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About a year ago I quit Spotify and started buying all the music I listen to, I wrote an article explaining why at the time but I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a bit of an update on that and give you a guide on how to quit music streaming yourself.
Life without Spotify has been great. I don’t miss having it at all. Without a streaming service to serve me unlimited music I have control over what I listen to. Music has an incredible influence on our mood, I don’t think anything can change our mental state easier than music can. Sad music will make us sad, and angry music will make us angry, but calm music will calm us down and happy music will cheer us up. If you are not in control of the music you listen to you aren’t in control of your mental and emotional state.
When you have instant access to virtually every song ever made you don’t feel like you need to be careful about what you are listening to. If a song you don’t like comes on it isn’t a big deal because there are millions of others for you to switch to. But if you had bought that song and come to realize you didn’t like it or it put you into a bad mental state it is painful because you wasted money on it. This pain is good because it causes you to be more careful about your music selection. Over time this pain motivates you to get better at selecting music and the end product of this is a music collection that you love and keeps you in a good mood.
When you have access to unlimited music a single song becomes replaceable content. If your music library is limited, each song is a piece of art that you have a personal connection to. Every once in a while I find myself with access to Spotify or something like that and while I could take advantage of that and listen to anything without limitation I’d rather listen to my music because it is mine.
I’m not the only one out there who has reported great results from quitting music streaming, you can search all around the internet for people quitting Spotify or switching to an iPod and feeling way more connected to the music they listen to and way less distracted by an algorithm that doesn’t have their best interest at heart. While I personally think switching to an iPod takes things too far (unless you are addicted to your phone) this video series is probably the best I’ve seen on the topic of ditching Spotify and I’d recommend taking a look.
But how do you go about quitting Spotify? I’ve had a lot of friends tell me that they could never quit Spotify because they listen to too much music and the investment to replace that would be way more than simply paying for Spotify does. If this is your mindset I’d invite you to consider if you need to be listening to that much music in the first place. I’ve found that when it comes to music less is actually more.
If you are ready to quit music streaming and to build your own music library start small and build slow. There are two reasons for this. First it is cheaper that way, you don’t want to drain your wallet on music so your initial investment into your music library should only be about thirty bucks this should last you a month or two. After that feel free to pick up some more songs every once in a while, as long as you’re spending less money per month than you were on Spotify you’re doing just fine. The second reason to start small and build slow is that it allows you to form a deeper connection with your music library; I lack the words to describe to you how great that is.
To do this carefully pick out your favorite thirty songs and buy them. If you aren’t ready to make the jump away from Spotify then put your thirty favorite songs into a playlist and see how long it takes for you to need more music, challenge yourself to live off of your thirty favorite songs for a week, then a month. If you can manage that then you can cut the chord from Spotify.
Now I realize that in the context of old iPod advertisements with lines like, “Thousands of songs in your pocket” and of course the, “Millions of songs anytime anywhere” that streaming gives you thirty songs is not a lot. But in reality thirty songs is between two and three hours of music and that’s plenty. These aren’t just any random thirty songs, these are your thirty favorite songs, songs you don’t mind having on repeat.
But you need to be careful when selecting these songs, they can’t just be ones you like they have to be ones that keep you in a good mood. Remember music has an incredible power over your emotions and mental state. You might love Taylor Swift but you shouldn’t buy any of her breakup songs because they can throw you into a bad mental state. It is okay to listen to those songs every once in a while, but only when you deliberately seek them out, having a song like that sitting in a playlist where it could come on and change your mood at a random time is incredibly dangerous.
On another note, you might have a great gym playlist that gives you the motivation that you need to push through the pain of your workout. I think it is a great idea to take advantage of music’s power to change your mental state like that. But you should never listen to that playlist, or any of those songs, outside of the gym. You need that push that music will give you when you are struggling through your last set; you don’t need it when you are stuck in traffic trying to get home after a long day at work.
As you become more mindful of the music you listen to you will find that a lot of the music you listen to now doesn’t really fit into your life, that is a good thing, there is a lot of music that shouldn’t be a part of your life. I don’t listen to a majority of the music that I used to listen to, and still like, because I don’t like the way it could make me feel at the wrong time.
Ultimately you should be in control of all the media you consume. I was working on a broader article on that topic when I decided focusing in on music would probably be more helpful for you. Quitting Spotify may have been the best decision I made all year. At the time I did it just to save money, and it has saved me money. Lately I’ve been buying songs at a rate of about one per week, the average price of a song is one dollar, which brings me to spend about $52 per year on music, a lot less than the $144 a year’s worth of Spotify’s standard subscription costs and still less than the $72 a year that the student plan costs. (Those are $12 and $6 a month now, not the $10 or $5 you probably thought you were paying.)
But after experiencing what it is like to have my own personal library I could care less about the money. I’m a lot more calm now that I’m in control of my music. I feel more connected to someone when I learn they enjoy the music I carefully selected for myself. And my music is now art that I enjoy listening to rather than just noise I put on in the background. I actually look forward to putting it on in the car when I drive.
I invite you to ditch music streaming and start curating your own music library. If you aren’t ready to make that jump yet then try my 30 song challenge; see how long you can go on your thirty favorite songs, you’ll be surprised by how far they will take you. If you need a separate playlist for the gym or something that’s fine, just limit it to ten songs that you only listen to there.
Be more mindful about the music you listen to. Music has the power to change your life, it already is changing your life. Don’t listen to the wrong music, the best way for you to prevent yourself from doing that is removing your access to it. Ditch your music streaming service, start buying your own music, and enjoy the art again.
The folowing addendum is not found in the Substack version of this post which has a different target audience than this website.
I realize that many of you in my regular audience probably weren’t Spotify users in the first place, I congratulate you for that. You’ve probably realized that you aren’t the target audience for this particular post but you have friends who are, at an appropriate time do them and me a favor and share the Substack version of this post with them. It is better optimized to be read on their smartphone and less likely to be blocked by their work wifi.
Some of you may have had the thought while (or even before) reading this that piracy would be a good alternative to both music streaming and buying music. It is not. Firstly it is illegal and it is my responsibility as an internet personality to tell you not to do illegal things, but it also takes away the benefits of buying the music. And I’m not talking about whatever rights your digital license will give you. The biggest benefit of buying music (or anything really) is that the fact you have to pay for it forces you to consider if that song you are looking at is really worth spending your money on, if it isn’t then you shouldn’t be listening to it.
Piracy robs you of that opportunity to be mindful about what you listen to just like music streaming does. Sure piracy can get you a music library independent from big tech music streaming services but that is not the point of this whole thing. The point is for you to have your own specially curated music library of which you enjoy every piece. When people pirate things they have a tendency to collect more than they consume which puts you into the same sort of meaningless music selection that Spotify would give you. Your goal in quitting music streaming is not to avoid big tech, it is to avoid bad music.