I'm getting ready to ditch Spotify because I can't countenance price increases while they continue to pay musicians even less. Their treating subscriptions as "bundles" as justification to siphon even more royalties away from songwriters is pretty appalling.
I don't want podcasts. I don't want audiobooks. I will never listen to those. I just want music and I want musicians to thrive. Spotify is a good way to access music, but it's the third worst way to help musicians earn a living, right after piracy and exclusively buying used albums.
The CEO's recent comments belittling music as "content" that's practically free to make didn't help either. If you set out to sound maximally out of touch and hostile to actual artists, you couldn't have written a better quote.
Probably switching to Apple or Tidal soon. And at least those platforms have the dignity not to nickel-and-dime their customers over mostly illusory sound quality (really just bitrate) increases.
e: My personal opinion is I think Spotify has made a fundamental error. They want to have a one-stop app for all audio content, i.e. all listening occasions. The CEO clearly believes all audio content is equivalent from a business perspective. But this is IMO completely wrong. Spotify offering audiobooks is no smarter than Netflix offering eBooks because they both happen to be entertainment consumed using your eyes. Turns out listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks are 3 completely different activities with different value propositions. You can't just throw them all in a blender and charge 3x. At least, that's my view of it. IMO would have been smarter to unbundle from the beginning. Spotify Music, Spotify Books, Spotify Podcasts. Then the interface wouldn't be a jumble and the pricing would make sense for everyone. Stupid. It would also open the door to further brand extensions (maybe they get into workouts or recipes someday) but instead they decided to cram everything under the same big, smelly tent.
OK, done ranting about Spotify now.
