Here’s a statement that I normally have to keep close to my chest as a What Hi-Fi? staffer: I like Spotify. I know that’s as basic as having The Weeknd as your favourite ever artist, or plastering the inside of your teenage bedroom with posters of Théophile Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon in a bid to be considered artistic, but that’s just the way it is. Spotify and I are enjoying a stable union and see no reason to part ways just yet. Sure, I use (and appreciate) Tidal for professional purposes thanks to its better-sounding catalogue of high-res music, but that’s more of a work relationship. In the end, I always come home to Spotify.
In fairness to my long-term streaming spouse, it currently offers numerous incentives for me to continue doing so. If anything, Spotify’s increasing diversification of friendly features only makes me admire and appreciate the service more, and while I’m not happy about the recent price hikes, I’m pleased and impressed with the introduction of audiobooks (great!), music videos (meh) and, most recently, AI curated playlists to the platform, the latter of which I’ve been gamely playing around with despite my misgivings about artificial intelligence’s ever-increasing encroachment into our daily lives. It’s been akin to using the Terminator as a novelty tin opener: useful, but with a nagging sense of jeopardy.
