There are lots of reasons to dislike Spotify but a frustration of mine with the "I ditched Spotify" discourse is that it hides the ball. As this article quietly acknowledges at the end: ditching streaming services either means spending a lot more money or listening to a lot less music. To be clear I think either option is fine, but those seem like the important aspects of the change. If you are going to spend 10x mor…
If you still spend as much on music as before (for the sake of argument), more of that amount now goes to the people who actually make music. It's a big middle finger to Spotify and the likes.
Of course, the obvious issue is that your money now isn't distributed fairly according to some viewpoints. You like band A, and buy some of their merchandise or a CD, but you also pirate singer B's music, and don't pay them a dime. On the other hand, if you want to stop helping these mega-platforms exploit artists and users and just generally suck, piracy seems like a good answer if you can do it without risking yourself.
It won't help much in the short term though, this is not an option for most people, but I won't judge anyone taking this route and can see how it can be ethically sound for many (but certainly not for all).