Bye Bye, Spotify

The day has been coming for a while now. One week after eliminating the last two social media platforms left standing in my world — Facebook and LinkedIn — I have said so long to my Spotify Premium subscription.

I have a feeling I will miss it about as much as I miss Netflix, which I got rid of this past January.

So hooray for me.

I’m not sure what it was that finally made me push it over the edge of the cliff. I wasn’t dissatisfied with their service, which I assured them of in their exit questionnaire. After all, all the music I could ever want was at my fingertips.

It wasn’t the latest dollar per month increase either. I had weathered those before, and I think by now we all realize it’s just par for the course with these things.

It wasn’t that I was overwhelmed by the business model, which requires — like all other social media and subscription-based apps — that I buy into the illusion of endlessness of content, such that even if I give 24 hours a day to it, I could never possibly get to the end of it.

It wasn’t because I had finally come to my senses and taken a stand over the way they pay artists for plays on the platform. I was interested in the inequity that it involved up to a point, but not really being able to do anything about it, I eventually just sort of shrugged my shoulders over it.

It wasn’t even that I had really stopped using it in the past half a year. I think the whole operation works on the same premise as gym memberships: 20% of customers use it a lot, 60% use it enough, and 20% forget they have it and continue to pay for it each month.

That last group is the sweet spot with things like this.

No, it simply has to do with the fact that Spotify is not the way I want to listen to music anymore.

My legion of readers will know that at the start of the year, I made the switch back to buying and collecting vinyl and it has been an unmitigated pleasure.

It’s not even really about the sound quality, though that’s part of it. There’s a warmth and richness to vinyl that, once you’ve reconnected with it, makes compressed streaming audio sound like old radio chatter. But more than the technical difference, it’s the ritual of it. The act of selecting an album, setting the needle down, and listening from start to finish — it turns music into an experience again, not just a background noise while I scroll or work or drive.

Spotify, for all its brilliance and accessibility, made music disposable for me. I had thousands of songs saved, dozens of playlists, and endless “recommended for you” rabbit holes. And yet I’d often skip through 10 songs before finding one I felt like listening to — not because the music was bad, but because it was too much, too easy. It became like fast food for the ears.

With vinyl, it’s different. It requires a little more effort, a little more intention. You can’t just hit shuffle on a record. You listen with purpose. And it’s reminded me of why I loved music in the first place.

Also, there’s something deeply satisfying about owning music again. Not renting it. Not trusting a platform to hold onto my favorites, or fearing that something I love might disappear from the catalog without notice. When I buy a record, it’s mine. It exists in the world, in my hands, not in the cloud.

That shift in mindset has started bleeding into other areas of my life too. I’ve started buying physical books again. Watching fewer shows, but choosing them more carefully. I’ve found that removing friction — which so many tech companies pride themselves on — doesn’t always serve us. Sometimes, friction is what creates value.

So yes, goodbye Spotify. And goodbye to the other subscriptions that promised to make my life easier, but in the end, made everything noisier. I’m not declaring war on convenience — I still use my phone, still watch YouTube now and then, and yes, I still get takeout. But I am declaring war on passive consumption. On endlessly paying for things that don’t bring me joy anymore.

In a world that constantly says “more, more, more,” I’m finding unexpected peace in saying “less.”

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally listen to that entire Miles Davis album the way it was meant to be heard — start to finish, no skips, no shuffle, no algorithm deciding what comes next.

Just me, the turntable, and the music