Spotify ruined music forever, but I can’t stop using it
Summary
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Spotify pays tiny royalties per stream, and many artists, especially independent ones, earn next to nothing.
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Spotify turns listening into passive consumption with playlists, shuffles, and hit-first algorithms.
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Yet I remain hooked because of the convenience and free service.
Spotify is the most popular music streaming service of all time, so it’s no surprise to anyone that it has changed the music industry forever, and especially not for the better. It has changed the way artists release music and the way we listen to it. Yet despite everything that’s wrong with Spotify, I still can’t stop.
Spotify has had a negative impact on the music industry
Spotify’s impact on the music industry is long and controversial. In fact, it’s so large that it has its own Wikipedia entry of over 7,000 words. One of the biggest controversies is how much artists make from Spotify.
While Spotify and other music streaming services have made music more accessible than ever to the general public, making music free has also hurt artists who were already making pennies on the dollar with record sales. According to Free Your Music, Spotify pays between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, and a good portion of that goes to the artist’s label. The artist gets an even smaller share.
For example, popular rapper Snoop Dogg claimed a few years ago that he received less than $45,000 for a billion streams. Spotify countered, saying it was paying between $3 million and $5 million per billion streams. The truth probably lies somewhere in between: it’s possible that Snoop Dogg only received a tiny portion of the total royalties based on his contracts. But that doesn’t change the fact that he is the artist and, despite that, he didn’t get the lion’s share.
Snoop Dogg is still rich, so Spotify revenue probably doesn’t matter too much to him. For independent artists who release music independently, revenue from Spotify is still quite small and likely won’t contribute significantly to their finances. That’s one of the lowest compared to services like Tidal and Apple Music, which don’t offer a free tier but pay artists about twice as much. These tiny payments sometimes result in content takedowns by smaller artists, although they are not the only ones.
Spotify’s policies outside the music industry may also cause artists to remove their music. For example, several artists, including my favorite band, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, removed their music from Spotify after CEO Daniel Ek led a €600 million (approximately $693.6 million) investment in Helsing, a German defense technology company that develops AI-based autonomous weapon systems.
Another area where Spotify has hurt the music industry is streaming quality. Services like Deezer and Tidal have offered lossless audio streaming for years, but Spotify only added this version for Premium users in October 2025 after years of teasing.
Although the practical benefits of lossless quality are hotly debated, the consensus is that it sounds slightly better with the right audio equipment. Regardless, given the price Spotify charges for Premium, this should have been available years ago.
Even now, it’s not perfect. Spotify’s lossless goes up to 24-bit/44.1kHz, while many other services reach up to 24-bit/192kHz. I won’t go into detail here, but YouTuber The Headphone Show did a great comparison that’s worth checking out if you’re interested in learning more.
Spotify has transformed music listening into audio consumption
One of the main reasons people hate Spotify is because it actively destroys musical creativity. It’s certainly added a lot of fuel to the mass-produced pop music fire: labels are pushing artists to make short, catchy songs so they get lots of covers, with Spotify feeding you recommendations on the homepage. Worse yet, it often favors certain songs based on their popularity and your listening behavior by featuring them in more of its shuffle playlists and even in the shuffle algorithm itself. If Spotify is the reason you’re tired of a particular song you initially liked, you’re not alone.
I don’t know if it’s just my experience, but I listen to a lot of mixes that Spotify makes for me, and it’s almost always the same old stuff. At first, I loved listening to these mixes because they introduced me to artists who make music similar to what I already love, but now it’s an extremely rare occurrence for me.
I’ve also noticed that it tends to prioritize 4-6 of the most popular songs from an album by an artist I like, while ignoring the rest. I only realized this after listening to these albums manually. When I open an album and listen to it, I discover that it contains several songs that I have never heard even though I knew the words to the other songs on the album by heart.
Speaking of album listening, this is another area where Spotify has diminished the music listening experience. Until Adele’s clash with Spotify following the release of her album 30 in 2021, Spotify automatically shuffled albums. In fact, this is still the case on the free version on mobile.
This deeply harms the music listening experience without the average user realizing it. Artists place a lot of emphasis on the order of songs on an album, so generally the best way to enjoy an album is to listen to it in order, from start to finish, especially when it’s your first time. This way you can experience it exactly as intended.
Having started doing this earlier this year, I can confirm this. Unfortunately, Spotify’s auto-shuffle on mobile means you’ll either have to change devices or go elsewhere if you don’t want to pay for Premium. Perhaps we hope that Spotify will improve the experience on mobile by making it more similar to the free version on PC. Just a few months ago, Spotify’s mobile app was even more limited. It was limited to shuffle mode and you couldn’t search for a song recommended by your friend or choose a specific track from your playlist.
Because of these shenanigans, I’ve largely abandoned the mobile version of Spotify. Instead, I listen to my limited selection of old MP3s and YouTube Music when I’m at the gym or on the go, which isn’t that often.
Spotify upgrades free accounts with new features
You decide what you listen to now.
Why I still use Spotify
Although Spotify isn’t a great app for either users or musicians, I’m still addicted to it and there’s no end in sight. The bottom line is convenience: Spotify starts automatically on my PC and always has a selection of familiar mixes ready for my enjoyment. Plus, most of my friends use Spotify, which makes it easy to share songs, and we love comparing our year-end Spotify Wrapped stats.
And perhaps most importantly, Spotify is free. Even though I listen to music for hours every day (especially when I’m working), I avoid subscription services as much as possible. And frankly, Spotify’s $12/month individual plan seems like an added value compared to other services. Even YouTube Premium’s $14/month plan seems like a bargain in comparison, as it also includes ad-free offline listening on YouTube Music.
- Subscription with advertisements
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No advertising on any paid plan
- Price
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Starting at $11.99/month, or $5.99/month for students
Spotify is a pioneer in music streaming. It offers an extensive library, impressive bitrate, curated and personalized playlists, and offline streaming. Spotify is available for free and for a monthly or annual fee.
