Spotify has seen unbelievable development since its launch in 2006, taking the music trade from reliance on bodily gross sales and purchasable downloads into the world of streaming. It has over 400 million subscribers, and for good cause—it is an extremely handy option to eat music, irrespective of the place you might be.
That stated, Spotify is in no way excellent. There are many the reason why you won’t need to use the service, whether or not it is internet hosting questionable content material, unfair artist payouts, or lacking options.
Listed below are all of the the reason why you should not use Spotify.
1. You Do not Personal Something
Although Spotify does supply free membership, it exists primarily as a option to encourage folks to enroll in a paid membership. However despite the fact that you are handing over cash, you do not personal any of the content material on Spotify.
Primarily, you pay for a proper to entry the music briefly. Spotify or its artists can pull the music at any time and there is nothing you are able to do about it. Similar for if the service suffers an outage or ever shuts down completely. That is completely different from, say, shopping for a vinyl, which you personal indefinitely.
2. Music Lacking From the Catalog
Spotify claims to have over 82 million tracks hosted on its platform. That is numerous music, however it does not imply that every thing you need is out there. Spotify has gaps, particularly in relation to older music, classical items, and remixes.
Plus, music would not at all times keep on Spotify. Artists like Joni Mitchell, India Arie, and Neil Younger are all lacking from Spotify on the time of writing. In 2014, Taylor Swift famously pulled her music from Spotify for a number of years, although she finally reversed the choice.
3. Annoying Advertisements for Free Customers
When you subscribe to Spotify, you get a totally ad-free expertise. Nonetheless, to help the free membership, Spotify runs adverts between your music. That is completely comprehensible—it could actually’t supply the service with out limitations.
Nonetheless, the regularity of those adverts, typically after each two songs, is infuriating. Many customers additionally report that the quantity of those adverts is louder than the music.
The free tier additionally solely performs music on shuffle (aside from some playlists), which ruins the crafted expertise of listening to an album starting to finish.
4. No Lossless Streaming
In February 2021, Spotify introduced it might carry CD-quality audio to the service via a brand new HiFi tier, however that also hasn’t come to fruition. At the moment, the best audio high quality Spotify provides is 320kbit/s for paid subscribers.
The corporate hasn’t talked a lot about it since then, merely acknowledging in February 2022 that Spotify HiFi has been delayed resulting from licensing points. It is an unlucky state of affairs contemplating that Apple Music and Amazon Music Limitless each supply lossless streaming at no extra price.
5. Historical past of Safety Breaches
Spotify has suffered its justifiable share of safety breaches and points over time. Some examples embrace:
- In December 2020, Spotify notified some customers that their private data (together with electronic mail, password, and date of beginning) was uncovered to some enterprise companions.
- In Might 2014, Spotify introduced it had been hacked, although claimed just one person’s knowledge was accessed. It pushed an improve to its Android app and required everybody to replace.
- In March 2011, a Spotify advert injected a faux Home windows Restoration program to person’s computer systems, with out them needing to click on the advert.
6. Internet hosting Misinformation
In early 2022, Spotify courted controversy over supporting Joe Rogan, a podcaster on its platform whose earlier episodes contained COVID-19 misinformation. Whereas Spotify eliminated among the extra troubling episodes, a lot remained.
Spotify’s dealing with of misinformation on its platform has been typically weak. Spotify added written content material warnings to some podcasts, however these are straightforward to miss and do not do sufficient to curb the unfold.
7. Forcefully Pushing Podcasts
Do you need to hearken to podcasts? No? Spotify is not . In a means, Spotify cares extra about podcasts than music. When you try a single podcast on Spotify, episode suggestions instantly flood your feed.
Plus, the house display screen of Spotify prominently shows a podcast “Reveals you may like” part, which you’ll be able to’t delete or take away. It simply means you must scroll additional and search extra to really discover music.
8. Poor Artist Payout
Each time you hearken to a music on Spotify, round 30% of the income goes to the streaming firm. Spotify then pays the rights holder between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, although that varies per nation.
Roughly, an artist can anticipate to make $3,500 per a million streams. Because of this solely the preferred artists make any actual cash from the platform. It devalues the artwork and signifies that most musicians want to show to different income avenues, like excursions, bodily gross sales, and merchandise.
9. Arbitrary Characteristic Removing and Interface Modifications
Spotify modifications its interface repeatedly. A few of these are small modifications, like tweaked icons. Others are bigger, like when Spotify redesigned all of its apps in 2021 to be in keeping with its extra primary net participant.
Many noticed this as a step again. Now, for instance, the Spotify app has no persistent search bar, and albums aren’t listed in launch date order on artist pages. It means it takes extra clicks to do issues.
Spotify is infamous for arbitrarily eradicating options or making interface modifications that go towards what customers need. For instance, although Spotify provided real-time lyrics in 2015, the much-loved characteristic was pulled and solely returned in late 2021.
10. Restrict to How Many Songs You Can Obtain
At one time, Spotify solely allowed you so as to add 10,000 songs to your private library. For music lovers, it was an inconvenient limitation. Fortunately, Spotify eliminated the restrict in 2020.
Nonetheless, that limitation nonetheless holds in relation to what number of songs you possibly can obtain for offline listening on Spotify. The service solely permits you to obtain 10,000 songs per system (as much as 5). In case your music assortment is bigger than that and also you journey away for lengthy intervals of time, it means that you must make sacrifices.
Are Different Music Streaming Providers Superior?
These negatives aren’t all distinctive to Spotify. A few of them, like not proudly owning music or paying musicians a pittance, are issues that plague the music trade as an entire. However for those who’re not a fan of Spotify, you may discover one other streaming service like Amazon Music or Apple Music is healthier suited to you.
Learn Subsequent
About The Creator
