Welcome to the Inconvenience Store
There's nothing for sale and that's kind of the point.
I recently made the extremely brave decision to cancel my Spotify subscription after spending 10+ years on the platform. I’d say I don’t need people to know this totally average thing about my life, but I am a woman of the internet, so I do.
The decision came on the heels of years-long encouragement from many people I respect (hello my boyfriend, my friends, Jason Sloan at www.fuckspotify.com) telling me that Spotify is garbage. And I was aware, sure, that Spotify pays artists less than other streamers and that their (soon-to-be former) CEO Daniel Ek has done all kinds of bullshit to cause artists to leave the platform.
But I’d been using Spotify since sophomore year of high school, when the app was more like a social platform, when you could see what your friends were listening to in real time. At the risk of sounding like a complete loser: I was there when there was a messaging feature in Spotify—something they’re now bringing back in what I perceive to be a continued attempt to make the app so socially ubiquitous that it’s harder than ever to leave.
Spotify held a stupid, special place in my heart for so long that it didn’t seem worth giving it up just to switch to another mainstream, billionaire-owned platform like Apple Music. But when Spotify started running ICE recruitment ads (they’re not the only streaming service doing this) and Daniel Ek began investing in military AI, I knew it was time to finally do the thing I perceived to be so inconvenient: switch from one music streaming platform to another.
I thought I was going to have to download some sort of transfer app, rebuild all my playlists from scratch, or just leave them all behind. Turns out…there’s an option to transfer everything right within the Apple Music interface. Cancelling Spotify, subscribing to Apple, and transferring 195 playlists took me all of 10 minutes.
Admittedly, today isn’t the first time I’m posting about this (yes, I need a hobby). I first posted an Instagram story weeks ago, asking for alternative streaming recommendations to Spotify. I received more responses to that story than I’ve received on any story ever, but I got very few good answers. Instead, everybody was asking for the answers I was getting. And it wasn’t just the people I talk to every day. People I haven’t spoken to since high school, people I met one time at a bar, people I’ve actually never even met were all asking my own question back at me. Because, surprise surprise: everybody wants to get off Spotify. But leaving just seems…inconvenient.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about how convenience is bad for our brains. Should we have access to almost all the music that’s ever been recorded, any time we want, for as low as $10.99 a month? I don’t think we should. But we do. And—among other things such as, oh, I don’t know, devaluing art—it’s sucking the fun out of the whole thing.
Instead of building music collections we can hold with our own two hands, or giving money more directly to artists, or taking the time to curate something with our brains, we’re paying some rich guy to get richer just because he knows how to run a music platform that recommends songs to us we already know. We’ve removed ourselves from the music discovery process entirely. We’re letting the algorithm win!
Obviously, Apple Music isn’t the answer and it’s far from the best platform in terms of artist payout (see: Tidal, Qobuz). But I’m not saying we should ditch streaming altogether and go analog. That’s impractical and expensive and if I said that, I’d be the asshole. What I am saying is that we should do things the inconvenient way once in a while. We should diversify our entertainment streams and get our brains and hands a little more involved in the process.
Maybe, in addition to streaming, you could:
Buy a real radio. I have this one and I love it.
Borrow CDs from your public library (hot!) and import them to your phone, computer, whatever. Yes! You can have a digital library that isn’t a streaming library!
Buy used CDs, DVDs, albums. Buy music on Bandcamp.
Straight up get a CD player, dude. My 4-year-old niece asked for a boombox for her birthday. If she’s on this shit, you can be too.
Invest in a record collection slowly (because it is expensive) over the course of your entire life (because it is really, really satisfying).
And yeah, you can jump ship from Spotify too. You can switch to Apple or Tidal or YouTube Music or Qobuz or whatever you want. Pretty much any streamer you choose is going to be better for artists and better for the industry than Spotify. Do a little research. Talk to people about it. Inconvenience yourself!
Okay…but why the Substack?
Well, guys, I’d like to slow down a little bit. I’d like to do things the inconvenient, inefficient way more often, because I think it might be nice. The world will convince us that the worst thing possible is to be inconvenienced. That efficiency is the solution to our problems. That it will make our lives better, will give us more time back, will stave off death or whatever the fuck. But that’s just not true.
The beauty and power of slowing down is not a new concept. Plenty of people who are smarter than me have written about the ways in which convenience and capitalism are isolating and destroying us. But still, we’re not talking about it enough, so say it with me now: convenience kinda sucks.
Convenience takes us out of real spaces and keeps us online, indoors, and devoid of human interaction. That’s not to say all convenient things are evil. I have no plans to forgo Google Maps in favor of paper ones. I’d like to keep putting my clothes in a washing machine. Airplanes are awesome.
But lately, I’ve found myself doing things like having my groceries delivered just because I can. I am a childless adult who works from home and enjoys going to the grocery store. At my busiest, I’m really never too busy to go pick up a potato myself.
Yet, somebody (capitalism) tells me I should constantly be optimizing. That if I have the option to be more efficient, I should take it. But guess what! Turns out I’m not a machine. I don’t need to be optimized. I like going outside. I like talking to people. And when you get right down to it, I don’t know what I’m “saving” all this “time” for. So here’s how this newsletter is going to work:
About once a month, I’ll be exploring what it looks like to do something that is, broadly: inconvenient, inefficient, or generally more about a process than an end result. Maybe I’m:
Reading a really long book (I’m talking 800+ pages. I’m talking Lonesome Dove.)
Going to the grocery store again because I recently discovered that my grocery store employs a cashier who can only be described as The Kindest Man on the Planet.
Undertaking a potentially “pointless” creative endeavor like, say, writing a novel during the month of November just to see if I can come up with that many words.
Walking my dog for 10 minutes longer each morning because he’s a great dog and I love taking walks with him and what’s 10 more minutes?
When you get right down to it, this is about doing things because I can. Because I’m alive and I have a brain and I don’t need fucking Google Gemini to summarize my emails for me.
I’ll leave you with this very long story from Kurt Vonnegut about the beauty of leaving your home to buy an envelope. I could give you the abridged, screenshotted version of the quote that you’ve probably seen online, but that’s not in the spirit of the thing. Plus, it’s more fun to listen to him tell the story (yes, it takes like 10 minutes) and I even time-stamped the start time for you here.
Some recommended reading if you want to keep riding the “Death to Spotify” wave:
This article in the New Yorker which is also about…
this book by Liz Pelly which I have not read yet but hear is great.
Do you do something the inconvenient way because you think it’s the best way? I’d love for you to tell me about it! Send me a message or drop a line in the comments.
I love this store
this rocks!! there is often a cost to convenience...we just dont always see it....much 2 think about.....