Spotify Could Learn Something From 8 Ball

I love 8 Ball Pool

I don’t love Spotify.

I used to, but I don’t anymore.

9 long years I’ve been using Spotify, I’ve fallen out of love with it.

8 Ball Pool - I’ve been playing it for 11 years. I still love it.

So the problem isn’t my commitment issues, as my therapist so dearly likes to point out. Then what might it be?

Here’s the thing. I loved Spotify.

I used to have a cracked app of the premium version on my Android. Loved the experience, had to respect the company enough for what it did, so I uninstalled it, started paying for it.

Loved the experience, but I thought there wasn’t enough of a difference between the paid and free version so I downgraded. Lost some privilege, but nothing that hurt me.

Some songs were locked. Sound quality dropped. Not a big audiophile, so no harm done. Ads are annoying, but I don’t mind. All good. Still love Spotify.

They shut down Lyrics for the freemium users. Okay. Makes sense - you want to have enough leverage for people to subscribe. Good move.

Then you disable Shuffle. Okay? Not sure how that helps, but tolerable.

We’re enabling Smart Shuffle now. What’s that? Oh, you’ll just play random songs from my playlist? Cool.

Oh, I can’t disable it? Hmmm……..

Oh, also you can’t change the song more than 4 times per hour. Huh?

Yeah… Oh, and while we’re at it, we’re also going to disable going back a song. What the fuck?

Spotify: Okay, so now that you have a compelling enough reason to switch to Premium, wanna give us your card?

Me: No

Spotify:

Here’s the thing.

Spotify has 550 million users. 220 million users are paid subscribers.

And music platforms are sacred temples for people. They do not migrate easily.

Spotify thrives on this fact. It has enough people hooked on the platform who’ve been using it for years. Their literal lifespan is on their playlists.

Spotify won’t touch this. But it will take away everything else!!

It will bully you into giving it your lunch money.

Some will give in. Some will fight. Some will choose to ignore. And some will simply walk away.

I don’t love Spotify. But I love 8 Ball Pool.

Here’s why:

• 11 years on, the app still hasn’t stripped me of any of the features I got on day 1

• I’ve not paid a single cent on the app, and it still doesn’t push me for purchases

• It embraces my commitment issues like my therapist does

I still use Spotify by the way. What else am I going to choose? Prime Music? You crazy?