(5/7/2026)
At the end of 2025 i pledged to stop using spotify. I knew that i needed to stop when i started listening exclusively to daylists - random vibe outputs that were almost too pleasing to my ear, catered to whatever musical phase i was going thru at the time…. I was eating up whatever the Machine served to me. A musical slop bowl. Even though slop bowls are tasty and can b good for you, you gotta draw the line somewhere to eating it every day. It withers away at your taste buds and discernment for flavor. Its a blend. I needed Real Ingredients back in my musical diet. Meat and potatoes.
There were a few months in which i was just repulsed any time i opened spotify, but i hadnt fostered any new ways to listen to music, so I just stopped listening to music (other than the radio) for that time period. I can't remember the last tim i did that... but these things happen sometime in the crative journey, and are often neccesary. Its best not to fight it and tend to the creative beast within you, wherever it takes you…
Anyways. I started listening to music again in January when i got my Navidrome server set up. There are no costs to this method in theory - especially if you have a spare laptop and download exclusively from soulsique. but having a dedicated device like a raspberry pi and actually buying music from bandcamp greatly improves the whole experience.
there are a few things to note if you're interested in doing this too.
1. This is not a direct replacement of the streaming experience, even tho the interface looks similar. It's a different thing entirely. This is more like an oldschool itunes library, except you dont have to connect devices very time you wanna update your collection. There are drawbacks you gotta get used to... namely, you can't pull up any song you want immediately within your srvr (actually.... you could prob do som programming magic and link up your server to navidrome. but idrk want to do that). i have to actually download th album on my computer first to listen to it on my phone.
2. i have a fundamentally diffeerent approach to msuci now. i don't make playlists anymore. I’m collecting albums. I save the playlisting for my radio show.