My music is staying. My cash and a focus are leaving.
I canceled my Spotify subscription. Sure, my music continues to be there, and if that’s the place you take heed to me, please take pleasure in it. I’m not organizing a boycott or imagining that my cancellation brought about somebody in Stockholm at Spotify’s headquarters to drop their lunch. I finished paying for one thing I not wish to assist. Apparently, within the music enterprise today, absolute motion requires a proof.
I’m 60, and I’ve a more durable time dwelling with the hole between what I consider and what I maintain paying for. In some unspecified time in the future, criticizing an organization whereas mechanically renewing my subscription begins to really feel like bullshit. I can clarify the comfort and inform myself that my cash makes no distinction. However I nonetheless must dwell with voluntarily supporting one thing I philosophically disagree with. For me, that lacks integrity, and it hurts my coronary heart.
I don’t want Spotify to note my cancellation for that cancellation to matter to me. I discover. How for much longer do I wish to spend paying for issues I resent, checking issues I don’t worth, and explaining away the contradiction? I would really like my selections to bear some resemblance to my convictions.
My objection to Spotify is key: I consider its priorities are anti-artist.
It purports to be a music platform, however I see an information assortment platform that makes use of music as bait. Artists provide the explanation individuals present up. The corporate turns their exercise into data that helps it retain subscribers, promote promoting, and maintain individuals engaged. Music makes the enterprise attainable, but the individuals creating it will probably appear remarkably disposable.
Sure, Spotify distributes recordings, pays royalties, and helps listeners uncover artists. Individuals discover music they love there, together with mine. However these capabilities don’t mechanically align the corporate’s pursuits with an artist’s pursuits. Protecting somebody listening for 3 hours doesn’t essentially imply that individual develops a relationship with any of the musicians they heard. The platform can have a really profitable afternoon whereas the artists stay nameless. And don’t get me began on their wishy washy non-action on synthetic intelligence. Ridiculous.
What bothers me virtually as a lot is how completely the music trade has accepted Spotify’s model of significance.
Its knowledge has grow to be an expert credit score that folks promote on the finish of the yr (#SpotifyUnwrapped). Month-to-month listeners are supplied as credentials, playlist placements as accomplishments, and screenshots as proof {that a} profession is occurring and that you’re related. We now have given one firm a unprecedented quantity of authority to inform musicians how they’re doing. Some artists have attracted labels, gigs and administration based mostly on Spotify numbers alone. Silly.
A quantity rises, and apparently the spinoff music acquired higher. A quantity falls, and now we’d like a gathering, a technique, and presumably some costly promotion on platform. The recording has not modified. The exercise round it has modified, which deserves examination however hardly justifies turning each fluctuation right into a verdict on the artist. Someplace alongside the way in which, checking the scoreboard turned an occupation. Some do it hourly. Actually silly. The precise pattern line of your Spotify knowledge ought to be stretched into years not minutes to be consumed and interpreted in any method that’s significant. All of this “checking” is what actually ingesting the Kool-Support appears to be like like.
I need helpful details about my music. I wish to know the place individuals hear, which recordings join, and whether or not a promotional effort achieved what I meant.
However a stream depend alone can’t inform me the depth of somebody’s curiosity. Intentionally returning to an album and listening to a observe as a result of a playlist saved operating are totally different encounters. Each could have worth. Treating them as interchangeable proof of fandom makes it a lot simpler to promote musicians the phantasm of an viewers. Even Spotify’s “tremendous listener” metric is deceptive on its face as a result of they solely offer you a tiny drop of further knowledge about these individuals which is inconceivable to place into context.
Spotify itself, in the meantime, is doing advantageous. Within the second quarter of 2026, it reached 300 million Premium subscribers, roughly 9 % greater than a yr earlier, whereas month-to-month lively customers rose 12 % to 777 million. My canceled subscription is just not going to derail that prepare. They may in some way have to hold on with out me.
However Spotify’s development doesn’t make it synonymous with music.
DMN Professional analysis revealed in June 2026 discovered that YouTube Music had been the fastest-growing world music subscription service by proportion in 2025, for the second consecutive yr. It added only some million fewer subscribers than Spotify regardless of its smaller beginning base. These are 2025 outcomes revealed in 2026 — a distinction value preserving in an trade that typically will get so enthusiastic about numbers that it forgets to learn their labels. Additionally, the quantity of knowledge you get in your YouTube dashboard is 10 occasions what Spotify gives. I believe greenback for greenback a YouTube promotion is greatest ROI within the music trade. (insert sound of a “increase”)
Comparable public 2026 development figures for Apple Music and Amazon Music are more durable to confirm, and subscription bundles complicate comparisons. I’m not going to fabricate a tidy horse race from mismatched data. The helpful level is that audiences exist throughout totally different providers, with totally different habits and causes for being there. The corporate profitable the company development contest doesn’t essentially maintain the viewers to your music.
Primarily based on years alone analysis I do know that my audiences are on Pandora, Amazon, and YouTube. That’s the place substantial listening to my work occurs.
These listeners don’t grow to be much less vital as a result of they’re someplace apart from the platform the trade prefers to debate. I’m actually not asking somebody having fun with my music on Pandora to relocate in order that my Spotify profile appears to be like extra spectacular. I point out this as a result of I’ve seen artists attempt to “corral” listeners on a platform of their selecting versus the listener’s. It went badly…
In the meantime, I desire Apple Music’s interface over anybody else’s. As a listener, I like utilizing it and I’ve been an influence consumer because the first moments of iTunes. However as an artist, I get virtually NO love there, which neatly illustrates how little my desire controls the result. Apparently, liking the institution doesn’t imply the institution goes to throw you a celebration or will even bear in mind your identify.
Artists could make recordings accessible, current them effectively, and invite individuals to hear. We will promote a launch and enhance the possibilities that somebody who would possibly recognize it should encounter it. We can’t dictate the place an viewers kinds or command that viewers to care. Listeners have their very own subscriptions, gadgets, routines, and tastes. They didn’t signal as much as execute our advertising plans. I see this so usually on BandCamp — it makes me cringe to observe artists pressure listeners by their “funnel”.
That mentioned, unbiased artists who consider they will reliably management or manipulate their streams are in for an disagreeable schooling.
Advertising can work, however affect has limits. There isn’t a reliable sequence of buttons that produces an enduring viewers, nonetheless confidently somebody packages the directions. Anybody promoting certainty about that association ought to clarify why they’re promoting you certainty as a substitute of managing the most important artist on earth.
Some promotional recommendation is official. Some retains musicians satisfied that yet another adjustment will lastly make the machine love them. Optimize the profile, change the discharge schedule, feed the algorithm, purchase one other marketing campaign. When the promised end result fails to reach, the artist will get one other task and the individual promoting the answer will get one other bill. It is a superb association in case you occur to be on the invoicing aspect.
Main label artists usually have benefits that unbiased artists can’t match: budgets, groups, promotional relationships, and the sources to maintain consideration round a launch. These benefits matter, and they need to stay seen when somebody begins telling the fairy story of a wholly spontaneous discovery. Seeds are inclined to develop extra impressively when someone has paid for the land, the irrigation, and a nationwide promoting marketing campaign for the backyard. The 2 most vital phrases on this paragraph had been: “maintain consideration” for these conserving rating.
Even then, someone finally has to need the music. Promotion can create alternatives to be heard and assist curiosity develop, but it surely can’t assure that listeners will return. In some unspecified time in the future, individuals hunt down one other recording, bear in mind a reputation, inform somebody about it, or transfer on. You should buy one other alternative to succeed in them. You can’t bill them for enthusiasm.
The numbers are what the numbers are. Perceive how they occurred, be taught what is beneficial, and determine what to do subsequent. Refreshing the web page is just not artist growth, and treating each motion as a referendum in your profession is a depressing strategy to spend a life. I turned a composer to make music. There was no childhood dream of changing into an unpaid analyst for a Swedish know-how firm.
Canceling Spotify is a part of a a lot bigger digital detox. Fb, LinkedIn, Spotify, Tidal, and loads of others have been let go. LinkedIn is just not the middle of my enterprise life, and these platforms have grow to be largely noise to me.
I don’t have to fake that leaving them represents some monumental skilled sacrifice. Their relevance to another person doesn’t set up their relevance to me.
I’m an artist, and I take that distinction significantly. My work requires room to assume, hear, experiment, and observe an concept earlier than I do know what it should grow to be. Generally I stroll the canine earlier than reducing a piano observe as a result of the contemporary air and wagging tails retains me grounded in what really issues earlier than I hit “file”. I do know noise interferes with my course of. Eradicating it’s a sensible choice in regards to the situations during which I wish to work and dwell. I don’t owe each accessible platform a spot in my day.
No individual, apart from my spouse, is entitled to my time. A know-how firm actually is just not. Having an account doesn’t create an obligation to indicate up, reply, submit, or maintain feeding the factor. I’m allowed to be unavailable. I’m additionally allowed to spend a day making one thing with out reporting that I made it.
I want extra of my individuals — artists, mates, colleagues — valued their time extra. These firms actually worth it.
Our consideration is a worthwhile commodity that they accumulate, analyze, bundle, and monetize. We provide the minutes, the habits, and the curiosity. They flip that exercise into business worth whereas encouraging us to produce extra of it. “Engagement” is a nice phrase for an trade whose price we not often cease to calculate.
The subscription charge is just the seen a part of that price. There’s additionally the checking, searching, evaluating, and questioning what occurred whereas we had been wanting away. Even an account that contributes little or no can maintain demanding small installments of consideration. Sufficient installments add as much as a day, then per week, then an uncomfortable quantity of a life.
My time has worth earlier than someone figures out learn how to monetize it. It has worth when I’m composing, spending time with my spouse, listening intently to a recording, or sitting quietly whereas an concept takes form. None of these moments must generate a metric to justify its existence. I need extra of my life accessible for them.
My music remaining on Spotify is a part of this imperfect actuality. Am I a hypocrite as a result of I nonetheless take part professionally in a system I criticize?
No youngsters, canceling a subscription doesn’t resolve each contradiction and make the world a greater place. I can acknowledge that with out utilizing it as an excuse to alter nothing. Protecting recordings accessible to listeners and deciding the place to spend my private cash are selections with totally different penalties. I’m entitled to contemplate them individually.
So, sure, Spotify will survive my cancellation. And I’ll survive with out paying an organization I basically disagree with.
My recordings stay accessible as a result of listeners select the place they hear; that doesn’t entitle Spotify to my cash, my loyalty, or one other hour spent obsessing over its meaningless numbers. I provide music to the platform. I don’t owe it a subscription, and I’m finished complicated participation within the music enterprise with an obligation to finance its bullshit…
A person mentioned to the universe: “Sir, I exist!”
“Nonetheless,” replied the universe, “that truth has not created in me a way of obligation.”
Stephen Crane
