I Canceled My Spotify Subscription

I Canceled My Spotify Subscription

Lately, I keep seeing the same phrase pop up all over the internet, something like, “I can’t believe this is reality, and I’d like to get off now, please.”

Honestly? I get it. The world feels like it’s getting weirder by the second, and the ride operator’s long gone.

Today’s reason for disbelief: Spotify (and a few of its streaming buddies) are now running ads for ICE. Yeah, that ICE. The ones who say things like “Join the mission to protect America” and “Fulfill your mission”, as if we’ve suddenly wandered into a recruitment campaign for the dystopian sequel no one asked for.

I won’t spiral into a full rant about advertising or how companies chained to ad revenue lose their moral compass. But let’s just say when you let advertisers steer the ship, you can’t be surprised when it starts heading straight for the rocks.

So, I canceled my Spotify subscription. It’s strange, I’ve been a loyal listener for years. My playlists were basically chaos, but I loved them. But I can’t keep giving money to a company that plays host to ads promoting organizations like ICE. Some things just hit a line you can’t step over.

So where am I going next? Well, I’ve been on a quiet mission to go back to physical media, CDs, vinyl, even MP3s on my newly revived iPod. There’s something comforting about owning the music outright. It can’t vanish because a licensing deal expired or an algorithm got bored.

That said, I do still need a streaming option, mostly for discovery and those times I’m too lazy to dig through a stack of jewel cases. After a little research, I landed on Qobuz. They pay artists more fairly, their catalog’s solid, and, as far as I can tell, they’re not in bed with ICE or anyone pushing that brand of nonsense.

The catch? I have to rebuild everything. No easy playlist transfer. No magic import button. Just me, starting from scratch, copying, pasting, remembering, re-curating. Between that, digging through SoulSeek, and updating my iPod, it feels a bit like a musical scavenger hunt.

But honestly, I kind of love it.

Because when you buy the album, when you actually own it, it’s yours. It can’t be quietly removed or rewritten. You can’t “lose access” to something that’s sitting right there on your shelf.

Maybe this is just what getting off the ride looks like, finding slower, smaller ways to stay connected to the things that still make the noise worth hearing.