After our decade-long relationship, I’m breaking up with Spotify.
It’s nothing personal. It’s just that Spotify and I have grown up, but we haven’t grown together.
Over the years, I’ve been tempted to leave Spotify many times. I know that the company faces accusations of poor streaming payouts for artists, compared to its competitors, and I haven’t forgotten that it was Spotify that platformed Joe Rogan’s podcast, then exclusive to the platform, to spread misinformation about COVID-19 and other viruses.
I know that Spotify is trying to kill the RSS feed, a move that siphons independence from podcasters. And yet, I’m embarrassed to say that until recently, these issues didn’t move me enough to take the time and energy to investigate alternatives to Spotify, a platform that I’ve been using daily since high school.
It’s unfortunately easy for us to bury our heads in the sand when the tech companies we pay monthly do things that disappoint us. (Yes, I still remember when Netflix laid off my industry colleagues, but I also know I’ll end up watching the new season of “Love is Blind”).
We don’t feel like our one subscription makes a difference — after all, Duolingo still beat revenue estimates after sparking backlash when it said it would replace contractors with AI.
But Spotify finally got to me in a way that’s unavoidable: when I open the app, I cannot bear its all-encompassing, suffocating reliance on algorithmic recommendations.
There’s an overwhelming display of visual clutter from the time it takes to navigate from Spotify’s home page to the music you’re looking for. These suggestions are front-and-center when you open the app.
First, I may see an unsolicited, full-screen pop-up promoting a new podcast. Then, I’m greeted with a 2-by-4 grid of music and podcast suggestions, including new episodes of shows I listened to once because they had a guest I liked, plus some other albums that I’ve dabbled in briefly over the last month or so. Below that, there’s a sponsored recommendation for a song I might like by an artist that I have never heard of. When I navigate to the search tab, I’m prompted with an audiobook recommendation, and if I scroll a little bit, I see vertical video clips that look like they belong on TikTok.
It’s easy to fall into Spotify’s recommendations, as the app constantly pelts you with customized pl …