There are plenty of ethical reasons to dump Spotify. In recent months, a number of artists—Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof, and Durham’s own Sylvan Esso—have done just that.
Over the years, none of those reasons ever quite motivated me to overcome the tug of convenience and cancel my subscription. Then, last month, I realized I wasn’t actually even particularly enjoying the streaming service anymore. Spotify Wrapped came and went—with its unsettling promise to be “more dynamic, personal, and unmistakably you than ever before”—but its annual dopamine hit had dulled to a slight ping, both the social and discovery aspects seemingly having evaporated into the algorithm.
I listen to music a lot: at the gym, the office, on the bus, while walking my dog, or cooking dinner. A byproduct of this is that the practice of listening has become a bit less special, a way to block out the noise of the world rather than to seek out new noise intentionally. Spotify’s algorithms haven’t helped this musical atrophy—I’ve found myself cycling through the same 50 songs without brushing up against anything new. When I search for a playlist, I’m typically served those same songs rearranged in a slightly different order under a title (“Millennial Workout Mix”; “Main Character Energy”) that seems very nearly designed to humiliate.
Psychologists have a name for the gratification of computational reinforcement: algorithmic dependence—taste as something to affirm a sense of self rather than taste as a mutable quality, something to challenge and expand the self. In Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist, journalist Liz Pelly describes how Spotify has begun to stock its most popular playlists with commissioned music by “ghost artists” (i.e., production companies), a process that cuts costs, phases out working artists, and pushes extractive practices to the fore.
“This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-based playlist fodder—is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era,” writes Pelly.
Pair this with Spotify’s paltry artist payment model and it’s hard not to feel nihilistic. According to musician advocacy group United Musicians and Allied Workers, Spotify pays musicians roughly 0.004 cents a song, meaning a listener must stream a song 236 times for an artist to earn $1. My most-streamed song on Spotify in 2025 was “Teeth Marks” by S.G. Goodman, which I listened to 63 times. This means I paid S.G. Goodman about 25 cents for all the hours I spent listening to that beautiful song—a far cry from what I would’ve paid in 2005, squirreling away babysitting money to buy a CD from Barnes & Noble.
There are a handful of alternatives to Spotify, all of which vary in the degree to which they reinforce the same issues: Tidal, Apple Music, Deezer, and Napster, among others. This month, I’m experimenting with a free trial of the French platform Qobuz.
Qobuz is considerably more artist-friendly than Spotify, with a royalty rate of 0.0187 to 0.022 cents per stream. It provides editorial features like in-depth digital liner notes, artist interviews, and album reviews. On a casual scroll of the discovery page, I encounter Lee Morgan’s jazz album Cornbread (1965) and Oneohtrix Point Never’s ambient Replica (2011) alongside recommendations for Brazilian funk, trip hop, blues, and a hefty amount of classical music. There are ways to migrate your playlists from Spotify. (That’s good: Some—like, say, a certain 46-minute “Steely Dan breakup playlist” circa 2021—couldn’t and shouldn’t be spiritually rebuilt from scratch.)
I’m not an audiophile and didn’t think I’d notice the difference in quality, but the sound is much crisper than Spotify and goes further toward capturing the magic of live music. Listening to artist Natalie Bergman earlier this week, there were a few songs that made me feel like I was standing in a dark warehouse, a crackle in the air, reverb glancing off a concrete floor. There are drawbacks: Qobuz’s catalog is smaller than Spotify’s and its price point is higher: I paid $11.99 per month for Spotify and after my trial ends will pay $14.99 per month for Qobuz. Audiobooks are not available, so I added another app (the library’s Libby app) to my phone’s roster. We’ll see if I stick with it.
My New Year’s resolution led to broader questions. How do other people find new music? In an age of infinite discovery, where to begin and how to integrate habits of discovery into daily life? How to retain access to beloved music and still stumble upon new favorites? How to keep music habits ethical, local? And—asking for a friend—for brains used to solving decision fatigue with mindless streaming, how to keep the resolution to stay off Spotify? To learn more, I emailed a few local music lovers to ask.
The results were unanimous: Go to local shows, support local creators, and talk to your friends.
The capitalist suture pulling to keep consumer culture together is finally bursting at the seams. So we’re uplifting indie artists and each other, babes! That means paying all artists fairly for their time, their work, and their expertise. Which is why the best way to keep your music tastes fresh is to support your local DJs. It’s our job to curate soundscapes that scratch your brain and bring you euphoria in these dark times—whether on the dance floor or in your earbuds. So show up to our events, pay the cover, and let loose. You can even tip us if you want!
The local scene is teeming with talent. Start at the clubs. The Conjure, run by DJs Gemynii and Femi the Femme, curates dance parties around the sound of Black femme magic. No Visa—brought to you by the global, legendary DJ and producer Alec Lomami, visual artist Mike Tambashe, and event producer Ngamet Keita—bops around the Triangle with local DJs and phenoms from around the world sharing original tracks that span genre and culture. Femme Fragments, led by Poetic Note, puts together a stellar all-femme lineup every other month at Rubies in Durham, often featuring vinyl sets with an expansive range of house and techno.
Willco and its connecting mezcal bar La Veladora give Raleigh a burst of culture, with DJs playing every Thursday evening, most weekends, and at the Pan Comido events on Sundays for a tropical feel, all curated by DJ K Ward. Fun fact: Much of my music tastes have been shaped by K Ward’s mixed CDs, which he used to hand out to club goers 20 years ago. To catch budding artists early, longtime producer and DJ Treee City of Party Illegal hosts Blends with Friends every first Wednesday at the Pinhook. Anyone can roll up with a loaded USB stick and plug in for a 20-minute set. I’ve felt so much freedom dancing at all of these parties, discovering new music along the way.
Following and supporting amazing local DJs and producers on social media will lead you to ways to buy their music. And then there’s the classic internet-stalking method: Find a DJ’s Bandcamp or SoundCloud and peruse their favorites to create playlists all your own.
—Victoria Bouloubasis, DJ, Uymami; co-creator, MOODBOARD; and creator, DIALED IN, a local daytime pop-up series connecting food, music, and coffee.
I love talking about new music. I read a few music sites (like Stereogum) and Substacks (like No Expectations), but I think my favorite music bloggers are my friends. Whenever we hear something we like, we text breathlessly about it. In fact, when Sarah asked me to write this blurb, I texted her about an artist she might like (it was hemlock, an amazing artist whose music is NOT available on Spotify).
I love to do deep dives on the albums I love too, reading through the credits and connecting the dots like a conspiracy theorist. I always find new bands to check out and new details to share. Discovery is even more fun when it’s live, in a room with other people. I try to get out to as many gigs as I can (at the Pinhook, Fuzzy Needle, the Cave, etc.), catch all the openers, and report back to the group chats.
—Stephen Salisbury, musician, Sun Juneand Upper Twin
Sourcing music outside your usual rotation is easier than you might expect, especially in North Carolina, where the local music scene is thriving. In Raleigh, institutions like Kings and the Pour House offer the chance, on any given week, to discover an artist who is either brand new or simply new to you, often through an unforgettable live performance.
While there are countless ways to uncover new music online, few are as impactful as supporting a local venue. Doing so not only introduces you to fresh sounds but also strengthens the local economy and sustains the creative ecosystem that makes discovery possible. The Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro is a prime example. Over the years, I have seen shows there that connected me to music I still carry with me today. Supporting Cat’s Cradle and venues like it helps ensure that North Carolina continues to be a place where great local music can grow, thrive, and reach new audiences.
—BreYonnaBeats, DJ and curator
My favorite current avenue for discovering music is good old talking to your pals—see what they are listening to/what shows they are going to that week. Showing up for openers is always a good plan, or finding a record label I like and browsing everything they have put out on their Bandcamp page; listening to full DJ sets on YouTube and then chasing down my favorites is always fun too. Active listening and exploring to find what I like—risk-taking! —Amelia Meath, musician, Sylvan Esso, and co-founder, Psychic Hotline
I love listening to DJ mixes—usually from NTS, The Lot, or other livestreams, and then digging into the track IDs to find the names of songs that stuck out to me. Each one tends to open up a whole little musical world I was unaware of. —Nick Sanborn, musician, Sylvan Esso, and co-founder, Psychic Hotline
As an incurable collector of American and International roots music and a curator of the music on community radio station WHUP, I’m forever engaged in the search to find great music, new and old. Since pretty much everything is now available online, the challenge has been how to trawl the web efficiently to find lesser-known but worthy material for both the station and my personal stash. The process of discovery is enhanced by WHUP’s access to services for radio stations that offer a treasure-trove of material at no charge, including Play MPE and Airplay Direct. Play MPE in particular posts multiple full albums and singles in every conceivable genre, more than 100 roots-related titles since January 1 alone. A few sample tracks are usually enough to determine if it’s in our wheelhouse.
Beyond that, I’ve tapped into multiple music blogs over the years, many of international origin, whose administrators have excellent taste. Some include samples, but if not, I’ll search for the music online using Bandcamp or YouTube. Or I’ll just do a generic Google search for a type of music I’d like to explore with a few additional search terms (“contemporary Irish folk punk bands,” for example). YouTube has a feature that users generally don’t seem to know about, the Topic function, which is especially useful for the thousands of international bands that have no distribution stateside and get little to no airplay—if I learn about, say, a jazz band from Europe, I’ll type [band name] YouTube Topic in the address bar (but not in the YouTube website) and the site displays many of the band’s full album releases that you can then hear in their entirety track by track.
Since WHUP has a focus on music from North Carolina and the Southeast, I’ll also check the club and concert music listings to see who’s playing locally. None of the listings are comprehensive, and a venue search can be time consuming, though it’s still worth the effort—we probably find a half dozen releases every week by local or regional bands we didn’t know about. —Bob Burtman, host, Roots Rampage, WHUP
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