Goodbye, Spotify

I'm done with Spotify - there are way too many UX issues with that nowadays.

Spotify Begins

I first got Spotify in 2017, when my wife, who then worked at Amazon, got an Echo device. Back then, Amazon’s integrations were such that the only music we could play on that was through Spotify (I think this was before Amazon Music existed). So I was made to cancel my Apple Music subscription in favour of that.

It was a crazy couple of years, since we steadfastly refused to get a family subscription (maybe that didn’t exist on Spotify then?), instead somehow coordinating so that we maximised family welfare when it came to music. On weekends, my wife would go to coffee shops to write, and I’d want to put our daughter to bed at home, and we would keep trying to steal each other’s music!

In any case, back in the day, Spotify’s recommendations and playlists were great, and I was hooked by the algorithm, and the quality of the Discover Weeklies. Soon I started using Spotify for podcasts as well - the UX is far superior to that of Apple Podcasts, which needlessly downloads all subscribed podcasts, thus clogging up the phone storage.

Things start turning

Maybe it was sometime earlier this year that I noticed that Spotify’s UX started getting worse. Playlists were stale. Recommendations were boring - it suddenly wasn’t showing me music that wasn’t in my regular listening already, but stuff that I might like.

And then a couple of months I found that the Mac desktop app had gotten worse - suddenly it was only recommending podcasts (maybe lower royalties there?) at the expense of music - and despite it knowing that I’ve NEVER listened to podcasts on my Mac (only on my phone).

A few friends suggested that given I already have YouTube Premium, I should just use YouTube music. I was sceptical, having tried using Amazon Music in the past. And then sometime last month I snapped.

I suddenly decided to not renew Spotify Premium Family subscription (we upgraded to this in 2019) and switched to YouTube. My wife, having bought a new iPhone earlier this year, was eligible for 6 months free of Apple Music, and she activated that (though she continues to use Spotify Free instead, saying the ads don’t bother her).

Atrocious UX

Last week, I had another whim - I suddenly decided that because I’d logged off Spotify, I wasn’t listening to podcasts any more (as I told you, I’m not that big a fan of the Apple Podcasts experience), and so decided to reactivate Spotify (the UX is worth the extra ₹180 per month, I reasoned). This time Spotify lost me for good.

I suddenly found that it had no memory of my family, and I had to add each one again. I had forgotten how painful it was to add family members on Spotify - they have had a lot of false positives on non-families sharing accounts, and they’ve made it incredibly cumbersome for families in response.

I also remembered how it had sometime suddenly refused to let my daughter have her own account - saying she wasn’t eligible for that since she isn’t 13. Rather than making the effort to set up my family account, I decided to cut losses (₹180 for a month’s family subscription), and cancel Spotify, this time surely for good.

An app that doesn’t treat returning customers well doesn’t deserve commission. There was another thing - the other day, in the metro, I tried to put on music, only to realise that when I cancelled my premium subscription lsat month, it had deleted all my saved downloads (and not bothered to re-download them again when I resubscribed). Another point of bad UX.

Over the last few weeks, YouTube music has grown on me. It isn’t that bad after all. And so I’ll continue to use it.

What I should do for podcasts, you tell (I realise the reason I’ve not listened to podcasts in the last month has primarily been that I’ve not driven or commute much - nothing to do with Spotify).