I deleted Spotify. More accurately, I finally deleted Spotify. It was a long time coming.
I had been paying Spotify monthly for about eight years until, in the wake of the Joe Rogan controversy, I stopped paying. But this isn’t about Joe Rogan.
Likewise, I knew Spotify was troublesome when it came to properly paying artists for playing their music. I’d read multiple stories featuring bands and singers complaining about the ridiculously low amount of money Spotify paid in royalties to play their music. It annoyed me. I thought twice about whether I should keep Spotify. To be blunt, it didn’t affect me because I was too lazy to do anything about it.
That’s the thing with subscriptions and routine. I had my favorite albums saved. I had discovered new bands through Spotify’s algorithm. I had my work playlists, my work-out playlists, and my writing playlists. I even had a playlist with 3-minute songs so I could shadow box in my apartment during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. It felt like too much work to upend all that for a different music service.
Even when Neil Young initially pulled his music, I didn’t immediately join the #DeleteSpotify movement because it didn’t seem like it would mean much. Then, Spotify doubled down.
I work in public relations and my current company does crisis communications work. The first goal in any crisis situation is to limit the damage. A very basic Crisis 101 approach is to apologize for what you did wrong, and outline specific steps to ensure what you did wrong won’t happen again.
Instead, Spotify CEO Daniel Elk did none of that.
The company’s first public statement about the situation did not include an apology for sharing or platforming vaccine misinformation. By writing, “Pick almost any issue and you will find people and opinions on either side of it” the company was literally going with the “both sides” approach to explain why they were going to side with Joe Rogan over Neil Young.
Most importantly, they were choosing Joe Rogan and his fans over the millions of people who, like me, listened to Spotify for music and not podcasts.
At first, the prevailing wisdom indicated Spotify was right. More people listen to Joe Rogan than Neil Young. Online boycotts rarely impact the bottom line, right? In fact, a Washington Post story about the situation explained why Spotify was right, closing with a quote from an analyst that aged like milk in the San Diego sun:
“I think it takes a lot for people to switch platforms. I’m not sure if anyone aside from the top 1 percent of Neil Young stans are going to do that.”
I don’t think I ever listened to a single Neil Young song during my 8+ years of having Spotify. I deleted Spotify because I couldn’t support that company any longer, not to keep listening to Neil. It’s unfair to say it’s only because of the CEO’s response, because I had thought about it previously. But his comments snapped me out of my laziness and caused me to spring into action.
I’m writing this as I listen to one of the bands I found on Spotify - the Maudlin Strangers. I have no idea who they are and where they went. I liked a few of their songs from 2017 and 2018. Thanks for the help, Spotify. Today, I’m listening to them on Tidal.
Moving my playlists over wasn’t that time-consuming either, with a multitude of sites, like tunemymusic.com, that can move over smaller playlists. I had one giant playlist that I had to break up into smaller playlists to transfer over. I’d say it took 30 minutes in total to move all of my songs over from Spotify to Tidal. As a bonus, my wife and I were both paying for Spotify, so we’re now on the same account and saving money each month.
Maybe I should thank the Spotify CEO for being a jerk?
The Joe Rogan controversy is still chugging along nearly two weeks later, and it’s only gotten worse. Old clips of him being racist, sexist, and misogynistic have resurfaced. More episodes of his podcast have been taken down. The nonsense about “cancel culture” has rolled through social media like a freight train, despite Joe Rogan notably not being canceled.
Thankfully, I don’t really care anymore. Spotify can spend as much money as they’d like on Joe Rogan. God bless America, that’s their right. I’m not canceling Joe Rogan. I canceled Spotify. God bless America, that’s my right.
Spotify will continue to deal with this for years ahead because those canceled subscribers aren’t coming back. Once you antagonize your customers to go find a better option, the likelihood is that they will. Unless you have something no competitor can offer, the likelihood is that they will be fine with their new option.
My playlists sound very much the same on Tidal as they did on Spotify.
Spotify chose Joe Rogan. I chose to leave. What a time to be alive.
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