There has been a noticeable uptick this year in the number of bloggers encouraging their readers to quit Spotify. This makes sense, as there are plenty good reasons to quit Spotify (ranging from its failure to pay artists fairly to its CEO’s reprehensible decision to invest in an AI military startup). What I don’t get, though, is why so many bloggers are promoting supposedly “better” streaming alternatives instead of encouraging us to consider leaving music subscription services behind entirely.
It took me a while to come around to this point of view (I myself only quit Spotify earlier this year), but here it is: streaming music sucks for almost everyone involved. I believe we only do it because we’ve allowed ourselves to be convinced that renting music indefinitely is cheaper than purchasing it outright – especially since streaming companies grant us the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet with our subscriptions.
That’s a common discussion in my family, with the added take of piracy. Basically, my sister not getting why my BIL and me download the songs/albums we enjoy, since Spotify exists. Or why I created a LAN to listen to downloaded stuff from my kitchen. And I often half-joke that, eventually, she’ll only listen to the stuff my BIL likes — as all her favs will be locked in a platform she won’t be able/willing to access.
Same deal with anime. I’m not ashamed to say I have 1600 episodes in my hard disk. I don’t download everything I watch (because… well, I do watch a lot of junk), but if I feel in the mood to re-watch something, it means I should avoid losing it, so I download it.
Of course, you could do all of that without piracy, if you got the bees’n’honey (unlike me). Or go for a middle ground; back in the 90s we used to record tracks playing on the radio in
K7casette tapes, while still buying official ones for artists we really enjoyed, so this isn’t exactly new.