John Darko
The first order of business for 2025 was to cancel my Spotify Premium subscription. I’ve been a paid-up member of the Swedish streaming service since 2015. During that time, I have enjoyed:
- Spotify Connect’s extensive hi-fi hardware support. If a product offers network streaming, it usually does Spotify Connect
- the speed with which new music is added to Spotify’s library. Most major new releases are added at 00:01 on a Friday morning
- the general comprehensiveness of that library. Spotify has music that’s sometimes missing from other streaming services
However, in 2025, the time has come for me to say goodbye. The pressure to quit Spotify has been mounting for a few years already and I’m now at a point where enough has become enough. Here’s why.
No single item in this list was reason enough for me to quit Spotify but sat next to each other, they formed a picture of dissatisfaction…
STILL NO LOSSLESS STREAMING
Spotify first announced lossless streaming in 2021. Billie Eilish and Finneas signed off on the proposition with a high-profile video promo. Its arrival would be imminent. Let it flow! But Spotify failed to turn on the lossless audio tap. For four years, we’ve seen a steady trickle of ‘any day now’ rumour articles – often stemming from code leaks – and the occasional ‘coming soon’ update from CEO Daniel Ek. Spotify even removed the Eilish/Finneas promo video. At the time of writing, Spotify’s maximum streaming rate remains pegged at 320kbps Ogg Vorbis whilst many rivals – Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music – offer lossless audio tiers where the studio masters remain untouched by psychoacoustic compression. That compression is excellent but its shortcomings are evident to trained ears listening via decent playback hardware. Chasing that last few per cent of performance is fundamental to the audiophile pursuit. We operate at the margins. And sat next to the competition, Spotify comes up short.
APPLE MUSIC’S APPLE TV APP IS BETTER LOOKING
One advantage of Spotify’s (Apple) TV app is that it can serve as a Spotify Connect endpoint. If we don’t wish to navigate the UI with our TV remote, we can hand off the song playing on our smartphone to the TV to have it pull the stream directly from the cloud. That stream is fed over an HDMI ARC port to the DAC in our A/V receiver, streaming amplifier, streaming speakers or standalone D/A converter. And yet I find navigating Apple Music on the Apple TV using the Apple TV remote more enjoyable. The Apple TV interface is clean and uncluttered. It talks to minimalists. And you cannot say that about the Spotify app.
SMARTPHONE AND DESKTOP APP CLUTTER
Ongoing product development is necessary for any app developer but Spotify has tweaked its app so much in recent years that music must now compete with podcasts and videos for our attention. I suspect (but cannot prove) that Spotify would rather we listen to podcasts because they attract no royalty fee. Let us not forget that 2024 will be Spotify’s first profitable year since it was founded in 2008; and it has reached this point by ensuring income from its subscriptions and advertising exceeds any running/infrastructure costs and royalty payment costs. Driving down royalty payment costs remains central to its shareholder service.
ROYALTY PAYMENTS
I think it’s well-known that Spotify pays out somewhere between US$0.003 and US$0.005 per stream. Other services might pay out slightly more per stream — but not much more. It’s also well-known that most musicians earn a pittance from streaming. This has been covered endlessly in recent years but what really ground my gears in 2024 was Spotify’s demonetisation of its long tail: it no longer pays out royalties on songs streamed less than a thousand times. Spotify has reportedly done this to reduce the number of sub-$3 checks it cuts (1000 streams x $0.003 = $3).
STREAMING IS TOO CHEAP
If musicians are the biggest losers of the music streaming age, consumers are the biggest winners. Last month, I made my case that we don’t pay enough for ongoing access to almost every song ever recorded. If I ruled the world, Spotify (and its ilk) would charge $50/month for access to every song in its 100 million-strong library. Lower-priced tiers would then offer time-limited access to selected content. Releases would come and go, just as movies and TV shows come and go on Netflix. Many of us spend the same amount of money on Spotify each month as we do on Netflix but Netflix doesn’t give us access to every movie ever made. Blue Velvet, The Maltese Falcon and Enter The Void are not a click away.
GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
Tipping me over the edge to cancel my Spotify Premium subscription at the start of 2025 was Liz Pelly’s article for Harper’s Magazine. It’s a teaser for her forthcoming book on how Spotify is gaming its own system by padding many popular playlists with music made by ghost producers to whom it owes no streaming royalty. Pelly’s article is a must-read.
You might think it hypocritical of me to quit Spotify to send even less cash in the direction of musicians each month — but you would be wrong. I now spend approximately $500 per month on CDs and vinyl. That physical media spend is funded entirely by this publication’s affiliate link income. Whatever I make, I return to the system. I know this isn’t a realistic amount of money for most people to spend on music but dropping even a couple hundred bucks per year on CDs, records or cassettes would put more money into a musician’s pocket than streaming those same albums.
And yes, I still stream: I maintain an Apple Music account for my Apple TV, Android smartphone and iPhone 13 Mini, the latter to keep an ear on Spatial Audio releases; I subscribe to Tidal for its Connect service and Roon integration (which Spotify doesn’t do); and to SoundClound for higher quality streams.
The last word goes out to the audiophile niche where Qobuz chatter is liveliest. I don’t subscribe to Qobuz for two reasons: 1) its library isn’t as comprehensive as Apple Music’s or Tidal’s (many tracks/albums are missing but YMMV) and 2) the Connect service is so new that it has yet to generate broad support among streaming hardware manufacturers.
