The enshittification of Spotify

Spotify was never great for supporting artists, but at least, it did its job (play music) is a relatively¹ reliable and unobtrusive way.

Well, not anymore, says Drew Austin:

In the past month, the company has opened up two new fronts against its haters, rolling out an AI DJ feature and then, just a couple of weeks later, unveiling plans to TikTokify its interface in the form of a vertically-scrolling video “discovery feed.”

This feels like enshittification all over again. Users are locked in and Spotify is taking advantage of this to start pushing features that nobody wants, but that might generate more eyeball time and more money.

The TikTok-like discovery feed is a major change, albeit one that nobody asked for—a seemingly desperate pivot oriented toward squeezing more value out of Spotify’s users in a hostile economic climate. Maybe someone out there is excited to see Spotify become more like TikTok, but it’s hard to imagine who.

Or maybe this is not really enshittification (because this doesn't follow the pattern of: value for users > value for business customers > value for platform) but rather just good old bloat.

The rest of Austin's newsletter goes on another interesting tangent that circles back to the other enshittification post (of search results, this time) that I mentioned earlier.

Use Bandcamp!²