Now That You Have Your 2024 Spotify Wrapped, Stop Using Spotify

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It’s no secret that people love Spotify. For ease of listening, ease of discovering, and ease of use, in-general. And that’s how they getcha. They make it as easy and seamless as possible, so that you’ll protest less when they announce things like, “We’re not going to pay artists anymore.” (since November 2023) And maybe this doesn’t mean much for artists who make new music, and then upload to streaming, and then receive billions of streams with little effort … but it’s important to everyone else.

I’m intentionally writing this on Bandcamp Friday, because a single sale on Bandcamp is equal to something like three years of streaming an artist’s work on Spotify. Three years. I’m not trying to lend any weight to Metallica of the early 00s who rallied against Napster due to them believing that a downloaded album is a loss of payment, because it’s not (if someone can’t or doesn’t plan to buy your music, and pirates it instead, it’s obviously not a lost sale). But, when you can, and if you can, you should buy the music that you enjoy.

On top of that, Spotify and Joe Rogan have an exclusive streaming deal that goes on through 2025, and if you’ve been alive and awake for the past seven or eight years, you already know why Joe Rogan is a guy who sucks and is a pile of garbage.

But maybe, just maybe, in this new era, we can convince ourselves that just because something is easy, or just because it’s something billions of people do, doesn’t mean it’s something we have to do.

If you’re an Apple fan, Apple Music pays all artists, regardless of amount of streams, and I believe Tidal and even Youtube Music does, as well!

I’m personally a fan of Apple Music, but mainly because all of my devices are from Apple, except for my Linux PC, and Dell laptop that I’ve got Debian 12 running on. And Apple also does another thing that makes total sense, and separates Podcasts in a different app, so that you aren’t shuffling around music and podcasts at the same time (yes, I’ve used Spotify and felt really cumbersome tapping around both types of media). But, you don’t have to use Apple stuff, you can just use one of the other ones I mentioned, … even though Google isn’t exactly a great company anymore, either.

Regardless, buy the music you like, stop using farking Spotify, for the love of garsh, and support artists in your day-to-day life. Make it something like … a 2025 resolution.