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The Real Problem With Spotify
As a way to play music, it was better in nearly every way. Spotify then became my favorite way to listen to music. Recently though, I’ve found myself hating Spotify. The app loads slowly. Music no longer plays instantly. The interface is riddled with recommendations, podcasts, audiobooks, and other junk that I don’t care for. I have to restart the app more often. It forgot its core identity — being a music player.
Arun Venkatesan
Like Arun, I too was a fan of Spotify. Even before it became a streaming giant, it was just a small green dot that allowed me to share music from my desktop with others who also had the green dot on their desktops. It was kludgy, but very cool. Then it turned into a streaming company — and its fortunes changed. I used it every day, up until 2022, when I couldn’t take it anymore.
The simple, easy-to-use streaming app had become hot garbage. It was yet another company that exists not for the delight of its customers, but instead for its stakeholders. “Spotify isn’t alone — a growing number of services are deprecating user experience in favor of their urgent financial growth needs,” I wrote at that time, pointing at Uber, Door Dash, and Apple as examples of companies cramming nonsense down our screens.
I switched to Qobuz, but it wasn’t reliable. Now, I am using Apple Music, which offers hi-res streaming and allows me to download music for listening in offline mode. Apple Music wasn’t my first choice, but now I feel a weird satisfaction from using it as my default music service.
It’s my way of saying f**k you to both Spotify and the European Union, for ruining what was essentially a safe experience for consumers. No matter how you look at it, we are staring at very messy app store ecosystems. I’m not sure this will change Spotify’s fortunes much.
As a former customer, I wish Spotify would spend half the energy it has used to moan about Apple’s app store monopoly on creating a better customer experience and making me love the service. Then, at least, I would re-signed for the service. I would then have a reason to feel emotionally invested in the company.
January 28, 2024. San Francisco
4 thoughts on this post
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I agree with Spotify no longer being as good as it was, and I too have moved to Apple Music.
But: “It’s my way of saying f**k you to both Spotify and the European Union, for ruining what was essentially a safe experience for consumers.”
It’s not clear to me from this post what the EU has to do with Spotify getting worse. What am I missing? Thanks!
What were the issues with Qobuz? I downloaded bed on your recommendation, but never signed up. Recently looked fit some of my favorite songs from a recent trip to Cape Town and it was missing the African DJs that I loved while there. Spotify has those songs. Don’t want to give up my iTunes match subscription as the are a bunch of late 90s cds I have on there, that aren’t on apple music, or spotify.
The biggest problem I am having is that their API is so weak and breaks when working with bridges like Sonos. I don’t know if noticed: downloading tracks for offline listening was an amazingly backward process — keep the app open and on to download music. That was such an old way of doing things. It showed the company is not technologically able to keep up with times.
Also they don’t have a lot of ambient music in their catalog anymore! I think maybe they don’t have the resources to convince the distributors and labels to be part of QoBuz. I don’t know why. I would still put up with lack of music, if the service itself was reliable.
Tangentially related, but your post makes me think of my Garmin watch. I used to love checking my stats after running in the trails. Something like this: distance, time, heart rate, perhaps elevation.
At some point, probably driven by competitors (Suunto, Coros, others) the number of stats began to increase. Last time I checked was in Sep 2022 and the thing was spitting out 48 (yes, forty eight) metrics: vertical oscillation, cadence, etc.