After caving and buying Spotify Premium, I realized how much they held back from the free users.
I thought it was dumb that free users couldn’t choose a specific song they want or play an album in order. For a while, this didn’t bug me because I like playing my playlist in shuffle mode, but whenever I went to play one song, a million would come before it.
That brings me to my second point. If a playlist wasn’t long enough, songs would automatically be added to it. Personally, I think Spotify suggestions often don’t match with a person’s music taste, so whenever these songs get added, the limited skips get wasted.
There are also tiny things that make the app annoying to use. You can’t see the next song that’s going to play, you can’t replay or rewind a song, and there are limited times you can look at the lyrics, to list a few. While these things don’t affect the music quality, they still get on my nerves and don’t feel premium-worthy.
The only things that should be included in premium should be unlimited skips, no ads, jam sessions, and offline downloading. Everything else should just be basic music app features .
I only stayed on Spotify because of Spotify Wrapped, Playlist In a Bottle, and because I didn’t feel like moving all of my playlists over to another app. But even these reasons aren’t working for me anymore. 2024 Spotify Wrap felt lazy and anticlimactic. They teased their users for weeks making it look exciting and big, only for it to be the bare minimum and feel AI generated.
Playlist In a Bottle also got removed this year. Users could only access the one they made during the last round but could not prepare one for 2026. I personally liked waiting to see what songs I put in the time capsule the previous year, and many users do, too. It’s weird and a let down that it got removed with no explanation.
At this point, I don’t really care about how long it will take to recreate my playlists on another app. Paying every month just to have a functional way to listen to music is annoying and feels greedy. Other apps may have their faults but not as many as Spotify.
ALTERNATIVE APPS:
YOUTUBE MUSIC
APPLE MUSIC
PANDORA
AMAZON MUSIC
SOUNDCLOUD
