weren’t necessary changes—700 million people don’t just get up and walk away—but he initiated them because they were simple and painless, and because they made more sense than being evil.
I really wish Daniel Ek thought this way. He doesn’t. I still can’t fault anybody for using Spotify, and I can’t see myself canceling it any time soon.
Call me a cynic, but the worst people own the best things.
