Cancelling my music streaming subscription made me excited about music again
I’m on the brink of possibly getting a job and definitely running out of money. In an attempt to start financially turning things around, I went on a monthly subscription purge.
I didn’t have a lot of subscriptions to begin with since I’ve done purges in the past. One thing that always survived the cut though was a music streamer of some sort. For years it was a Spotify account that an ex I haven’t spoken to since 2021 paid for; in fairness, he offered to. A few months ago I finally deleted it and got Apple Music. At the time I just assumed I needed a music streaming app because of course I would. I’m learning drums, I love watching live bands, I love music.
During last night’s purge though, I realized that not only did I rarely ever use Apple Music, I couldn’t even remember the last time I was excited to discover a new song or artist. For background noise I’ll throw on a hockey game or a podcast, but more often than not I’m perfectly ok with silence. And it’s been that way for years now.
I think having the option to listen to anything made everything less special to me. The dopamine hit of hearing a new song and immediately loving it used to be earned, and as a result, lasted longer.
To hear new music you went out to a store, or asked a friend to borrow whatever they had, or destroyed your computer with LimeWire, and frequently got burned with the results. Paying $18 for a CD that ended up only having one good song made you that much more grateful when you came across an album you didn’t have to skip a single track on.
I know it sounds old and out of touch to complain about having immediate access to every song ever recorded, but I don’t care. I’ve been living a life of immediate gratification and I think it’s been one of the biggest roadblocks to enjoying whatever time here I have left.
I recently finished Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and that coupled with last night’s purge gave me the itch to go thrifting for CDs (and a CD player). So that’s what I did today, unsuccessfully, but it didn’t matter. I was content to get dressed, hop on the bus, and walk around the Salvation Army shop without having any expectations of what I’d find.
That just means when I do find something interesting, I’ll bring it home, throw it in the CD player, and give it my full attention. Maybe it’ll suck, maybe it’ll be awesome, I don’t know, but I’ll be engaged the whole time.