From ever rising prices, to the lower-quality of streamed versus local content, to the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, pledging his money to fund "the European Dream," of AI war-tech, there are a growing number of reasons I want to quit Spotify and get an MP3 player in 2024.

It is no surprise to anyone still using Spotify in 2024, that it is slowly becoming more and more of an unpleasant experience as the price of the platform increases, while the quality of updates decreases. In the past year, there have been two price changes to the platform that has steadily been $9.99 since its launch in 2011, with the single premium plan now being $11.99 for those subscribed to the platform. Along with this, comes the ever decreasing quality of the platform for both premium and free users.

Spotify, for the last several years, has been known to have irritating, obnoxious, and overwhelming advertisements that are constructed purely to make users angry enough to pay a monthly fee to remove them, and is arguably the number one reason why anyone pays for the platform. But lately, with additions to the platform such as the smart shuffle reccommendations being the user's first option when shuffling a playlist (and apparently, it cannot be permantently disabled), making it merely annoying for premium users, and near-impossible for free users to find the songs they actually want to listen to, the user experience is plummetting. No longer are users downloading a platform that claims to make listening to music an easy, enjoyable experience, but one that ensures you will not enjoy your experience unless you subscribe, and even then, it's a long shot. Along with the fact that Spotify free users cannot select individual songs, but also must shuffle playlists in order to even access music on the platform, Spotify is ever clear in it's message: it wants to squeeze money from its users and dominate the music-listening experience.

Even Spotify premium users cannot escape in-app advertisements. Rather than simply offering up the user's music catalogue, both the premium and free versions of the mobile app and desktop client relentlessly push advertisements for podcasts, music, and audiobooks completely unrelated to the user's "taste profile," or the Spotify algorithm that claims to push music similar to the user's music catalogue in order to widen one's musical tastes.

Where does that Spotify money go?

Daniel Ek, multi-billionaire and CEO of Spotify, has a particular vision of funding the "European dream," and is executing this dream by pouring his money into big tech investors, including $1.2 Billion into Helsing, a European defense tech company that aims to use artificial intelligence in war. There is an ever growing use of artificial intelligence in war strategy, with the Israeli army using Google Photos' facial recognition in order to surveil Palestinian's in Gaza, as well as the Israeli government signing a $1.2 billion contract for Amazon and Google to further develop AI projects such as Project Nimbus. Huge tech companies are pouring billions into the development of AI in order to surveil people in war, which adds to the growing concern for the human right to privacy in a technocratic world.

Very little of the money Spotify generates from streaming and subscription plans gets paid out to artists, especially smaller artists. Previously, tracks used to generate less than a penny per stream, and with changes to their royalties system this year, there is now an eligibility system where tracks must reach 1,000 annual streams before being able to generate royalties. While most tracks on the platform qualify, it still leaves the smallest of artists out of luck when it comes to generating money on the platform.

What else is there to do?

There are many other streaming sites to play music from, sure, but there is no perfect streaming service. Streaming services pose limitations to the user experience in order to redirect money that would be going towards artists, and instead to corporate CEOs.  including poor audio-playback compared to local file playing, costing a monthly fee to play music (but not to own it), and an inability to have autonomy over your music collection.

Along with offering a poor user experience for free users, Spotify also offers a less-than ideal music listening experience overall. When you stream music over Spotify, music that would be played as a higher quality .FLAC or .WAV file directly from your device, is instead compressed into lower quality formats in order to support streaming your music over WiFi. Essentially, by listening to your music on Spotify, whether you have the free or premium plan, the music you are listening to is a compressed, lower quality audio file than if you were to listen to the music via your local files. Streaming content also requires a data connection, whether it is over WiFi or mobile data, and only the Spotify premium plan allows users to download music (not as a local file onto the user's device, however) and listen without a connection. Playing local .MP3, .FLAC, .WAV, or other audio files does not require an internet connection in order to play high-quality music.

Since none of the music a user listens to belongs to them, and they are merely paying to access the catalogue of music hosted on the platform, songs are often subject to being pulled from the platform or appear unavailable to users in different countries. I myself have experienced songs I frequently listen to on Spotify being greyed-out and unplayable at times, which would never happen if I played music directly from my own catalogue.

You might be thinking, "So, what, are you getting an MP3 player? It's 2024!"

And to that, I say: Hell. Yes. Well, kind of. I would love to find an MP3 player for the isolated experience of being able to listen to my music without ads and without shelling out more of my money to big, greedy corporations, but I don't currently have a separate MP3 player device other than my phone, which will do in the meantime. Using a phone works just as well as using an MP3 player in terms of playing and storing local files, although in using a phone I may be subject to data charges and such.

Although I'm not old enough to have remembered the age of cassette tapes, I have always been a fan of having a physical music collection, whether it be CDs or vinyl records. In fear of looking like a pretentious dork, no, it's not because I think it looks cool, but because I listen to music for the sake of listening to music. I live, breathe, eat, and sustain myself on listening to music; music is my lifeline. A world without music is no world for me, and I want to cultivate the most enjoyable musical experience for myself, one free of the hands of greedy middlemen who seek to dominate the experience for capital gain.