Tip for Spotify haters & music lovers: NTS Radio

When Spotify launched in 2008, I was one of their early users. My friend Vasco in Stockholm sent me one of the invites he received from the founder of this übercool Swedish startup.

Before Spotify I had a big hard drive full of illegally downloaded music (Napster, BitTorrent). Searching for an artist and just pressing play on Spotify was revolutionary – also like having a massive hard drive, but unlimited and legal.

But I’ve fallen out of love a long time ago.

Why Spotify sucks (for me)

Spotify gets more and more bad publicity. Subscription prices keep rising (while they keep paying artists the same – between $0.003–$0.005 per stream). Founder Daniel Ek hasn’t made himself very popular by investing much of his wealth in a military AI start-up that makes AI-powered drones

Personally, my main problem with Spotify is the algorithm. I hate it with a passion – it kills the need to discover music and lets money flow to uncreative music creators. Spotify wants you to maximize the number of hours you spend there, so they motivate you to choose “one click play all day” playlists (like “Focus”, “Chill” and even “Sleep”). This makes music like wallpaper. No wonder Spotify sees AI-generated music as an “opportunity”.

What worsens it: Spotify started offering artists and labels to pay for priority algorithmic placement – in exchange for accepting a 30% royalty reduction on those promoted streams. They don’t disclose in the playlists, but somewhere in the fine print of the terms.

I avoided the algorithm and discovered new music by following websites & playlists by really great curators & experts who share my weird taste (like Oor for Indie, Alt Orient for Turkish electronic music, Pitchfork for anything alternative).

Check out NTS!

Years ago, a Tunisian musician who I met in Athens tipped me to check out NTS radio – a “music discovery platform” powered by humans (“Residents”) who are curated by NTS to create “shows” that run for an hour or so. And NTS is very critical, it seems. All the shows I’ve listened to, transpired a deep love for music and a particular “scene”. Quirky music! My cup of tea.

What I love most, is that there’s a big focus on non-European and US music. My favorites include DJ Ruth Tafébé from Abidjan, North African RAI lover Cheb Mimo and Indian music expert Symrin (“Ganga Blues“).

Try it out some time! It’s free to use, and if you become a “Supporter” (€4.99 & 50% goes to the artists – eat that Spotify) you’ll get an extra warm feeling of supporting good music and full track-lists.

So, have I ditched Spotify? Not yet!

My aim with this article was to get my head straight and see if I can live without Spotify.

I’ve concluded I can’t do it. Yet. The option to listen to music offline (NTS doesn’t offer it) when I’m on the road is quite essential for me. And I still use Spotify a lot to listen to music I discover through NTS. I’ve recently been binge-listening to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – something I couldn’t have done on NTS Radio.

Check out NTS Radio!