When we consume goods from a company (be it software or not), we contribute to its financial stability, development, and profit. Conversely, boycott campaigns against a company can greatly harm their reputation and business, becoming a very useful tool for peaceful activism widely used over centuries.

As a consumer, I often find it difficult to decide which companies I want to support, and which I don’t. I literally cannot investigate every single company I want to buy from. But at the same time, if I’m aware that a company is involved in what I consider unethical activities, I cannot just ignore it and move on.

Bye bye, Spotify

When I started my Free Software activism, I made a list with all the proprietary software I use and decided to look for a free, open source software that could give me a similar service. Along the way, I learned about privacy and digital sovereignty, which made self-hosting a very appealing option for me. Since then, I’ve embraced projects like Matrix, OpenStreetMaps, CoMaps, ntfy, Nextcloud, Jekyll, LanguageTools, Kuma, Grafana, Gitea. I even host my own Docker registry. But one of the apps I didn’t manage to get rid of is, precisely, Spotify.

Roughly 20 years ago, I used to have a 512MB MP3 player where I stored pretty much all music I needed. After that, for many years, I didn’t listen to music at all, and it was not until I started working in an office that I created a Spotify account and started enjoying music again. As a software developer, a fair amount of my working hours are dedicated to reading, coding, researching, testing, etc., all of which I typically do own my own while listening to music.

I am not actually sure where that music came from back in the days, but I suspect I didn’t have the skills to download it myself. Or maybe I did, through torrent. Or a friend transferred those files to me. One way or another, most likely the origin of those files was dubious.

The paradigm of music consumption has also changed over time. I remember playing all tracks in an album during road trips, something that few of my friends do nowadays. We’re used to the immediate demand, to the surprise, to the music shuffle. We enjoy not knowing which song comes next. We want to discover new songs, stay up to date with the new releases of our favourite artists, or find new groups. We’re used to all that commodity, and it’s hard to walk away from that.

For artists, things have changed as well, and not for good. I won’t pretend do be an expert on the field, but those who are, are organized in platforms (ref. 1, 2, 3) that condemn predatory practices by Spotify and lower royalties than ever. I see there are some platforms like BandCamp that pay a big share of the benefits to the artists, which may be a more ethical way to acquire music. Plus, you can download the files in MP3 format and use the player of your choice.

Navidrome, welcome

The fact that you can have your music in MP3 format is very relevant. When you use a streaming service, you pay for the license to stream (not permanently store) digital media, tied to the contract with a certain provider (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.). In 10 years I’ve been using Spotify, I’ve paid roughly €2000, and I do not own a single copy of a song. However, if you buy music in MP3 format, or rip a CD you own (even if you have to bypass some DMCA protections, which I find unethical on their own), that is something you can later use in a different device, backup, etc.

Provided the origin of those MP3 files is ethical now (unlike my files 20 years ago), you can still get some of the fancy features streaming platforms provide. For example, you can configure an instance of Navidrome to host your personal music library, and apps like DSub2000 to stream songs in your device.

Ethics

As I mentioned in the beginning, I wanted to ditch Spotify simply because it’s one of the leftover proprietary pieces of software I am still using. But the last nail in the coffin for me was learning that Daniel Ek’s investment group is putting money in the arms industry (ref. 4, 5) (I refuse to name it defense industry) which is something I cannot bear with. I don’t analyze the investments of every CEO of every service I use, but this is something I cannot (and don’t want to) unlearn, and therefore I cannot just sit and wait while the money from my subscription goes to funding this kind of companies.

Again, I won’t pretend everything I’ve ever done is legal or ethical, but at least, I’m trying. And for me, this is one more step towards becoming the person I want to be.

The rhyme in the headers was unintended.