Ditching Music Subscriptions for Something Better

Streaming was the last thing I let go of. I had already cut most of my apps and turned off most of my notifications, but the music habit was harder to give up than any other.

What was actually wrong

Nobody talks about how tiring constant access is. Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music are all built to keep you browsing, and I let them. What started as background noise turned into an hour of scrolling through albums I had no intention of listening to.

The number that stopped me was in my own listening stats: 30,000 minutes the previous year. About 500 hours. Three weeks of my life spent as background noise.

Buying instead of streaming

Owning the music changed my behaviour more than I expected. I get through albums now, start to finish, because there is no infinite queue to fall through to.

I buy physical copies wherever I can find them. The rest I keep as local FLAC files, and playback happens on a device that is not my phone.

The hardware

A 5th gen iPod Classic did it. No internet, no notifications, nothing but music.

I installed Rockbox so it plays FLAC properly. The part I did not expect to miss was the scroll wheel. Choosing an album became a deliberate act rather than something that happened while I did something else, and the click when it locks is better than it has any right to be.

What I got out of it

I finish albums, which almost never happened before. Albums I bought years ago get played again, where streaming meant I would never return to them. And I no longer spend twenty minutes a day deciding what to listen to, which sounds trivial until you notice you have been doing exactly that.

On minimalism here

I do not think of this as giving things up. It is about removing the friction between you and the thing you actually want.

Concretely that meant killing the infinite scroll, cutting down the number of decisions, and making playback something I chose on purpose.

I spend much less time managing my music now and enjoy more of it, which is the whole point.

If you want to try

You do not need to go out and buy an iPod.

1. Pick ten albums you would actually want to hear again.
2. Listen to one start to finish without skipping.
3. Buy one you love, physically if you can find it.
4. Notice whether you treat it differently once you own it.

Streaming was designed to take your time. Buying music gave most of it back.