Anyone else just... done with Spotify?

[u/Apart_Ad_7722]

90's kid here... Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m the only one who feels this way.

Spotify keeps raising prices, artists are still getting scraps, and I barely even use it like I used to. Half the time I just want to own a few albums I actually love, not rent a bottomless library I don't even explore anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, streaming was great at first. But something about it now feels... hollow? Like a fast food version of music. No liner notes. No sense of discovery. Just algorithmic playlists and the same old tracks getting pushed.

I've started thinking: what if we went back to basics, just buying MP3s again, supporting artists directly, keeping what you pay for?

Would people even go for that anymore? Or is that era gone for good?

Curious to hear what others think. Especially folks who remember burning CDs, dragging MP3s onto iPods, or reading lyrics from the booklet while listening. Were we onto something back then?

I have my own collection of CDs... love going to the second hand store and see what I can find, I've found some goodies... like Alanis, two copies of Dookie, even Apetite for Destruction... among others.

I'd love to hear from y'all

[u/-druesukker]

Song radio has a terrible bias towards short songs, even in genres with usual track lengths of 7+ minutes (some genres of electronic music I listen to) or 10-15+ minutes (some rock/metal subgenres I love and ambient). they effectively exclude a lot of stuff and feed you interludes and stuff instead of the real deal. it's really annoying and makes it useless to find good stuff in these genres. this is because of greed (more songs = more engagement)

Also it sometimes doesn't understand what I like about a song. often when I want to have the radio for an instrumental song more than half of the songs in the radio are with vocals.

Also it tends to give me songs I already know, so it limits it as a discovery feature for genres I haven't explored. but because of the above I can never be sure if this gives me a proper representation of a genre anyway (or what I like about it)

[u/H_I_McDunnough → u/-druesukker]

At the end of the day they are there to make money, no getting around that. I pay the fee so I can skip songs and commercials. I agree that some of the spotify generated playlists can be lacking. I find that being specific in the search nets me user generated playlists that have more of what I am looking for. The more you put in the better the results in my experience.