After 11 years i just cancelled my spotify subscription.

Back then paying for music was so weird that most of the people i knew were not even aware of what Spotify was, but for me Spotify was the last subscription i would stop paying for. There is no day that i don’t listen to music so it was my most used service.

Its remarkable how bad Spotify has gotten in order for me to stop paying for it.

They had to do 1 job which was to serve music and they were doing that pretty damn well for so many years but we can’t have nice things for ever can we?

The list of issues with spotify:

• Their discovery mechanisms was so good that i found a whole new world of artists and tracks through it. Their radio feature was amazing but now its the same songs over and over again
• If i wanted audiobooks and podcasts i would use dedicated apps for that. Even if we accept that they have to have them because other people use them, it’s impossible to just say “not interested, don’t ever show or promote them again”
• You pay so you don’t get ads but you still get sponsored banners.
• Abysmall royalties to artists.
• Spotify says its best developers haven’t written a line of code since December, thanks to AI. While you are it you can maybe tell your llm to build you a native app? This way we may be saved from wasting gigabytes of ram to stream music because of your electron app.

Migrating to a different service

I chose Qobuz as a replacement even if they have a smaller catalog.

• The price is similar but they do what they are paid for, stream music.
• Their sound quality is better than Spotify’s which is clearer if you have a HiFi system
• They pay artists more
• I see artists i never heard of
• Bonus point: you can actually buy music from their store and keep it yours for ever.