I Am Here to Demonize Spotify. By RICHARD BECK. "Finally, there was Spotify. I am here to demonize Spotify. Its negative impact on the lives of working musicians has been well documented, as have its homogenizing effects on music itself (the intensified need to make sure that listeners don’t get bored within the first thirty seconds and skip to the next track, songs getting shorter because artists are paid by the single play, et cetera). But Spotify also degrades the experience of listening to music. Like the rest of the internet, it encourages impatience. You listen to a track or album, and if it doesn’t grab you right away, you skip to the next thing, and then you never come back to it. You may intend to, but you won’t. There are too many playlists, too many slapped-together musical mood-boards, too many mixes claiming to document subgenres that don’t exist—opening the app on my phone just now, I’m being asked to delve into something called “Organic Experimental.” The platform is a fire hose of asinine recommendations for songs you haven’t heard that were only recommended to you because they’re as similar as possible to songs you have. (In the words of one Guardian writer: “You like bread? Try toast!”) In pursuit of its goal of perfect, frictionless streaming, Spotify encourages you to outsource the work of deciding what you like and dislike, and of figuring out why." "In other words, it discourages listening to music as such. Not all listening requires immersive attentiveness—that’s what the radio is for—but in its attempts to swallow up radio and home listening alike, Spotify turns all music into something that fills up the background while you work or exercise or scroll through Twitter. And at least radio stations have DJs. Listening to Spotify is like listening to a radio station run by the stupidest version of myself."