I've been thinking, especially since the recent Spotify layoffs, that I'm due to delete my Spotify account. I haven't paid for it in years, and I have also significantly reduced my usage.
The other thing is that I've had this draft for ages and procrastinated on this topic. Luckily, today, I stumbled across this post from Raed explaining their reasonings for deleting their account. I thought, "Yeah, see, I had the same idea but procrastinated on it!". Not anymore!!
I have reasons similar to Raed's, but here are some of the thoughts that have been lurking in my head.
Their apps take up too much disk space.
It first annoyed me some years ago when I had a very old laptop with limited disk space. At one point, their app and its data took over 4 GB of disk space. That was when I deleted their app from my computer.
I don't want to pay for music I don't own.
The appeal for me to use Spotify Premium was that I had already bought the CDs from my favourite artists, so I didn't want to re-buy their digital versions. Now, this was, of course, pure laziness too.
Technically, you can plug a CD into your computer and copy and play the files. But this process was more straightforward in the early 2000s. I don't remember having a CD player on my laptop many years ago.
But since there was a way to avoid this whole effort, I paid for Spotify when commuting using the tube in London. Since there was no signal, I had to use Spotify Premium to be able to listen offline. One morning, one of my favourite artists removed their catalogue from Spotify. I couldn't listen to them anymore. Fair enough. It is in the terms and conditions, but I had the CD at home.
I ended up buying an external CD player to plug into my laptop to copy the songs. But doing that is a whole process because I also have to copy them to my phone.
Spotify took too long to allow blocking users.
I've been stalked via my Spotify account. Their harassment was by getting themselves and their friends to hit follow on my profile as a tactic to let me know that they are there and they see me. It was only in late 2021 that Spotify took measures to address this. At that point, they had already lost me.
Spotify gives a lot of money and a platform to awful people.
I don't need to say more about this.
Spotify gives too little money to the artists.
Another self-explanatory.
Spotify is bad for the environment.
I took these photos at FFConf 2022. That was the first moment I felt ashamed, and I should have pulled the plug then. And I shouldn't have shared some of my Spotify playlists since then, but I wanted to share something that would connect me to people.
Please watch Natalia's talk on this topic as it is really important.
Goodbye Spotify wrapped
I always felt so smug and happy when I shared that I was either in The Rasmus's 0.001% or 0.005% top fans every year. I buy their merch and art and travel to see them live, so I am contributing to their livelihood as much as possible. But I can't contribute to this company anymore either.
Thank you, Raed, for sharing your post and prompting me to take action, too.