It’s time to air some grievances.
For a long time, this wasn’t a problem at all.
Two price hikes that close together don’t feel great.
Justin Duino / How-To Geek
The other problem is with what you actually get for the Premium price tag.
You could argue that Spotify Premium doesn’t really have many bonus “features.”
Instead, I feel more like I’m paying Spotify to stop holding basic music features hostage.
Poor Treatment of Artists
It’s no secret that Spotify doesn’t treat artists very well.
She specifically mentioned that streaming had “shrunk the numbers of paid album sales drastically.”
So, how much money do artists actually make on Spotify?
Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek
More recently, the max possible was$0.003 per stream.
That means some artists will literally be getting zero payments for their music.
Trying to Ruin Podcasts
Podcasts are one of the last nearly platform-agnostic forms of entertainment.
That’s magical, and Spotify is trying to ruin it.
See, Spotify didn’t just start letting podcasters publish their shows to the platform.
In 2018, the company acquired its first show, making it exclusive to Spotify.
You could no longer listen to it with your podcast app of choice.
Since then, Spotify has acquired a number of shows, making them exclusively available on the platform.
These are some of the most popular podcasts available today.
Platform-exclusive podcasts go against everything that makes podcasts great.
You shouldn’t need a specific streaming service to listen to your favorite podcast.
Why do I still use Spotify?
I’m a very “hands-off” music listener.
I don’t typically have something specific in mind that I want to listen to.
Rather than seeking out an artist or album, I seek out a genre or mood.
Playlists and mixes are my bread and butter, and that’s what Spotify does better than anyone.
These features take a lot of the thought out of finding something to play.
Or I can just let the DJ do his thing all day long and never touch Spotify.
When you only play specific artists and albums, you miss out of finding new stuff.
So many of my favorite artists nowadays have come from hearing songs in random playlists.
It’s not that other streaming services don’t also offer music discovery featuresthey do.
But Spotify just has so much more to offer.
So, I will continue to begrudgingly pay for the service in hopes of finding something better.
