How Streaming Has Impacted My Relationship to Music

I jumped on the Spotify bandwagon as soon as it released in 2014 and it easily became my go-to app for listening to music. It’s honestly a little hard to remember a time without it. I remember CDs and the transition to iTunes and the iPod (which came with downloading songs off YouTube and Limewire) but then it starts to get fuzzy. As the years went on and the subscription prices went up, I never questioned if there were alternatives or if my listening habits were being shaped by the platform.

On a random day in my local bookstore, 50 Watts, I came across “Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist,” written by music journalist Liz Pelly, and my curiosity peaked. What is Spotify doing that I don’t know? How can an app that lets me listen to music alter my listening habits?

I have a lot of feelings about the book as a whole, but the chapters focusing on Spotify and their business practices left me feeling pretty uncomfortable. Pelly talked about how little artists were getting paid due to strict NDAs with record labels and offering “prime playlist” spots for reduced royalty rates (keeping in mind that the average is $0.003/stream.) Then, they realized the market for passive listeners. If people were just putting playlists on in the background for a vibe, they wouldn’t notice if they flooded the playlists with “fake” songs. They started hiring “ghost artists” to create songs with strict guidelines: we want it to sound like this for this playlist. Pelly quotes an unnamed former employee who remembers from the mid-2010s, during which the CEO of Spotify reportedly said “Apple Music, Amazon, these aren’t our competitors. Our only competitor is silence.”

I felt so betrayed. Without even realizing it, I’d gone from choosing what I felt like listening to (was it a Jesse McCartney or Bruce Springsteen kind of day?), to putting a random playlist on shuffle and not thinking of the music or artists behind it. Last year, I had 61,638 minutes listened on Spotify. That’s approximately 42.8 days! Thinking back on my year, I had my headphones on all day, everyday. On the train, at work, running, going for a drive, cooking and eating dinner, and on and on.

Now, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with passive listening. I love a good running playlist (and am making one for when I get better at rollerskating) but I don’t want that to be the only way to engage with music. I’ve noticed that discovering new music got harder and harder because every playlist had the same stuff (because labels were paying for prime spots without telling us!!). I stopped using Release Radar and Discover Weekly two years ago after getting fed the same genre over and over. Also, not only does Spotify have the worst audio quality of all music streaming apps, it is also the most expensive!

There’s so much more in the book Mood Machine, but what really stuck with me is the conversation it started with myself of how I choose to listen to music. Am I trying to fill the void? Or do I want to actively listen to an album from start to finish? If I like an album, am I buying merch or a physical copy?

I’ve collected records for close to 15 years now and love the act of putting on a record; the intentionality of choice and the patience of listening through for your favorite song. I love listening to an album cover-to-cover and noticing the ways it changes with each track, especially when they transition into each other! In an effort to get closer to this, I bought a SONY CD Walkman off eBay and found some of my favorite albums (as well as ones I wasn’t familiar with to boost variety). I also moved from Spotify to Apple Music. I know, I didn’t say I had all the answers. I’m just switching from one streaming service to another but I find Apple easier to burn my CDs and access the iTunes store, I enjoy the live radio channels, and find switching from “Apple Music” and “My Library” more accessible. I’m having so much fun organizing my library, adding album art, rating the songs and deep diving into artists.

I’m grateful for this book jumpstarting the conversation about how my engagement with music has changed over the years. I think this is necessary, especially considering how social media is designed for me to continue using (and scrolling) without asking any questions about what is happening behind the screen. I think there is a time and place for passive and active listening, but I want to make sure I’m keeping my taste open and supporting artists where I can. 

Also, it’s just really nice to own something again in a digital age where companies are writing into the terms (like Kindle) that you do not own the digital items you buy. These CDs and records are mine and no one can take that away from me.