I also left Spotify because of podcasts. I did not want to listen to podcasts, and they couldn't get that through their heads, shoving it down my throat, advertising it to me, even though I paid for an ad-free experience. Drove me crazy, so I left.
What did you switch to? I tried Tidal, loved the noticeably higher-quality audio, but there were two dealbreakers for me - no crossfade playback (for running) and no downloads to the desktop app (for travelling). I could just about have dealt with no downloads on the desktop app, but they actually removed the crossfade playback a while ago because, according to an official reply on their support forums "it didn't add to the customer experience", which to me seems like such a blatant lie to cover for something else like they found it difficult to do for some technical reason.
I switched to a combo: For myself, I'm back to a music library that I own. No DRM. For my wife, I signed up for Apple Music. She wants more variety than our library.
Thanks. I've been getting back into the Apple Music app a bit - I have a large library of CDs that I've digitised too, but I've discovered so much on Spotify over the years that I think I'd miss that side of it. I don't really have time to read music websites (and despite reading Melody Maker and NME quite a bit when I was younger) I find most of it overblown.
Like a sibling comment, I now also buy CDs and LPs of albums realeased in the pre-streaming era, depending on which format the album was made for. But I always immediately rip the CDs into FLAC because I'd forgotten how brittle they can be in terms of a slight scratch ruining one or more tracks.
And for more recent stuff that I really like, even if I hear it on Spotify, I try to buy it on Bandcamp or similar, so there's some cash going directly to the artist.
What all that doesn't solve for me is discovery, which I find is significantly better on Spotify than the Apple Music service. (Or the worse audio quality of Spotify compared to Tidal - my test album is always Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin. There's no hiding when it comes to the synth hi-hats at the beginning of Xtal.)
> Seriously considering just getting a record player so I can get rid of these middle men though. It's too much.
Do it! I started buying CDs again, and it's great. I get the best quality sound — we can argue about that another time ;) — all the music is _mine_, and after I convert it to FLAC for my walkman or iPhone (play via VLC) it's as convenient.
Companies have redefined advertising to exclude advertising for their own platform (and people will defend this for them and claim that "promotions aren't ads" or something like that).
At this point, we need a bill in Congress to establish that "ads are ads" and that "ad-free must be ad-free".
I came here to remind everyone that college radio streams are almost all ad-free and still a great means of music discovery.
Also many many many hobby/community radio stations streaming narrowcasts focused on your favorite obscure musical genre.
Radio.Garden is a fun place to behold the breadth and depth of what's available, right now, subscription free.
I wonder if that's a sign of things to come. Nowadays it's (in most cases) pay so you don't see ads, but in the future it will probably shift towards pay so you see fewer ads kind of model.
I mean Spotify already kind of does it with JRE. It doesn't feel right that he's got his own ads despite the very lucrative deal he got, and I'm still forced to listen to him drone on about yet another generic vpn service even though I'm paying for a subscription.