It was my daughter who was most worried about losing it. As she said, it is a timeline and record of her life for the last 8 or 9 years, with pictures attached, playlists and shared stuff.
My son on the other hand was more pragmatic in that he is now producing music that he will want to start sharing on the most used platform, which is understandable.
It’s a bind, for sure.
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Spotify is a perfect symptom of humanity.
We want everything cheaply and easily without caring that it is incredibly destructive to so many.
(both artists livelihood and human lives)
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I can’t get the title of that old Dead Kennedy’s comp out of my head.
Give me convenience or give me death.
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Been doing a similar re-evaluation, and not just Spotify. The more you inform yourself, the more you begin to realise that there are very few platforms that are squeaky clean. Then a friend pointed out that being online in any form inevitably involves compromise. The challenge is to find the compromises we’re comfortable with. The flipside of this is that it could lead to giving up entirely: if you accept one compromise as the price of being online in 2025, why not all of them?
Everyone will have different criteria for where they draw the line, if at all. I’m trying to do what I can to do right by others (eg Bandcamp not Spotify, bookshop.org not Amazon etc), while not beating myself up for making compromises elsewhere.
With your Spotify dilemma, can you downgrade the account to the free/ad-supported version and then leave the kids to carry on while you go elsewhere? That would keep them happy, I guess, but leave you with the disappointment that they share fewer of your values. Parenthood, eh? It doesn’t get any easier, the problems just change.
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Divestment is convoluted. Supermarket chains that own more pokie machines than the average casino, super funds that prop up the worst of the fossil fuel producers, technology manufacturers that externalise pollution in unregulated countries, and streaming companies that fund war components yeah.
Spotify is pretty good for discovery, one thing they do better than the rest, then I switch over to Bandcamp to buy music direct for radio and DJ work etc etc.
I reckon if a person was to discover an artist via Spotify, and buy a single ticket to a local live show, directly supporting their local arts and culture economy, then the sins of the consumer are mostly forgiven.
Ek’s business approach is all very sub-optimal, would love something better to emerge, but for the artists using it it’s pretty good for getting their new tunes in your ear and the tour dates in front of your eyeballs.
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if it makes anyone feel any better i work for the music service of one of those companies (not the fruit one), so if you use that service, you’re helping pay my salary. and i’m as ethical as they come! 
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My kids are on our Apple family subscription. I’ve often wondered whether I have now committed to that for life, or whether one day they will stump up for their own subscription. If they do then it’s back to square one re-adding and sorting out their own libraries.
My records serve the same purpose for me in cataloguing my life. They are still organised ina weird and confused categorisation scheme which is a mix of artist/genre/time purchased.
It dates back to when I only had one shelf of records and new ones would be put at the right hand end, next to the record player where I could easily get to them. I’ve not fully managed to kick this yet, so I guess I haven’t let go of that history of what I was listening to at any time in my life.
Just been looking at pay per stream rates for the big platforms and whilst it seems there are as many answers as there are platforms, it does look like Amazon and Apple come top of that pile.
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I think this year I’ve invested in about £250 worth of vinyl for my daughter , can anyone tell me how much of that may have made it to the artist? I’ve always been curious
I feel your pain, mate. Trying to extricate myself from Spotify but my son is fully committed. There is a simple - and free - way to transfer all of your playlists to Apple from Spotify. I know they (Apple) don’t pay musicians a great deal more than Ek’s lot but it’s an improvement at least.
Tidal and Quboz are much better payers and probably a damn sight more ethical than Spotify or Apple, but their library may not be quite as comprehensive as the big 4 of Spotify, Apple, Amazon and YouTube. If you’re transferring from Spotify to anyone other than Apple then best to use an app like SongShift to transfer all your music easily. Think it costs 4 or 5 quid to do that.
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Totally get this -no hope getting my kids off the platform either but signing these is a start
Massively depends on how they were manufactured and what distribution deals the label / artists have. The reality is if they were short run press, which lets face it neary all vinyl production outside of major labels are these days, the margins are so tight the artists probably saw little / no return.
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I’m going to bin Spotify too. I told my missus and son that there was no negotiating. He moaned a bit but is pretty politically switched on for a sixteen year old so didn’t need too much persuading luckily.
My missus just asked about podcasts.
I was thinking Tidal or Qobuz. Anyone on here got any experience with these two? Main thing I’m concerned about is the library being much smaller.
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I’m in the process of binning Spotify and transferring my online listening to tidal. I’d say from a content perspective for every c.200 tune playlist on average there’s maybe 1-2 tracks that aren’t available on tidal. But Spotify has its gaps too, so I always end up digging/listening elsewhere anyway. Tidal interface seems v similar to Spotify too. Tried Qobuz and the gaps there in terms of content seemed way bigger than tidal The biggest problem is weaning the rest of the family off Spotify and onto another platform.
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Which one! Spill it : )
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I moved from Spotify to tidal a few years back. The catalogue has gotten alot better and usually I have no probs finding the track I’m looking for. There’s a free app you can use to import Ur Spotify playlists, can’t remember the name of it but should be easy enough to find.
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I have Qobuz through a family plan and the sound quality is great. The app can be a bit slow and wonky sometimes.
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