I have paid my #Spotify subscription for years but I canceled it today.
Because:
1) The money artists receive from Spotify is shit.
2) Experiencing music on Spotify or on your iPod/CD player is much different.
This is what has been happening to me:
-in an ocean of music to choose from, rather than enjoying the moment and the song I am listening to, I've started thinking about what I am missing out and it's really easy to get bored and quickly go from one song to another before the first one is finished.
-if I don't particularly like a song in an album the first time I listen to it I tend to very easily skip it. Before, the songs I wouldn't like the first time I listened to them often became my favourite ones in the album, after a proper listen. Acquired taste, they call it. And now we just eat fast food.
-when I only had my CD library to choose from, I never went blank when I had to choose what to listen. Now it takes me a couple of minutes to choose.
This is what has been happening to me:
-in an ocean of music to choose from, rather than enjoying the moment and the song I am listening to, I've started thinking about what I am missing out and it's really easy to get bored and quickly go from one song to another before the first one is finished.
-if I don't particularly like a song in an album the first time I listen to it I tend to very easily skip it. Before, the songs I wouldn't like the first time I listened to them often became my favourite ones in the album, after a proper listen. Acquired taste, they call it. And now we just eat fast food.
-when I only had my CD library to choose from, I never went blank when I had to choose what to listen. Now it takes me a couple of minutes to choose.
3) The stream quality of the music can't be always good (when you're not on wifi or if you have a bad connection). That takes A LOT from the songs, even if you don't realise. Why do artists pay shitloads of money to get good studios and instruments, and mixing and all that shit, if at the end of the game you're going to listen to 96 kbps mp3 because you don't want to go over the data allowance of your phone?
4) The fact that we give for granted that that music is just there and we can have it whenever we want and as much as we want is harmful for both the listeners and the makers.
For the listeners because music becomes obvious and is given for granted. As a result, we don't feel as much as we did before, when it was a choice: we chose to listen, we chose what to listen, and it wasn't an easy choice, because we didn't have all the money in the world to buy all the albums in the world. That way, when we could buy one, we would treasure it, the whole experience of going to the shop, opening the case, reading the booklet, listening to the songs for the first time, just us. Me and the music. It was a magic moment, that rarely happens now.
It is harmful for the makers too, because they are not given the proper rewards and recognitions. But I'm going to leave this here, because I'm a maker and I don't want to make a biased speech.
For the listeners because music becomes obvious and is given for granted. As a result, we don't feel as much as we did before, when it was a choice: we chose to listen, we chose what to listen, and it wasn't an easy choice, because we didn't have all the money in the world to buy all the albums in the world. That way, when we could buy one, we would treasure it, the whole experience of going to the shop, opening the case, reading the booklet, listening to the songs for the first time, just us. Me and the music. It was a magic moment, that rarely happens now.
It is harmful for the makers too, because they are not given the proper rewards and recognitions. But I'm going to leave this here, because I'm a maker and I don't want to make a biased speech.
Call me nostalgic, but I miss all that, and with that £10 I was giving to Spotify I'd rather buy even only one record per month. That will give me less choice, but a better quality. I won't rely on a system that doesn't recognise the massive emotional, intellectual and magical power music has.
I think we need to rethink all this and rediscover what music truly means, to give it the importance it deserves in our lives and in society.
I think we need to rethink all this and rediscover what music truly means, to give it the importance it deserves in our lives and in society.
Now, what do YOU think?
