First off, Spotify is a licensing and corporatization platform. So, anything added to the platform becomes part of a long and winding monetization pipeline. In fact, monetization is the aspect that determines whether music lands there or not in the first place. Compare to YouTube where, except for certain copyrighted works, pretty much anything goes - especially stuff you made yourself. Music, in any way, shape or form, can be uploaded to YouTube and the scope of the platform is, because of this design, infinite. This is mostly a matter of unenforced copyright rules/law, but it means that YouTube either (1) has everything or (2) at least gives you the option to make it have everything.

Spotify, of course, doesn't give you that option because it is obviously way above piracy and doesn't skirt around paying artists at all. Every piece of audio uploaded must be linked back to someone's bank account because all music on Spotify is ultimately a business. This makes the platform inherently exclusionary towards music not composed with the express intent of licensing your music, which probably makes up about 90% of all music ever composed¹⁾²⁾. This music then is missing from your platform, which means that if you want to listen to that music anyway, you're going to have to pivot to an alternative.

So, about Spotify and alternatives. Spotify is designed specifically to discourage multiplatforming. Spotify is, still, a walled garden, so any kind of cross-compatibility with platforms like YouTube or even just audio files on your device³⁾ is an absolute no-go (hmmm, another brand comes to mind which reinforces this idea). To Spotify users, confronted with the goldfish bowl-esque limits of the Spotify catalogue, being presented with a link to another platform is a “hassle”. But, that's never their problem, to them it's just you listening to weird, outlandish music. So if you want to share music with a Spotify user, that's not gonna happen unless you use Spotify yourself - and that's the point!

It is kind of funny to think about because, in absolute terms, Spotify has a gigantic catalogue. You can get any type of music and you can get niche as fuck. So as someone inside this system, it is hard to realize just how small the catalogue actually is. But then again, Spotify also does a really good job at nudging you away from realizing this, regardless of how easy it is to break that illusion. If you've ever found a cool remix of a song on YouTube before and tried recommending it to a Spotify person, you'll know what I'm talking about⁴⁾. Spotify has a particularly bad coverage of video game soundtracks, as most artists don't mind their music being uploaded to the web, but don't want to bother with the drama of licensing it to Spotify. Y'know, like 90% of all music created.

So as someone who listens to music already knowing what I want to listen to (ie. I played a video game and now want to listen to that game's soundtrack), Spotify is genuinely useless. There is no point in using an application that I constantly have to switch out of to find the music I want to listen to where, even if Spotify's catalogue was more complete, it would still be a pain in the ass to actually get that music onto my device. Ah, right. Let's talk about that.

?? Are you insane? Seriously, how rich are you? How rich, irresponsible or just ignorant can you be that you don't mind spending 13€ on this, when there are alternatives that are far more complete, faster and give you full control over the things you have? You wanna support a creator, buy their merch. Yknow what, just buy their fucking album, just not through Spotify?? Like, you can spend ~10,000€ on music over 60 years, I don't mind - just don't do it through Spotify. Find the most direct way to financially support your favorite artists, and use that. Saves you money, removes all the unfairness in Spotify's pro rata model, makes you feel better and you get your music for free, all of it. And you also have their merch now. I cannot describe just how lazy and irresponsible going through Spotify is, when, even if you genuinely want to support music development and artists, there are a bazillion ways of doing that.

It is only corporate propaganda that makes you think that you should submit to a model that gives 30% of your money to Taylor Swift, and that this model is better than listening to music for free (and making sure that you support your favorite artists). If Spotify were free, I would still not use it over being limited and clunky, but at least people wouldn't be morons for using it. At this point it would essentially be a platform like YouTube, just a bit worse ⁵⁾).

Seriously though. How much money do you have? Throughout the month we all try so hard to save money and hurt people in the process. Not buying fairtrade here, getting food delivered there, ordering from Amazon this, not donating to a charity that. But when it comes to music, suddenly it's all “oh, livelihoods depend on this”. Huh?? What are you talking about? You really wanna make an impact with your money, then try to not save money on anything else - just not music. It just does not make sense how you can accept the full bandwidth of corporate exploitation in Spotify (or the music industry as a whole) and hamstring yourself to a lower quality of service, a minimal, corporate-chosen catalogue and all the limitations and restrictions of the Spotify prison, just so you can think to yourself that you're the right thing by paying 4 bucks to Taylor Swift on a monthly basis. Yeah, Taylor Swift really needs your money.

Honestly, if your monthly charity budget is limited to 13 bucks (Four of which go to Taylor Swift) use it on literally anything else, please. And then listen to music for free. Please.