10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Use Spotify
Spotify has seen incredible growth since its launch in 2006, taking the music industry from its reliance on purchasable downloads to a world of physical sales and streaming. It has over 400 million subscribers, and for good reason—it’s an incredibly convenient way to consume music no matter where you are.
That said, Spotify isn’t perfect. There could be many reasons why you don’t want to use the service, whether it’s hosting questionable content, unfair artist payments, or lack of features.
Here are all the reasons why you shouldn’t be using Spotify.
1. You don’t own anything
Although Spotify offers free subscriptions, it exists primarily as a way to encourage people to sign up for paid subscriptions. But even though you’re paying, you don’t own any of the content on Spotify.
Essentially, you pay for the right to temporarily access the music. Spotify or its artists can pull music at any time and there’s nothing you can do about it. The same if the service suffers an outage or is permanently closed at any time. This is different than buying a vinyl, which you own indefinitely.
2. Music missing from catalog
Spotify claims to have over 82 million tracks hosted on its platform. That’s a lot of music, but that doesn’t mean everything you could want is available. Spotify has gaps, especially when it comes to older music, classical pieces, and remixes.
Plus, music isn’t always live on Spotify. Artists such as Joni Mitchell, India Arie and Neil Young are missing from Spotify at the time of writing. In 2014, Taylor Swift famously pulled her music from Spotify for several years, though she eventually reversed the decision.
3. Annoying ads for free users
If you subscribe to Spotify, you get a completely ad-free experience. However, to support the free subscription, Spotify plays ads in between your music. This is completely understandable—it cannot offer a service without limits.
However, the regularity of these commercials, sometimes after every two songs, is annoying. Many users also report that the volume of these ads is louder than the music.
The free tier also only plays music on shuffle (except for certain playlists), which ruins the tailored experience of listening to an album from start to finish.
4. No Lossless Streaming
In February 2021, Spotify announced it would bring CD-quality audio to the service via a new HiFi tier, but that still hasn’t come to fruition. Currently, the highest audio quality Spotify offers is 320kbit/s for paid subscribers.
The company hasn’t talked much about it since then, just admitting in February 2022 that Spotify HiFi has been delayed due to licensing issues. This is an unfortunate situation as both Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited offer lossless streaming at no extra cost.
5. History of security breaches
Spotify has had its fair share of security breaches and issues over the years.
In May 2014, Spotify announced that it had been hacked, though claimed that only one user’s data had been accessed. It pushed the upgrade to its Android app and all it needed to be updated.
In March 2011, a Spotify ad injected a fake Windows recovery program into users’ computers without requiring them to click on the ad.
6. Hosting misinformation
In early 2022, Spotify sparked controversy on its platform for endorsing Joe Rogan, a podcaster whose previous episodes contained misinformation. While Spotify removed some of the more troubling episodes, many remained.
Spotify’s handling of misinformation on its platform has generally been weak. Spotify has added written content warnings to some podcasts, but they’re easy to ignore and haven’t been enough to stop the spread.
7. Pushing Podcast
Do you want to listen to podcasts? No? Not interested in Spotify. In a way, Spotify cares more about podcasts than music. If you watch a single podcast on Spotify, episode recommendations fill up your feed instantly.
Plus, Spotify’s home screen prominently displays a Podcasts “Shows You’ll Like” section, which you can’t delete or remove. It just means you have to scroll more and search more to actually find the music.