Life After Spotify: What Musicians Lose — and What They Gain
Back in July, I wrote about why I was leaving Spotify. At the time it felt like a line in the sand: I’d had enough of a platform that devalues music, underpays artists, and invests in industries I want no part of. That article was a departure notice. This one is more of a field report — what it’s been like since, how I’m navigating the trade-offs, and why I think it’s worth documenting the process.
The battle between ethics and ego
Making the decision took some time. Ethics pulled me one way; ego pulled me the other.
Ethics: streaming payouts that barely buy a sandwich, Daniel Ek’s ties to military AI, and Spotify’s willingness to let AI slop creep into artist catalogues.
Ego: the fear of losing listeners, disappearing from the discovery machine, and undermining my own career.
Doubt: the persistent voice that asks, “Have I just shot myself in the foot?”
That battle hasn’t ended. Some days I feel certain I’ve done the right thing; other days I catch myself wondering whether I’ve made life harder than it needs to be. I suspect a lot of musicians feel the same tension but don’t talk about it publicly.
Not alone: community in action
One thing that helps is knowing I’m not alone. I’m part of the UK folk scene — that’s where my community is — and I’ve been heartened to see others taking the same step. Some of the artists and labels I know who’ve already made the move include:
Goblin Band — their decision was the push I needed.
Campbell Baum (Broadside Hacks) — another early voice.
Tamsin Elliott & Tarek Elazhary — have recently taken their music down.
Lady Maisery — one of the most established groups to act.
Penny Fiddle Records — the label is already carving out new paths.
Mikey Kenney — enigmatic, mercurial, and long anti-Spotify; an originator in many ways. Mikey left almost all his catalogue off the platform after discovering that festival and promoter websites were using Spotify’s playlist widgets to “represent” him with tracks he’d only played on as a session musician. To avoid being misrepresented, he chose to leave up just one traditional fiddle album — a compromise he still feels uneasy about. As he puts it, the alternative would be organisers embedding music that wasn’t his at all.
Grace Petrie — a major voice on the UK folk scene who has also stepped away.
I’ll keep adding names as I come across them, because it’s easier to make brave decisions when you see friends and peers doing the same.
Where the music lives now
Taking music off Spotify doesn’t mean erasing it. It means moving it somewhere that feels healthier. For me, that has meant a mix of platforms.
Bandcamp: still the best way to support artists directly, through downloads, pre-orders, merch, and Bandcamp Friday. It’s had ups and downs — with ownership changes raising questions — but it remains the most reliable place for musicians and listeners to connect. I’m also watching newer, co-operative models like Subvert, which put decision-making in the hands of musicians themselves.
Qobuz: increasingly where my attention is going. It feels more intentional than most streaming platforms, and I’ll explain why in the next section.
None of these are perfect, and each has compromises. But they all feel like a healthier step than staying on Spotify, and they ask listeners to engage with music in a more intentional way.
Qobuz and the value of music
Qobuz is often marketed as “the audiophile’s streaming service” because it offers lossless and hi-res audio. That matters to some people, and it’s certainly great to hear music in such a pristine way, but what matters more to me is its stance on value. There’s no free, ad-supported tier, so listening is paid listening. It also treats albums as cultural objects, with liner-note-style essays and reviews in Qobuz Magazine (as an ex-Time Out editor, I’m a sucker for anything with a magazine). It isn’t Bandcamp — there’s no built-in merch — but it still presents music with care rather than as frictionless background noise.
And the difference shows up in reported averages.
| Service | Estimated payout per stream* | Per 1,000 streams* | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qobuz | ~ US$ 0.01873 | ~ US$ 18.73 | Qobuz press, MusicTech |
| Tidal | ~ US$ 0.0128–0.0133 | ~ US$ 12.80–13.30 | Ditto Music |
| Apple Music | ~ US$ 0.01 | ~ US$ 10.00 | Apple Music artist letter |
| Amazon Music | ~ US$ 0.00402 | ~ US$ 4.02 | LabelGrid |
| Spotify | ~ US$ 0.003–0.005 | ~ US$ 3.00–5.00 | Ditto Music |
| YouTube Music | ~ US$ 0.00200 | ~ US$ 2.00 | Royalty Exchange |
*Estimates to rights-holders (labels/publishers) before splits with artists/performers; actual payouts vary by country, subscription type and contract.
The gap is stark. Qobuz’s reported average works out at roughly six times Spotify’s and nearly ten times YouTube Music’s. YouTube’s model is built on scale — ad-funded plays and background autoplay — which is, on the surface, fine for discovery but weak for sustaining the people making the music. Qobuz, by contrast, builds on a simple premise: music has value, and listeners should contribute to it.
The practical side
The process itself isn’t glamorous. It’s admin, and quite a lot of it.
Pulling the tracks. In my case, it was just a few clicks in DistroKid, but I wasn’t sure how to do it at first. A kind person behind the chat icon sorted it instantly, and within a few hours my songs were gone. I got the impression they were fairly used to the request.
Updating links. Across my website, social media bios, press packs, and even old blog posts — anywhere I’d lazily dropped a Spotify link over the years had to be revisited. Not easy to do. One useful trick for non-tech-savvy musicians: type
site:yourdomain.com spotify(changing yourdomain.com to your own site) into Google, and it’ll show you every page where “Spotify” appears, making it easier to track things down.Redirecting fans. That means pointing them to Bandcamp, Qobuz, Tidal — through mailing lists, YouTube descriptions, and just as importantly, at gigs. I’ve found that when you explain it on stage, people often respond with a mix of shock and approval. Fans want to support you. They don’t want to be ripping you off, and many don’t want their listening money feeding AI weaponry or Donald Trump’s presidency either.
Swapping out embeds. Spotify players are everywhere — on artist sites, blogs, even media coverage. Replacing them with Bandcamp embeds or other alternatives takes time, but it’s a small act of independence.
Promo and press. Journalists often default to Spotify links. I’ve started asking, politely, if they can link Bandcamp or Qobuz instead. Most are happy to oblige.
It’s fiddly and repetitive — a digital version of spring cleaning. But every time I replace a Spotify link, it feels like loosening the grip of a system that was never designed to support musicians like me.
What I thought I’d lose (and why it matters less than I feared)
At first, I worried about losing what I’d call passive plays — the streams that happen when your song drifts onto an algorithmic playlist or into someone’s background listening. It feels like reach, but it isn’t really connection. Most of those listeners never know your name, let alone come to a gig or buy a record. When you stop and look at it, the value is more illusory than real.
I also thought I’d lose a sense of “industry visibility.” Spotify’s dashboards make it easy to equate graphs and monthly listeners with progress. Then, once a year, Wrapped rolls around and amplifies it: vanity metrics dressed up as an achievement, encouraging artists to share numbers that, in truth, say very little about genuine connection or support. It’s addictive theatre, designed to make musicians feel grateful for crumbs.
In other words: what seemed like a sacrifice at first has turned out to be losing very little. A handful of intentional listeners, people who actually want to engage, are worth far more than thousands of ghost plays — or a colourful graphic at the end of the year.
And this is the crux: Spotify has built a reputation among musicians as the ultimate discovery tool. It’s the story we’ve all been sold — that the next playlist placement, or the next Wrapped summary, might change everything. That narrative is where most of the fear of leaving comes from. Once you step away, you see how passive and flimsy it really is.
The playlist trap
For years, I even spent money chasing Spotify playlists. There’s a whole industry built around it — Submithub and the like — and what it revealed to me was that homogenisation sits at the heart of it all. Traditional music rarely makes the cut; it’s too raw, too unpolished. What most curators wanted was lowest-common-denominator stuff: tracks that would pump their own numbers.
The feedback was almost comical: build towards a booming climax, learn to sing “properly,” smooth off the edges, think about background music for coffee shops. The music that lands on Spotify playlists has been called “Spotifycore.” It’s easy to sneer at that… but we all want to be heard, and I’m not immune. Sneering about Spotifycore makes me sound like a jealous outsider who just isn’t good enough, but then I think about Bob Dylan. Imagine him born into a world where taste was dictated this way. What chance would he have had? What would we have lost if someone had told him to “sing properly” or cut to the chase with “Percy’s Song”? Doesn’t bear thinking about.
Every now and then I’d land a playlist spot and feel the dopamine hit as my numbers shot up for a week or two. But they always dropped back down, confirming what I already knew: I’d been background music. None of the money I spent made anything stick. My songs were just another commodity feeding someone else’s bottom line while mine stayed flat.
What I learned was simple. Those momentary spikes never outweighed the long flatness. I wasn’t building an audience; I was renting one for a fortnight. Once I saw it that way, it was hard to convince myself the chase was worth it.
What I’ve gained
Stepping away from Spotify hasn’t just been about stripping things back. It’s also given me space to notice what I’ve gained.
First, I feel part of a movement that’s heading in the right direction. However small it might seem in the grand scheme, there’s a sense of solidarity in knowing others are making the same choice, and that together we’re nudging the culture of music towards something fairer.
Second, I’ve come to value that real connection. On Bandcamp, people don’t just click play; they buy albums, add a note, sometimes even send a message saying they applaud the decision to leave Spotify. That makes the exchange human again — it’s not just numbers on a dashboard, it’s an actual conversation. I think the same may be possible on Qobuz. It’s early days though. I’ll report back.
Third, I’ve become more connected to the real world of music. I’ve been heading into record shops again. I don’t drink alcohol, so instead of an end-of-the-week pint I’ll go to the shop and spend that money on a record. That becomes my soundtrack for the week, a way to explore and experience music as I once did — actively, passionately, non-passively — while putting money back into the local community. I’ve even started making YouTube Shorts about the record shops I visit, and I plan to keep going as I tour, in the hope that others will rediscover them too.
Finally, I’ve gained a different kind of confidence. It feels better to build slowly, with listeners who are intentional, than to pin my hopes on algorithms and passive plays. It’s not about chasing volume, it’s about nurturing something sustainable.
Resources and further voices
I’m not the only one thinking this through. If you’re weighing the same decision, here are some voices worth hearing:
Podcast: Why It’s Time to Quit Spotify (Drowned in Sound)
Featuring Laura Burhenn (The Mynabirds, The Postal Service live band), who pulled her music after learning of Daniel Ek’s $700 million investment in Helsing, a military AI startup. Her “Disarm Spotify” TikToks went viral, coinciding with a wave of artist departures including Deerhoof, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The episode goes well beyond streaming payouts into what it means for music to be tied up with militarisation.Laura Burhenn: Once you’ve listened to her on the above podcast, follow her on Instagram. She has become one of the clearest and most consistent voices in this movement.
Dan Mangan: Canadian musician who made an excellent Instagram video (which I’ll embed above) summarising some of the main points about why Spotify’s model is broken and what artists can do next. You’ll find him here.
Luc Rinaldi: The Death of the Middle Class Musician. A long, detailed feature on how streaming economics, touring costs, and industry structures have hollowed out the possibility of making a living as a working musician. Essential context for anyone thinking about the bigger picture.
Emily White: her Substack essays on the future of music are sharp and worth following. She digs into the economics and ethics of streaming with clarity.
Subvert: a co-operative platform run by musicians for musicians, experimenting with a different kind of online model. It’s still early, but their manifesto points toward what a fairer ecosystem could look like.
An open-ended process
I’m still figuring this out. I may change my mind on some things. There are days when it feels like a clear, necessary step, and days when I wonder if I’ve made life unnecessarily complicated.
But sharing the process feels important. It’s a way of thinking out loud, and maybe a way of offering solidarity to anyone else sitting with the same decision. If you’re thinking about leaving Spotify, perhaps we can compare notes as we go.
