I Quit Spotify

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Main Sources of Frustration with Spotify

  • Frequent UI changes break established workflows; users report more friction to play their own music and fewer obvious paths to their library.
  • Features regress or break: local file playback, offline/airplane mode, queueing behavior, and laggy “add to queue” are recurring complaints.
  • “Smart shuffle” is widely disliked, both for behavior and for being hard to avoid.
  • Increasing clutter from podcasts, audiobooks, and videos, which many music-focused users neither want nor can hide.

Algorithms, Discovery, and Album vs. Playlist Culture

  • Some feel locked into repetitive, low-effort “algorithmic slop” (e.g., generic lo‑fi), suspecting Spotify favors cheap-to-license or promotional content.
  • Others praise Spotify’s recommendations, especially for certain genres, and use stations and mixes heavily.
  • Strong debate over albums:
    • One camp treats music as individual tracks in big playlists and finds album-centric UIs burdensome.
    • Another defends albums as the primary art form and views track-only listening as shallow, sometimes in overtly elitist terms.
  • Desired but missing feature: shuffle by album (play whole albums in random order, preserving track sequence within each).

Artist Compensation and Business Model

  • Some users quit or avoid Spotify on ethical grounds, citing much lower payouts per stream than Apple Music or Tidal.
  • Discussion of “Discovery Mode” as a modern form of payola: artists accept lower royalties for boosted exposure in algorithmic playlists.
  • Others focus more on UX than ethics, but acknowledge Spotify is squeezed between customers resisting higher prices and labels demanding royalties.

Alternatives and Self-Hosting

  • Major service alternatives mentioned: Apple Music (better library focus, lossless, parental controls), YouTube Music (mediocre but stable; good for uploads and rare tracks), Tidal (sound quality, artist pay), Deezer (stable, less clutter), Pandora (strong radio-style discovery).
  • Non-streaming approaches: Bandcamp and other download stores; carefully curated local libraries from CDs, Bandcamp, and rips.
  • Self-hosted or niche tools: Navidrome, Airsonic/Subsonic forks, mpd, Foobar2000, Roon, Winamp-style players, album-centric apps on iOS.
  • Several note that migration tools (e.g., web apps to sync playlists between services) make leaving Spotify easier.

Parental Controls and Content Safety

  • Multiple reports that Spotify’s family/child controls are inadequate: unfilterable video podcasts, TikTok-style compilations, and explicit “ASMR”/porn-like content bypassing “explicit” flags.
  • These issues led some families to cancel Spotify and switch to Apple Music, which they report as safer for children.

Broader Product & Industry Critiques

  • Complaints of “too many PMs and marketers” chasing engagement metrics, portfolio pieces, and lateral changes rather than stability or long-requested basics (e.g., lossless, better controls).
  • Some still find Spotify’s mobile/web app and discovery superior to competitors, highlighting that dissatisfaction is significant but not universal.