Personal essay by Milo Openshaw

I’ve used Spotify since early high school (and, dare I say it, before Spotify was cool.) Before Spotify, I was an iTunes junkie. For every holiday and birthday, I asked for iTunes gift cards. Most of the pocket money I saved would go towards buying digital albums and playing them on a hand-me-down iPod.

When I heard about Spotify, I was immediately enchanted. What do you mean, I can play whatever song I want just by searching it? This wasn't like iTunes, where you could only hear 30-second clips of songs you didn't own, or like YouTube, which I also poked around for badly-edited lyric videos and nightcore covers. Spotify promised a massive collection packed with more songs than I could ever listen to in my lifetime. Of course I signed up!

My collection of playlists grew. I spent hundreds of thousands of hours listening to music every year. I watched with joy as more of my friends got Spotify accounts as well, so we could share and listen to each others’ playlists. I discovered so many artists I never would have encountered otherwise. Spotify succeeded in democratizing the music industry to an absurd degree. No matter if you were recording songs on your laptop in your bedroom, or you were signed with a record label, you had the same shot at having your music be heard around the world.

And then... you know. We broke up.

Cracks showed in Spotify's beautiful face. I learned more about the company’s practices the longer I was on the internet; that artists who uploaded their music rarely even made minimum wage on their uploads. Still, I reasoned, at least I was listening and supporting their work through, and if I really liked their stuff, I'd go see them in concert if they came to my city. The Spotify algorithm also grew strangely cluttered. Plus, the CEO, like most CEOs, was a freak and a weirdo and investing in nuclear weapons, for some reason. Why do CEOs do that shit? They’re actually all freaks!

As I grew older, I shifted from a vaguely central-democratic political bubble to the far left side of the spectrum. Boycotting became part of my everyday routine. There are plenty of chain restaurants and stores I refuse to step foot in unless necessary, so if Spotify was such a shitty corporation, why didn't I act like it was a Starbucks, and just leave?

Spotify felt like a safe space. A soft, dark nest. Music is such an integral part of my life, I couldn't just abandon the platform I had grown up with. All my playlists and album collections were personal works of art, carrying emotions and memories of mostly-forgotten places. Some of my most vivid memories are tied to music. And besides, no ethical consumption under capitalism, right? It's not like I can cut ties with every single company whose business practices I don't agree with. That's literally impossible. I’m just one guy. Might as well keep my precious playlists and suck it up.

And then, my last straw: Generative AI.

In the early days of Generative AI, in which my only experience with it was making my OCs on Artbreeder (if you know you know,) I thought it was sort of cool, but flawed. Then as I learned more about it, the more my discomfort grew, until I felt a pit in my stomach every time someone mentioned ChatGPT. I was a teaching assistant while I was in graduate school, and the second semester I taught, almost half my class submitted AI-generated essays. As I frantically ran each essay through several AI checkers, refusing to believe my own instincts, this moment felt like a betrayal of trust. (Although I don’t blame any of them. I blame the system.) Not only does GenAI steal work from millions of hardworking artists, writers, and creatives, but it robs users of the joy of creation, of learning from their mistakes, and making work that feels distinctly strange and wonderful and human.

I learned in the past couple of years that Spotify (allegedly) has been promoting "ghost artists.” These musical ghosts lurk in official Spotify-curated playlists of mostly instrumental music. If you tap on their profile, a few albums might show up, but search their name on Google and you’ll find no evidence they exist. That's because Spotify (allegedly) both employs their own musicians to compose music, and/or uses AI to generate nonoffensive songs for their own playlists in a matter of seconds. These plastic-flavored songs (allegedly) send users’ money and attention not to musicians, but back to the corporate giant Spotify itself, diluting the already tiny pool of artists' revenue, investing more money in weapons and GenAI.

I've been trying so hard to distance myself from AI, I've even switched to a dumbphone (a fliphone limited to calling and texting) to try to avoid social media and the avalanche of machine-generated slop that now exists on the Internet. That’s how desperate I’ve become. I couldn't believe that my beloved Spotify could be so greedy! So against my own values! But I continued to use it, because that’s where my music was. Where part of my life was, basically.

My friend texted the group chat this summer: "Does anyone know any alternatives to Spotify?"

I said no, but my interest was piqued. I had become so reliant on Spotify that I hadn't even considered that there were other options. My friend looked into a few different apps, and finally settled on Tidal. They suggested that I switch over too. I said: "I'll do it if you will too." I was irrationally scared. I felt like I was abandoning an old friend. I really needed somebody to hold my hand.

(The process was actually pretty easy. There's a service that lets you transfer all your old Spotify playlists to a Tidal account. There truly is an app for everything!) 

About a week after the two of us had left Spotify, they started to run predatory ads paid for by the American government. We knew we made the right choice.

Tidal is pretty much a Spotify clone. You can share user-generated playlists, which is the most important part to me, although it lacks some of Spotify’s streaming speed with its higher-quality sound. In case you’re thinking of switching, you should also know that collaborative playlists are gone, “listen-alongs” are impossible, and the price is a few dollars more per month. I’ve also heard Youtube Music is a good alternative.

But another ethical dilemma has come up in my life: yes, Tidal's policy pays artists more money per stream, but it's still a subscription-based service. I don't actually own any of the music I listen to.

Are we going to keep paying these companies until we die, to use their products, which are millions of miles away from us and could be altered or destroyed without our consent? Can you imagine how easy it would be for us to slide farther into facism, as experimental or anti-establishment songs can be quietly deleted from your favorite platform under the guise of making the platform safe for children and advertisers, until all you’re left with is Taylor Swift’s latest inoffensive cash grab, one Beatles album, and a couple hours of Lofi Beats to Relax / Study To?

I don’t know. I hope not. I don’t want that.

I've been getting into physical media recently. I have a collection of CDs, cassettes, and vinyls, and I've even been recording my own playlists from Tidal onto cassettes to listen to on a secondhand Walkman. I got back into my old iTunes account and painstakingly downloaded thousands of hours of music onto a flashdrive. It's a long and slow process trying to take back control, but I'm happy that I've started.

The moral of this story is that you do have a choice. FOMO isn't an excuse anymore. If you believe that you're being taken advantage of, it's your right as a human being to step away from the relationship, and ask yourself if staying is worth it. A common argument I see is that “well, I’m just one person, so my dollars don’t make a difference to these multi-billion dollar companies.” And yes, that’s true. But consider this: you can and should influence the people around you. Your actions can inspire someone else to change their own life. Corporate greed thrives on where our money goes; slowly, person-by-person, we can make a difference.

The music industry is weirder than it has ever been. TikTok simultaneously corrupts bands and promotes them. Artists are growing even more undervalued and unappreciated as GenAI infects not just social media feeds but the real world as well. Also, Ticketmaster is a motherfucker, generally. Yet despite it all, you have the power to make what you want, listen to what you want, and support who you want to support. It’s up to you whether your comfort app matters more to you than the small possibility of shifting the music industry away from this downward spiral.  But either way, please, I’m begging you on my hands and knees, attend local concerts. Save the media you love onto a format you don’t subscribe to. Stop by a thrift store and pick up a few CDs.

The change won't start with Spotify – it'll start with you.