After being in the news for the past few years for not paying artists, laying off its own workforce, and supporting the genocide in Palestine, Spotify was in the news again this week for shitty reasons, specifically because the company is about to launch a macabre AI-powered remixes/covers feature. Leaving Spotify has been a bleak experience, to say the least. It’s bad out there. The best time and reason to get rid of Spotify was when any of those other things came to light. The second best time is today, so in the spirit of telling this company to throw itself in the trash, here’s a guide to getting off Spotify and, more importantly, taking your music somewhere else. 1) Choose which competitor you would like to use instead. If you want to stop streaming altogether, purchasing albums directly from Bandcamp is a great way to directly support an artist. If you can’t shake your dependence on streaming catalogs, there are plenty of alternatives like Tidal, Apple Music, and Qobuz. I wouldn’t recommend Amazon or YouTube Music for obvious reasons (both companies suck) and technical reasons (they’re bad apps and YT Music has terrible sound quality). 2) If your new service supports it directly (Apple Music on iOS does, for example), sometimes you can just transfer your Spotify library directly. If not, you can use a service like Free Your Music or TuneMyMusic, which may cost you a few dollars but is generally worth the investment. Those tools will do their best (and from experience they are very good) to move your entire library, playlists and everything, off of Spotify and onto your new platform of choice. If you’ve also listened to podcasts within Spotify, most of your rivals will also offer podcasts within their music app, but if they don’t (Android users can’t use Apple Podcasts, for example), Pocket Casts is a totally viable solution. 3) Once your library has been transferred, delete your Spotify account, then block their email addresses, because after a few weeks they will start sending you pathetic offers like this: 4) That’s it. Were you expecting a long, drawn-out 2000-word guide? It’s extremely easy to exit Spotify while keeping your library intact, and you don’t owe that company anything. What are you waiting for?
