🔵 Rejecting the race to the bottom

Quitting Spotify and engaging with a more emotionally affecting approach to listening to music

Hi there,

A few weeks ago (and ironically before one of my songs was pulled from the platform!), I finally decided to cancel my Spotify Premium account. I think it is a matter of record that I'm not a massive fan, but actually the main factor causing me to cancel was simply an overriding sense that the entire experience of using the app was just painful now.

It feels at times like Spotify is actively working to distance you from your own music collection on its platform, forcing that down to the bottom of the main screen and instead trying to push podcasts, crappy playlists and now audiobooks on you instead.

I just wanted a music app. That's it. A music app, with my streaming music collection on it, ideally with some actually-valuable editorial, and... that's it.

Ironically it was the Plex app, which serves up my MP3 collection (yes, I kept them! Did you?) that showed me the light here. No nonsense, no distractions, and just sensible suggestions of a mildly editorial/data-led nature, like telling me it was 35 years since album X by artist Y was released.

Whilst generally airing my cancellation of Spotify on Bluesky and asking for input on alternatives, I was offered a trial of Qobuz, a platform a few friends had been talking about of late. Never one to pass up free goodies, I obviously jumped at the chance and dived in.

Now, in general I am highly cynical about audiophile types. My friend Chris once remarked that "audiophiles are like the flat earthers of the music world" and when I stopped laughing, which took a while, I realised he had a point. Ergo, I think it is safe to say that I am cynical about people raving about hi res audio and suchlike...

... except, on this occasion the hi res audio being dished up wasn't just "a bit better". It was substantially better - to the extent that even on Samsung Buds headphones, listening via my phone, I could instantly tell the difference. In some senses it was quite shocking, if only because it made me realise how weak the Spotify audio quality had been.

The depth of impact felt visceral; suddenly I was getting crazy dopamine rushes as I revisited songs I use to test any system - Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy" being the one I've always reached for first. Those bass swoops (and how tight they sound on a good setup) not to mention those strings, recorded at Abbey Road... all just incredible. The quality of the production was being allowed to come through, and as a consequence the emotional impact was so much greater.

In fact, let's take a moment here to talk about Qobuz, which, despite what you might think, is not the core topic of this post.

Qobuz is "just" a music platform. You fire it up and get a neat, minimal interface that brought to mind my much-missed Rdio, which I felt had the best UI of any music service out there. Editorial on Qobuz feels passionate and is written by human beings - though the need to point that fact out is depressing in itself.

But between the interface, (which, funny enough, focuses on the music), the sound quality (which simply makes Spotify’s playback sound dreadful), I was left concluding that this was the streaming service for me. Equally, if you really care about enjoying music as the brilliant, emotionally-affecting experience it should be (and was created to be by artists everywhere) then Qobuz is the one to use.

However, as good as QoBuz is, it is not really the point of this article. Really what that platform has been is a tool to reconnect with music on that deeper level that I think the worlds of Spotify and co are actively working against now.

The Quietus's John Doran used to frequently tweet a photo of an album on his stereo, with his feet up, suggesting a man reclining and focused on just one thing. "Have you ever tried just listening to an album?" was the usual comment that accompanied this post.

He has a point. Over time, this has all become wildly eroded; albums became single tracks, and then became just playlists of 'stuff to listen to'. The emotional impact, which can be so powerful as to be overwhelming, has been weakened at every point, until we're arguably just getting bland mediocrity pushed upon us at every turn. Weak algorithms suggesting boring songs, played through weak-sounding audio codecs. Harsh, but true.

Regarding those algorithms: I recall doing a controlled test on Spotify where we created a brand new account, and then all we streamed was amazing Trojan Records playlists of deep dub cuts.

After a few days of playing those, we checked to see what Spotify would recommend. The result? Not the other Trojan playlists, which even basic logic would suggest as the next stepping stone. No, it was Spotify’s own "This is Reggae", with the first track being Bob Marley.

That was years ago now, but frankly little has changed since.

I have my own views on streaming in general, and there's a piece to come soon regarding formats and the lack of evolution there. For now though, I feel it is worth flagging just how watered down and valueless music and the experience of listening to it has become via platforms like Spotify.

Despite what might be claimed, it is not a great place to nurture any kind of relationship with music. Perhaps that is why Qobuz felt so refreshing, i.e. because that's literally all it is there to do. However, I think that illustrates how far things have changed when the most appealing feature of a music service is that it is just that: a really good music service, without all this other cruft thrown in.

At a time where much talk is of the superfan, it is bitterly ironic that the first point of contact many will have with an artist is through platforms that aim to instantly distract the listener away into other artist’s songs on a playlist, or, when you return to the app later that day maybe, distract you into playing a podcast or audiobook instead.

We can do better. We have to, as right now it feels like music is precisely where Big Tech wants it to be: just another bland piece of content fed through it's pipelines.

Format might be one area where things could change, but right here and now, the experience of this all could be drastically improved if only the music was valued properly. It is not, and that needs to change if we are to make any headway in reviving music in general as the powerful artistic statement that it really is.

Have a great evening,

D.

🎶 Listening to “Decius Vol. 2” on Qobuz. I’d not been aware of Decius and their unique brand of what I can only describe as “perv disco” until recently, but I’m loving this album. It is the kind of vibe we need right now; playful, somehow kinky in an inoffensive way, and just… refreshing, dammit. I love it. Can’t wait to see them live at fabric next month.

📺 Watching “We Are Fugazi from Washington, D.C.” trailer on YouTube. Can’t wait to see this in the cinema on March 5th, with Fugazi remaining my guiding light as all-time punk heroes and people who Just Did It Right. Still one of the best bands I’ve ever seen live, and still every bit as exciting now to listen to as they were then. Peerless. And if you need a primer, J.R. Moores just wrote a perfect one over at The Quietus.

📖 Reading “Aphex Twin - A Disco Pogo Tribute”. Now this is my kind of book; a sumptuous hardback chock full of images, artwork, diagrams and - most importantly - interviews and articles, all about the Analord himself, Richard D James. Exquisite stuff, and essential for any Aphex fan. Written words don’t do this justice though - it’s a stunning brick of a thing.

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Notes in dispatches:

• I have - gulp! - released an EP! Bandcamp is having a fundraiser today, in which 100% of their proceeds will be donated to MusiCares, an organization providing emergency financial aid, mental health support, and essential health services to artists in need. So, I figured now was the time to unleash an EP of four techno tracks for the world to hear under my Syon Ward alias. Go take a listen, and if you like, consider a purchase if only to aid the MusiCares cause if nothing else. Thank you! (And if anyone wants to review, feature it or otherwise give it a plug, I will be massively grateful… thanks!)

• The last NN post, about being removed from Spotify, caused a HUGE response from readers. I’ll be doing a follow-up on that next week, but I found it telling that the post has already become the most-read thing ever published here, suggesting an issue that plenty of people are having problems with.

• Thank you to everyone who responded to last week’s call for interest in the Indie Worker Pass. We’ve had a solid number of responses, including some of the bigger labels and retailers out there, and we’re now looking to progress this along. If you missed all of this, please read last week’s Network Notes where I explain the whole idea.

• I’m now posting over on Bluesky too, so if you want hot takes on stories as they break etc, follow me over there. 🦋

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