Spotify?

I got an email today that Spotify are raising the price of Premium again from £10.99 to £11.99.. which is creeping up to a bit more than I really want to pay a month.

This prompted me to think about whether I have any better options for my music listening convenience.

Do I buy music again?

I was thinking this evening about sacking off Spotify or any of the music streaming platforms, and going back “old school” to actually buying music. I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought music!

I should (if it still works) already have a hard drive full of MP3s somewhere from the iPod days when I loaded in my old CD collection (and my parents CD collection).

In theory I could put the £11.99 a month to owning music files and building up a larger library. But I also then have to have storage for all those digital files and manually transfer them between devices.

I also did this evening try to figure out how to buy MP3s through Amazon Music to check out the pricing, but it wouldn’t even load in my mobile browser so that was not a great start!

My partner does this and transfers the files to his phone, but then his music taste is pretty limited and stuck primarily in the era of Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel and he very rarely buys new music (the only thing he bought in 2023 was apparently I’m Ken from the Barbie movie.. this was our alarm for a while, until I couldn’t take it being stuck in my head any more!).

But the algorithm is amazing

This works for him because he doesn’t care for new music, but I like to discover new things. I’m also lazy though and not “into” music enough to actively seek anything out myself. The algorithm in Spotify has been amazing for me over the years, and it’s offered me up some new favourites I wouldn’t have ever found by myself!

I even enjoy that cheesy DJ feature they added… even if he says my name in the worst cheesy American accent! (“Aaaalice“)

Some random faves in heavy rotation:

Wet Leg, I fucking love Wet Leg.
Andrew in drag by The Magnetic Fields
Kyle Craft
Lily pad on your doorstep by Don’t Stop or We’ll Die… Which is the exact kind of stupid song I love to death
Vitam String Quartet who are my go to for instrumental-only focusing music at work, or ambience for dinner time.

If I went to only purchasing music I’d be missing out on discovery. In that way I am now hooked on the algorithm! So going to no Spotify at all would be a wrench.

Perhaps I could work out a hybrid approach to combine local files with suggested listening…if I went to the free plan (with ads… I don’t know I can go back to ads…)? I think most of the apps will cater to that.

Portability

Another issue is that most of my listening is at work in the office, or while I’m working at home on my work laptop which can’t be filled with music files, and I don’t want to destroy my phone battery running off that all day. I’v become very reliant on the convenience and portability of streaming.

God, the days when I carried around an iPod nano and wired headphones feels like another life time!?!

Is it worth £11.99 a month?

So the algorithm is worth something to me, as is the convenience of being able to jump between devices – and that with our smart speakers we can also use voice commands to play Google home.

I also discovered that Spotify have upped the paltry 10 hours of audiobook to 15 hours a month. That’s still not great… But it’s better. I’ve found the Spotify audiobook library is a good backup for me if I can’t find anything through my library, and they have an up to date catalogue with no waiting list. I’ve used it to try books I’m kind of interested in but not that bothered about – like Daring Greatly, Cultish and Paris: The Memoir (which was actually fantastic).

If I make an effort to use the 15 hours per billing cycle that’s definitely added value too.

But, it’s the tiered plan pricing that makes an individual subscription such piss poor value compared with the dual (£16.99 for two users) or the family plan (£19.99 for 6!). It is so much more expensive for single users!!

That really rankles.

Apparently people have gotten away with splitting a plan amongst friends and family, regardless of address so maybe I look into that as an option too.. but it’s only worth it if I can find friends interested in splitting the cost, and that’s quite unlikely.

After all that.. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I might have talked myself into keeping Spotify… But maybe I’ll take a better look into how moving to local music files might be possible for me, or if it’s a non-starter!

Gift cards!

Just as I get to the end of writing this post I find a Money Saving Expert (Martin Lewis, what a hero) page that mentions you can buy a gift card for 12 months for £99 which works out £45 cheaper!

So that’s my plan now! 😂 If you read all the way down here, I love you for it.