It’s that time of the year again. People are sharing their top music charts from Spotify. It’s become a tradition to screenshot the results and share them everywhere. What I wasn’t expecting this year was to see a #boycottspotify happening at the same time.

Users are cancelling their premium subscriptions and podcasters are removing their catalogs from the service because Spotify’s CEO invested money on what appears to be a terrible AI company.

Is it really that simple to just leave one’s music provider? Around 6 months ago I struggled with the decision to unsubscribe from Spotify premium. My reasons were different, but it took more than just waking up one day and saying I’m done with Spotify.

Maybe is the sentimentalism of the music medium, as my playlists still live on Spotify and I couldn’t imagine them anywhere else. Maybe is the fact that I used to love Spotify, but I find it hard to hate on streaming services, even the ones I don’t even use, because they provide too much value to people in developing countries.

So I thought this #boycottspotify was all an overreaction, until Migala detailed why they’re taking their podcast down from the platform.

We can’t collaborate with a company that profits from artists to finance war.

When you put it like that something feels incredibly unappropriate about this mix of art and war.

I stopped paying for Spotify premium in favor of Plexamp. I was just rooting for a less algorithmic (is that a word? it made sense in my native Spanish) way of enjoying my own collection first and a more organic way of discovering music as there are only two record stores left in the city and I heard one of them might be closing soon. But I’ll go about music discovering another time. I’m just here to say there’s something admirable in every ethical decision, so props to those who finally quit. They inspired me to finally move those treasured playlists, and hopefully there will be time to talk about that too.