Is Quitting Spotify A Moral Imperative?

Or is perfect the enemy of the good?

If there’s one thing we’re obsessed with on the left, it’s being as ethical as possible.

If there are two things we’re obsessed with, it’s making sure everybody knows just how ethical we’re being.

That leaves very little room for imperfection.

I Stopped Paying for Spotify... Now I Might Go Crawling Back

A year ago, I wrote about my failed attempt to quit Spotify. With every ICE ad and AI-generated track, using the behemoth streaming platform becomes less and less defensible. And yet even as I watch many others (very publicly) cancel their subscriptions, and even as my own guilt accumulates to a fever pitch, I’m still forking over my monthly fee.

How can I – how can anyone – possibly justify it?

Increasingly, the implication¹ is that it’s not possible. Either you stop using Spotify (and probably all streaming), or you don’t care about artists, full stop. In other words, divesting has moved from the realm of “preferable” to “morally mandatory”.

I saw a TikTok (stay with me) a while back that questioned the familiar refrain: “I’d be vegan except for the cheese”.

@itsmekateveeI never talk about veganism very explicitly but I’m just saying if it’s one thing stopping you then just like don’t be stopped, do it except for the one thing

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The young woman in the video shruggingly implores us: “If that’s how you really feel, DO IT. Nobody’s stopping you. Go vegan except for the cheese.” Like, what’s the problem? Why are we so all or nothing? Isn’t perfect the enemy of the good?

“I don’t know when we all got consumed by the need to portray “goodness” but it sure is making everyone seem like performative bores. We know that our online personas are just shells of who we are; yet, we focus so much on how to present these shells. As if all the facets of a person can be summed up in one Instagram profile.“ -Carré Kwong Calloway

Personally, I’m sick of being told that using streaming is tantamount to not giving a shit about musicians.² But I wanted to recruit somebody with a more finely calibrated moral compass to discuss that question with me.

I'm changing the way I listen to music

Lavender Sound (Max Freedman): I think the idea that using streaming means you don’t care about artists, or that you’re a bad person, completely lacks nuance and grace.

For as long as we’re forced to participate in capitalism, streaming is the most comprehensive way to access recorded digital music. None of the passionate music listeners I know have enough money to buy all the music they want to listen to. They can’t afford to be virtuous people who avoid Spotify.

It’s only through streaming that you can test-drive an album before buying it. The days of hearing a couple of singles on the radio and buying the CD before having heard the rest are gone.

Gabbie: I’m an outlier, but I’ll still use myself as another example. I pay for Spotify (and Apple, and Tidal, and Qobuz, and SoundCloud, and YouTube) because that’s where my audience is and I want to make music discovery accessible to the most people in the most places. I also only link out to Bandcamp on my actual posts whenever that’s possible to do (and hundreds of people buy albums and concert tickets because of my recommendations).

Because Spotify’s catalog is largest and their UI is easiest to navigate, especially for playlists, having my “curation headquarters” on Spotify is what makes sense for me right now, especially while I can’t quit my day job to do this. It sucks, but until I’m able to devote my life to music curation full time, I have to stick to what saves me the most time.

Convenience is often overlooked in these conversations, but it’s probably the biggest reason people stick with streaming even when they’re opposed to it in theory.³ We can talk about morals all day long, but there’s not much more to it than that. The average consumer puts their needs first. Introduce any kind of friction point, and you’ll lose.

This is why I balk at the “quit Spotify or you’re a monster” implications. Is literally everybody who chooses their real life convenience over a stranger’s theoretical livelihood, regardless of the context around it, morally bankrupt? A sizable portion of you currently reading think the answer is “yes,” even though we all do this every day.

But what I actually want to ask you —

Does opting out actually make a measurable difference in a world where artists are still reliant on this system?

Lavender Sound (Max Freedman): Oh yeah, I’m under no illusion that if I alone canceled the one music streaming subscription I have (YouTube Music⁴) it would make a sizable, impactful difference. I do think that if a mass of other folks were to join me, then there would be an impact, but we’re talking tens of millions.

“Spotify won’t notice my individual absence from its platform any more than Amazon missed my online orders or Walmart has noticed I don’t ever step foot within its doors. The point is that I sleep better knowing my own small, everyday decisions are made with as much socially positive forethought as possible.” -Tony Fletcher

I feel that my actions are making a tangible difference because it puts me in a position to eventually be part of a mass movement to compel these platforms to listen to their users’ wants and needs, ranging from “stop being fascists” to “pay your artists.” That mass movement isn’t here yet, but maybe, just maybe, my example can encourage others.⁵

On a related note:

To what extent do you think it’s incumbent on us to educate our readers and the broader listening public?

I’m thinking of my one friend who’s as passionately far-left and up on the news and ~discourse~ as I am but didn’t know that Spotify was running ICE recruitment ads until they saw me post about it on my Instagram story.

Gabbie: I think of fast fashion as an analogous example. I regularly see comments on social media brushing people off as annoying or even ableist/classist for pointing out how problematic it is to buy fast fashion. Plenty of people are perfectly aware that companies like Shein effectively employ slave labor, but the call of the $5 dress is just too strong to resist.

Photo by Viktor Drachev\TASS via Getty Images

I’d go so far as to say that streaming is the fast fashion of the music world.

It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s constantly being churned out in mass quantities, it’s delivered to us instantaneously, and we are prone to consuming it without regard to the artist/designer. Maybe we haven’t reached peak educational saturation yet, but I don’t think the reaction will be different. Shein isn’t going to suffer and neither will Spotify.⁶

I’m not trying to say that it’s pointless to educate people. Just that awareness doesn’t automatically change behavior, and even when it does, it usually impacts us more than it impacts “the system.” And if awareness doesn’t reliably change behavior, it’s hard to argue that divestment is morally mandatory rather than morally admirable.⁷

Lavender Sound (Max Freedman): I do think there’s something to be said when folks using Spotify or other platforms don’t know about their ethical problems. The bliss of that kind of ignorance is pretty American, like real “living in the core of empire” vibes, to be communist about it, It feels icky that anyone could consume things without knowing about the awful actions and beliefs of the companies whose products and services they’re buying. No matter how well-meaning that person is.

But I get that the effect of my withdrawal from streaming has been more on me than on anyone or anything else. I wouldn’t say being off streaming has done me harm, but it does mean that I haven’t listened to, say, a full U.S. Girls album in a while, since they’re among the handful of artists who only allow a few songs per album to be streamed on Bandcamp. It’s a big-time change to my relationship to music consumption.

That’s a problem I don’t yet know how to solve without buying every album that I’m at least a little bit interested in. My budget is limited, which means that I’m not as able to invest time in releases I’m enjoying at first blush but might come to absolutely love with further listens.

What’s inarguable is that streaming platforms offer unparalleled music access.

Do you think that being against streaming also equates to being against widespread music access?

Gabbie: I’ve written before about intentional listening or putting parameters around listening, so it’s not inherently bad to set limits. However, limitation doesn’t mean lack of access.

If we want new artists to succeed, we should also want it to be easy to access their art. This is the anti-gatekeeping ethos, after all.

It’s noble to want to dismantle a system that inherently devalues that art, but realistically it’s also impossible. Once Pandora’s box is opened, the monsters don’t go back inside.

It’s worth noting that the growing desire for “old tech” - the children yearn for analog, I’m told, and there’s a growing interest in things like modding iPods with bluetooth and modern storage capacity.

But with the odd exception, this generally happens alongside streaming, not as a total replacement.

In any case, I don’t want to give up just because I refuse to take a purely black and white position on this. Quitting is admirable, but is it a requirement?

How can people “go vegan except for the cheese” when it comes to getting rid of streaming?

What are some things we can do if we actually do care about artists, but aren’t ready to divest from streaming completely just yet?⁸

Lavender Sound (Max Freedman): My gut response is that the streaming equivalent of going vegan except the cheese is just to use the free version of Spotify. I can’t think of another option even though I don’t necessarily like it for myself.

The free version of a streaming service will break up the albums I’m listening to with ads, and that interferes with my listening experience. I’m always listening to music when I write or edit. For example, before I bought CMAT’s EURO-COUNTRY, I tried streaming it on YouTube while writing. The ads were completely disruptive to my work, but they wouldn’t be if I were cooking, walking, or exercising.

I think it’s worth bearing the ads to not have a cap on the number of times I can listen to a release before buying it, which will continue to be my ultimate goal for releases I truly love. And of course it’s worth it to increase the chances of the artist gaining a fan, even if they aren’t getting paid.

Hold me accountable — this will take me a while to start doing.

It does feel like admitting some amount of defeat in my quest to quit streaming.

After all, these platforms still make money off ads. As a passionate music listener who also writes about music, I need to stand in this unfortunate middle ground.

Gabbie: The world is one big gray area, and that’s a great place to start.

I have a few other ideas, though, mostly leaning in to the idea that things don’t have to be all or nothing. Hopefully readers can add their own.

1. Pause your subscription every once in a while. If you can’t go free completely, fine. Pause for a month now and then. Use the extra money to buy an actual album.

2. Don’t subtract; add. If money isn’t the main concern, then make this an additive exercise. If you’ve listened to an album more than X number of times (two, three, ten) then it’s time to buy it. Test out a few less problematic streaming services and see if you prefer them, then make the switch.

3. Go to more concerts. Go early and see the opener. Buy merch.

4. Stop listening passively. Don’t use AI-generated playlists. Sign up for bands’ mailing lists. Read their newsletters. Donate to their Patreons. Whatever! Just be more engaged.

5. Promote and participate. Write about music if you like writing. Share bands on your social media if you’re on social media. Tell your friends IRL if you’re not.

What’s your version of “vegan except the cheese” when it comes to Spotify?

1. Actually, it’s usually said outright!

2. If promoting almost exclusively small new bands to thousands of readers every week doesn’t count as supporting musicians, then I actually give up.

3. Say what you will about Spotify, but the user interface is intuitive, it’s got most of the features that people want, and compared to other streaming services, it frankly just works better most of the time. There are basic things like availability of tracks, ease of making and finding playlists, and discoverability of new music that can make or break the usability of a streaming service.

4. I hate to break it to Max, but YouTube also runs ICE recruitment ads.

5. Relatedly-ish, Max is currently listening to Lambrini Girls via Bandcamp’s streaming function since buying their album Who Let the Dogs Out. Frontperson Phoebe Lunny would surely have thoughts on what we’re talking about.

6. For what it’s worth, I don’t actually buy any fast fashion, and indeed buy almost all of my clothes secondhand. But I don’t have anyone else wearing my clothes the way I have thousands of others listening to my playlists. So my playlists stay on Spotify (and Apple, Tidal, YouTube, Qobuz, and SoundCloud). I pay for ALL the streaming! Maybe that makes me that much more evil!

7. I’m getting into way too many examples, but I feel I should mention the conceit of The Good Place here — the idea that there are negative unintended consequences to absolutely every action, and that everything we do in modern society is inextricably linked to some morally indefensible practice. We’re all critiquing streaming from smartphones built through their own compromised supply chains. So either we give up and admit we’re all hypocrites, or just allow the possibility of improvement over perfection.

8. Or maybe ever, if you’re willing to admit it.