I remember when I first heard about Spotify. It was exactly what I had been searching for. A flat fee to access all kinds of music, pretty much anything I could think of. I remember diving in shortly after it launched and since then I have happily paid the Premium subscription for a service that I’ve used almost every day. That all changed just over a week ago when I finally decided to ditch Spotify.
So what happened?
The price hike. Sure, it was the first price rise in a long while for Spotify (possibly ever) but it got me thinking about what I was actually paying for.
A little context first. Over the last eighteen months it had become increasingly apparent that I needed to upgrade to a family account. Unfortunately this was not possible because I was paying for Spotify through my mobile phone contract which meant it was locked to an individual account. I had to wait for the phone contract to expire before I could make the switch. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I was almost ready to make the upgrade, it was at this exact moment that Spotify decided to announce a price hike for family accounts. Timing is everything it would seem. The price hike itself was only £2 per month but it still felt like a slap in the face. This got me wondering about where that extra money would actually be going. Certainly not towards the artists. From there it wasn’t much of a logic leap to figure out what else was wrong with Spotify. Which leads me to…
Podcasts. I love podcasts, I’m currently subscribed to more podcasts than I have time to listen to. The thing is I already have an app that sorts out my podcasts for me and it does an excellent job of it (Overcast in case you’re curious). I don’t want or need Spotify to do this for me and yet Spotify is insistent that I check out their podcast content. To my mind Spotify is first and foremost a music service and it’s increasingly incessant nature of shoving podcasts in my face was becoming annoying. Not being able to completely filter them out was one thing but having them appear front and centre when I open the app was taking the piss.
Notice the ‘Spotify Original’ tag in the above screenshot? My guess is that this is where my extra price hike cash would be going, which leads me to address the turd in the room.
Joe Rogan. Headlines were made when it was announced that Joe Rogan’s podcast was joining the Spotify roster and the price tag was high, really high. $100 million for a guy who gladly pushes massively uninformed opinions about the Coronavirus and belittles those who wish to take some caution about it. Spotify is giving a huge platform to an absolute tool and the fact that more of my money would be enabling this rather than going towards the music artists felt like a sour point.
So that’s why I left. Right now I’m a week into a new Apple Music subscription, but that’s a blog post for another time.
Bye Spotify, it’s been a good 12 years but you’re a bit shit now.
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