I'm really struggling with reasons to stay with Spotify. Yes, I've known for ages that they treat their artists poorly with low, unsustainable payouts but I was able to ignore that, or to rationalize it away. "Sure, that sucks and I wish it were different, but that's something for the artists and the platform to work out amongst themselves." Also, everyone else is getting all this content for next to nothing, why shouldn't I?

People have complained about how Spotify selects the artists it promotes in playlists, but I have never relied on Spotify playlists for new music recommendations. Okay, except maybe for the "Release Radar," which is but one of several sources I monitor for new releases. I've always created my own playlists and curate them to my own personal interests and satisfaction.   

But the more you learn, the worse it gets. Spotify apparently uses a pro-rate system to pay artists based on the "market share" of total streams rather than a fixed price per stream, leading to some very low payments for many artists. Worse, there are allegations that bots have been used to inflate the number of listens for popular artists, padding their payout while diluting the payments to others. 

Then there's the use of AI generated music in playlists to create product for which Spotify doesn't have to pay anyone, and some artists even claim that AI generated tracks have appeared on Spotify under their names, although they had nothing to do with creating the music and don't receive any money.     

As if all that weren't bad enough, Spotify's CEO has reportedly invested the company's profits in developing AI for military applications, so that the money getting diverted away from the musicians is being used to fund the global military complex. 

A lot of artists that I like but frankly don't listen to all that much have pulled their music off of Spotify, such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Sylvan Esso, Deerhoof, and Xiu Xiu.

I could live with that, but some of my absolute favorite artists have moved off the platform too, including The Necks, Thor Harris, Jim O'Rourke, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And today I learned that John Zorn has removed the entire massive Tzadik catalogue, which he had only put up there just a few years ago (2022?). Notice that the "play" buttons don't work anymore on the post just below this one.  

Do I really want to subscribe to a platform that treats its talent like shit and uses its profits in ways I find morally abhorrent, but also that doesn't even have some of my absolute favorite artists anymore? 

When put like that, it sounds like an easy, slam-dunk decision, but there's still a lot of music on there that I do like, and it's one of the easiest and most reliable ways for checking out new recordings and new musicians I haven't yet heard. And at only around $10 per month, it's still a relative bargain. I've had my cursor hovering over the "End Subscription" button several times already, but every time I back away without cancelling.

For whatever it's worth, I also enjoy exploring and listening to new music on NTS radio, and I can always use YouTube and Bandcamp to check out new releases or access other streaming services. I have about 850 MBs of digital music stored on an external hard drive and have a literal closet full of more CDs than I could possibly listen to in a lifetime, including both store-bought discs I've been accumulating since 1990, as well as tracks I've burned from sources like Napster and UseNet which are even more ethically questionable than Spotify.

To help goad me ointo leaving, today I purchased the brilliant three-disc, three-hour-long new album, Disquiet, by the long-running Australian band, The Necks, through Bandcamp. It cost $20, cheaper than three separate CDs although still more than whatever micro-fraction of my monthly Spotify bill it would have been, but I have the added satisfaction of knowing that I'm financially supporting the artists. 

And not funding the AI war machine.