When we started Hearing Things last year, one of the many questions we asked ourselves was: Should we even be on Spotify at all? As longtime music journalists, we had all covered the streaming wars in one way or another, and we knew Spotify was often singled out as the company with the worst track record. According to countless artists and reports, their per-stream rates are pitifully low compared to their competitors. Their playlist-centric strategy takes music out of context and relegated it to the background of people’s lives. Their sound quality is butt. They engage in practices that seem a lot like a modern version of payola. And there was that one time Joanna Newsom called the company a “cynical and musician-hating system” and compared it to a rotting banana. “It just gives off a fume,” she said. “You can just smell that something’s wrong with it.”
Our values as a publication—pro-worker, pro-artist, pro-active listening, anti-villainous corporations—did not align with many of Spotify’s actions and policies. At the same time, more people listen to music on Spotify than any other platform, and we wanted to make any playlists we put together as accessible as possible. So we reluctantly started paying for a Hearing Things Spotify account. But a couple of days ago, we canceled that paid subscription, and we will no longer be making playlists on Spotify or linking to the platform. It feels great.
So what finally pushed us over the edge? Well, a lot of things.
