It's the apathy that absolutely does me in. Artists, bands, music industry people, shitposters on Instagram - everyone's been banging on about what a total shitshow Spotify is, has been and continues to be for a while now, and it's largely just been met with an almighty shrugging of shoulders, and carrying on, because 'well yeah, but I've got my playlists on there, and I like my Spotify wrapped!', despite the arms tech investments, despite the meagre royalties, despite the sacking of their editorial team, despite the [demonetizing any song lower than] 1,000 plays thing, despite the creaking tech that's full of bugs, despite the adding audiobooks so they could argue for an even *lower* royalty rate, despite the general cheapening and disconnection of music, despite the explosion of shitty AI slop, despite one man masquerading as many different artists being responsible for a huge royalty payout by juicing the system, despite the literal owner of the platform claiming that 'content' doesn't take any money to make these days, despite everything, despite all of that. But people just think it's a bit of fun. And you can scream it from the rooftops, but it's hard to snap people out of it. I mean, I'd understand if spotify was the only game in town, but it's clearly not - you've endless supplies of streamers if that's what you want. Hell, you could even just go back to buying things too, but if you want to keep streaming, you've so many other options - Tidal, Deezer, Apple, Bandcamp, Amazon, even fucking YouTube - it's not hard to just switch up. It's the weakest amount of pressure that's ever been applied to anyone's life, but people still seem so resistant, so hesitant to ditch it.
Gavin Miller, aka electronic musician worriedaboutsatan, "what were the skies like when you were young?", december 2024
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