Long time paid Spotify user. Soon to be ex-paid user. This resonates with me. For a while now, I have been pretty unhappy with the way I consume music. Yes, because Spotify has become shit. The UI is hostile. Their business practices makes me feel bad for using it. And everything else already mentioned in other comments. But there's something else.
My spotify Liked has about 2400 songs. And I can't name most of them. If you played one for me, chances are I wouldn't even know the artist. It all feels so... disposable. How did I get here? I hit like a few times on Discover Weekly, each week. And now...I have this mess! Spotify recommends me songs that sound exactly like other songs...that I can't remember the name of. I can't go back to check. Weeks later I hear it! Or is this the new one that sounds like the old one? I don't know. It's all so surreal and so different than the before times.
In my yutes would buy albums and absolutely devour them whole. Every track. I would listen to just that album for days or weeks. I couldn't afford to buy all the music, so I squeezed every drop of enjoyment I could out the music I had. I think I enjoyed the music much more, back when I had much less.
So, with that nostalgic feeling in mind. I'm starting a new system of music consumption. I'm going back to the old ways! Instead of paying Spotify $12/mo to shovel all the shit in my face, I'm going to spend $12/mo on Bandcamp (or equivalent) to buy an album and pour over it for the whole month, until I buy the next album.
I don't know if this will work. I don't know how I'm going to handle discovery. But I have to do something; And this is something. A few weeks ago I bought some music. Threw it into a Beets.io library. Setup a Navidrome server inside my vpn. I listen with Symfonium on my phone (good offline features there).
Now I'm trying to really listen to the music again; not just mindlessly consume it like disposable content. It feels like this muscle has completely atrophied. Lyrics don't stick like they used to. I don't instantly remember the track order. Listening to an entire album takes some effort. Maybe though, that's the way it should be.
Long time paid Spotify user. Soon to be ex-paid user. This resonates with me. For a while now, I have been pretty unhappy with the way I consume music. Yes, because Spotify has become shit. The UI is hostile. Their business practices makes me feel bad for using it. And everything else already mentioned in other comments. But there's something else.
My spotify Liked has about 2400 songs. And I can't name most of them. If you played one for me, chances are I wouldn't even know the artist. It all feels so... disposable. How did I get here? I hit like a few times on Discover Weekly, each week. And now...I have this mess! Spotify recommends me songs that sound exactly like other songs...that I can't remember the name of. I can't go back to check. Weeks later I hear it! Or is this the new one that sounds like the old one? I don't know. It's all so surreal and so different than the before times.
In my yutes would buy albums and absolutely devour them whole. Every track. I would listen to just that album for days or weeks. I couldn't afford to buy all the music, so I squeezed every drop of enjoyment I could out the music I had. I think I enjoyed the music much more, back when I had much less.
So, with that nostalgic feeling in mind. I'm starting a new system of music consumption. I'm going back to the old ways! Instead of paying Spotify $12/mo to shovel all the shit in my face, I'm going to spend $12/mo on Bandcamp (or equivalent) to buy an album and pour over it for the whole month, until I buy the next album.
I don't know if this will work. I don't know how I'm going to handle discovery. But I have to do something; And this is something. A few weeks ago I bought some music. Threw it into a Beets.io library. Setup a Navidrome server inside my vpn. I listen with Symfonium on my phone (good offline features there).
Now I'm trying to really listen to the music again; not just mindlessly consume it like disposable content. It feels like this muscle has completely atrophied. Lyrics don't stick like they used to. I don't instantly remember the track order. Listening to an entire album takes some effort. Maybe though, that's the way it should be.