In recent years, Spotify has become almost synonymous with digital music streaming. With over half a billion users globally, it is, for many, the default way to discover and listen to music. Yet, behind the glossy playlists and carefully curated recommendations, a growing number of critics—artists, journalists, and listeners alike—are speaking out against what they see as Spotify’s deeply flawed approach to music. For some, these criticisms have reached a tipping point, prompting bold decisions to walk away from the world’s biggest music streaming service.
Hearing Things, an independent music publication, recently made headlines when it announced that it would be leaving Spotify for good. Their decision is emblematic of a broader movement: a reevaluation of how we value music, and who really benefits from the current streaming ecosystem.
The Playlist Problem: Turning Music into Background Noise
One of the central critiques Hearing Things levels at Spotify is its “playlist-obsessed model.” On the surface, Spotify’s endless supply of playlists—tailored for every mood, activity, and subgenre—seems like a music lover’s dream. But beneath this convenience lies a troubling reality: music is increasingly being treated as background noise, a disposable soundtrack to our daily routines.
Spotify’s algorithms and curators organize millions of songs into digestible lists, often stripping them of context, meaning, and the stories behind them. For artists who have poured months, even years, into crafting an album as a cohesive statement, seeing their work reduced to a single track in an anonymous playlist can be demoralizing. Listeners, too, are encouraged to “lean back” rather than “lean in,” passively consuming whatever comes next instead of engaging deeply with the music.
Hearing Things argues that this model is at odds with the values that drive passionate music fans and the people who dedicate their lives to making music. For them, quitting Spotify is a stand against the commodification of art and a call to rediscover music as an experience worthy of attention and context.
Audio Quality: Good Enough Isn’t Good Enough
Another major complaint from Hearing Things—and many audiophiles—is the audio quality of Spotify’s streams. Despite years of promises, Spotify still lags behind some competitors when it comes to sound fidelity. The platform’s compression algorithms may make streaming smooth and fast, but they do so at the expense of sonic detail and richness.
For publications and listeners who care deeply about how music sounds, Spotify’s “good enough” approach just doesn’t cut it. Hearing Things dismisses Spotify’s streaming fidelity as “butt,” bluntly highlighting the platform’s prioritization of convenience over quality.
The Shadow of Modern Payola
The music industry has long been plagued by payola—the practice of record labels paying radio stations to play specific songs, often at the expense of other artists. While the digital era promised a more democratic approach to music discovery, critics argue that Spotify has simply reinvented payola for the streaming age.
Playlist placement on Spotify can make or break an artist’s career, but the process by which songs are selected for high-profile playlists is shrouded in secrecy. Some labels and artists have accused Spotify of engaging in “modern payola,” where money, industry connections, or opaque algorithms determine what rises to the top. For independent musicians trying to reach new listeners, the system can feel rigged, with power concentrated in the hands of a few gatekeepers.
An Artist-Hostile Reputation
Perhaps the most damning critique comes from artists themselves. Joanna Newsom, a fiercely independent musician known for her uncompromising vision, has described Spotify as “a cynical and musician-hating system… the banana of the music industry.” She’s far from alone: Taylor Swift, Thom Yorke, Neil Young, Björk, and many others have criticized Spotify for what they see as exploitative business practices.
The core issue is financial. Spotify’s royalty system pays artists fractions of a cent per stream—typically between $0.003 and $0.005—while funneling the majority of revenue to record labels and corporate partners. For all but the most-streamed acts, making a living from Spotify is virtually impossible. The platform’s growth, critics argue, has come at the direct expense of the people who actually make the music.
Hearing Things’ Dilemma: Reach or Integrity?
When Hearing Things first launched, they, like many in the music world, faced a difficult choice: Should they use Spotify to reach the widest possible audience, or take a stand for their principles? For a while, the answer was to compromise—creating playlists, sharing Spotify links, and maintaining a presence on the platform, despite mounting unease.
But eventually, the conflict between mission and reality became impossible to ignore. In a candid admission, the publication declared, “Enough is enough.” They canceled their subscription, stopped making playlists, and announced they would no longer share Spotify links with their readers.
For Hearing Things, the decision was about more than just music. It was about what kind of future they wanted to support—a world where art is valued for more than its background utility, where artists are paid fairly for their labor, and where listeners are encouraged to engage meaningfully with the music they love.
The Broader Backlash: Artists and Listeners Push Back
Hearing Things’ departure from Spotify is part of a broader backlash against the platform and, more generally, against the streaming model that has come to dominate the music industry. Criticisms of Spotify have been growing for years, encompassing a wide range of issues:
- Royalties and Artist Compensation: As noted, Spotify’s payout rates are infamously low, and the system disproportionately benefits major labels and global superstars at the expense of independent artists and smaller acts.
- Opaque Playlisting and Influence: The methods by which songs are chosen for prominent playlists remain mysterious, leading to suspicions of favoritism, backroom deals, and modern-day payola.
- Transparency and Trust Issues: Repeated controversies over user data, “fake artists” (music uploaded by anonymous producers to reduce royalty payouts), and unpopular changes to policies have damaged Spotify’s reputation.
- Shifting Focus Away from Music: Many users and artists have criticized Spotify’s growing emphasis on podcasts, audiobooks, and other non-music content, arguing that it distracts from the platform’s original mission and further marginalizes musicians.
What Quitting Spotify Really Means
For Hearing Things and others who have left Spotify, quitting is a refusal to support a system they see as fundamentally broken. It’s a statement of values—an insistence that music is not just filler, and that artists deserve better.
But quitting Spotify is not the end of the story. Hearing Things, like many other critics, is eager to support alternative models—whether that means buying physical albums, supporting Bandcamp and other artist-friendly platforms, or encouraging readers to engage more deeply with music and its creators.
Can Streaming Change?
Spotify’s defenders argue that streaming has made music more accessible than ever before, helping artists find global audiences and enabling listeners to discover a world of sound with a single click. There is truth in this—but as Hearing Things and many others have made clear, accessibility should not come at the cost of artist welfare or musical depth.
The debate over Spotify is ultimately a debate over what kind of music culture we want to build. Should music be convenient, disposable, and algorithmically driven? Or should it be something we savor, support, and celebrate—not just for our own enjoyment, but for the sake of the artists who give us so much?
For those who decide to quit Spotify, the answer is clear. The hope is that, in the long run, more listeners and platforms will join them in building a fairer, richer, and more meaningful music ecosystem.
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