This was one of the last books I read in 2025 and finished yesterday. I read it in a little over a week.
I really struggled with this book as I have over the years with the very concept of Spotify. It really was some essential reading and the author, a music journalist, writes a fascinating analysis of the inner workings of this popular streaming service. She has many interviews with former Spotify employees, musicians and listeners. She goes into great detail describing the motivation of the company and their justification for the so-called playlist. Also the way the company treats musicians and their creation of their data gathering algorithmic mood inducing "ghost artist" which are actually fake bands.
I really felt like immediately dropping my Spotify account. I first started using Spotify in 2017 after I retired and was no longer acquiring lots of new music. I used it as a way of keeping up with current music that I was interested in by going online to my usual music sites like AllMusic and Pitchfork and looking at their new release section. Then I would put those albums in my Spotify album library to check out later.
I also found a third party software that took all of my playlist on iTunes and transferred them directly to Spotify. So I was using Spotify to get access to my personally created playlists and I was not using their playlist. I did try a few of their system created playlists that were based on my Spotify listening but it was mostly a rehash of my own playlists with a few of the new songs from those albums I had added to my library. I was not listening to any of their background mood music playlist at all.
Another Spotify playlist that I started listening to a few years ago was their weekly collection of classical music new releases which I have continued to enjoy.
But now I'm considering what to do about Spotify after reading this book. I am really now looking for an alternative to both Spotify and iTunes. Apple has given up supporting iTunes and in my opinion has actually made it so bad in an effort to drive users to their Apple Music and their other Apple iPhone related products which I am avoiding like a plague but that's another story.
No comments:
Post a Comment