“It’s a little box that sits on my desk, plugged into my router,” he explains. He is now using a project called Navidrome to create a self-hosted streaming library that he can stream from any location, across various devices. For Shakespeare, downloads are now his primary mode of consumption: he has replaced his iPod’s hard drive with a micro SD card dock to increase capacity, and loaded it with Bandcamp purchases and ripped CDs.įor Krawczeniuk, the move away from Spotify after eight years was partly inspired by the realisation that by using open source software, a home server and a VPN on his phone, he could build something similar himself. Miles says he increasingly sees artists selling CDs and downloads at shows indeed, for some who have deleted Spotify and Apple Music accounts, leaving streaming has meant a big-picture reimagination of their relationship to MP3s. Before I used streaming services, I would listen to the whole thing.” Nick Krawczeniuk, a music fan and network engineer who recently moved away from streaming, felt his listening habits were being particular affected by Spotify’s “liked songs” playlist: “I found myself selecting more and more just one-off songs from an artist, whereas before I’d been inclined to save a whole album.”Īnd Milesisbae, a 23-year-old hip-hop artist from Richmond, Virginia, who recently cancelled all streaming subscriptions after learning how little musicians were compensated, noted something similar: “I will listen to one song 100 times in a row, but I won’t give the rest of the album a chance. For some, though, this has felt distinctly tied to streaming. It’s something that leaves everyone to take it for granted.”Ĭonversations around how digital marketplaces shape listening have long focused on the unbundling of the album. Before there was streaming music, what else was streaming? This idea that you can just turn on a faucet, and out comes music. “The word ‘streaming’ is one of those things that’s gradually assimilated into everyone’s vocabulary. “Streaming makes the listening experience much more passive,” he continues. My musical experiences definitely feel more dedicated and focused … I have to work for it and I like that I really have to seek things out and research. I can use the internet as a search tool but I’m not using it as a means to listen. Now, I have to work for it and I like that. I was checking out the first 15 seconds and hitting skip. Although on Spotify, I wasn’t necessarily listening to stuff. I’ll reluctantly admit that I listen to less music. My musical experiences definitely feel more dedicated and focused. Jared Samuel Elioseff, a multi-instrumentalist who records as Invisible Familiars and owns a studio in Cambridge, New York, also felt the streaming environment was generally hindering his musical curiosity: “I’ve been Spotify-less for two years now. “Streaming was actually contributing to some degree of dismissal of new music.” Even with digital downloads, he tended to give music more time and attention. With streaming, he says: “If I didn’t gel with an album or an artist’s work at first, I tended not to go back to it.” But he realised that a lot of his all-time favourite albums were ones that grew on him over time. A Bristol-based musician and audio engineer, Shakespeare recently deleted his streaming accounts and bought a used iPod on eBay for £40. “With streaming, things were starting to become quite throwaway and disposable,” says Finlay Shakespeare. So she cut off her Spotify service, and later, Apple Music too, to focus on making her listening more “home-based” and less of a background experience. “I decided that having music be this tool to an experience instead of an experience itself was not something I was into,” she reflects. It wasn’t just passive listening, but a utilitarian approach to music that felt like a creation of the streaming environment. “ Using music, rather than having it be its own experience … What kind of music am I going to use to set a mood for the day? What am I going to use to enjoy my walk? I started not really liking what that meant.” An uncomfortably familiar loop, it made her realise: she hated how music was being used in her life. She looked some more, through playlist after playlist. Tasked with choosing the day’s soundtrack, she opened Spotify, then flicked and flicked, endlessly searching for something to play. Meg Lethem was working at her bakery job one morning in Boston when she had an epiphany.
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