Bye Bye, Spotify
Ditching Spotify helped me fall in love with music again.
I grew up on CDs, then like most of us, jumped headfirst into the world of MP3s and iPods. I moved to streaming pretty early on. Only it was Rdio. I liked Rdio because it was based on albums and building a library—basically the iTunes model for streaming.
But Rdio died, Spotify didn’t. So I switched.
Spotify’s app got increasingly cluttered. They added podcasts and music videos and radio stations that somehow only played the same five songs. I had access to almost all the music in the world, but it never felt as good as CDs, buying digital albums, or the growing vinyl collection at my house.
Listening to music was easier than ever, but less satisfying.
The reasons I cancelled were cumulative. Poor artist royalties and getting burned out on subscriptions for everything. The latest drama around ICE recruitment ads was the final straw.
So I've gone back to the early 2000s. Organizing digital files and fixing metadata and folders within folders. Luckily I still had a lot of music on an old hard drive. I have also purchased albums on Bandcamp, and acquired others by unspecified means 🏴☠️
Why does it feel like self-hosting a music library is an act of rebellion?
Plexamp has been a great alternative to Spotify's cluttered dumpster fire of an app. Plexamp is responsive, enjoyable to use, and connected to a library of FLAC files that sound better as well. I'm now returning to albums that I love, but hadn't listened to in years. The selection is limited compared to everything, but it feels like more.
It's satisfying. It's my library, and it's not going anywhere.