Intentional Media Consumption for Dummies
Bella Ross, who writes the Substack newsletter ephemeral musings, on why she left Spotify and what she replaced it with. It is part argument about algorithmic listening flattening taste and underpaying artists, part practical list covering CDs, internet radio, Bandcamp and the public library. Ends with her favourite music and films of 2024.
The argument
Ross opens on Spotify Wrapped day 2024, when her "growing distaste for the widely used music streaming service was affirmed by the masses". Her complaint is structural rather than nostalgic: the app's interface prioritises playlists and podcasts, so albums get "easily lost in the shuffle", and she noticed she had stopped listening to full records despite repeatedly trying to.
Her diagnosis is that intentionality used to be enforced by friction. Ripping albums off YouTube in high school, or spending an hour picking which songs to buy with a $10 monthly allowance, made you commit. "Now that all of the inconvenience has been removed from the process... that intentionality has been lost, and it's left me feeling increasingly alienated from the humans behind the art."
Two further charges:
- AI slop as a margin play. She notes Spotify padding playlists with AI-generated music "with the specific intent of paying human artists even less than it currently does".
- The echo chamber. Wrapped revealed "we're all listening to the same shit, the shit they want us to listen to". Her point is not ego. It is that art's value is helping you understand other people, and an algorithm that only returns your existing taste robs you of that.
What she actually did
- Moved to Apple Music. Still a big player in a broken industry, but it pays artists more, foregrounds albums, keeps podcasts in a separate app, and sounds better. She kept a free Spotify account purely to preserve her library.
- Physical media, specifically CDs. Cheaper and more practical than vinyl, playable at home, in the car and on a thrifted portable player. Her honest reason: she habitually skips songs before they end, and a disc disincentivises that.
- Internet radio.* **NTS Radio** as "the better, more human version of Spotify's algorithmically-generated playlists", with DJ shows from around the world, free or **$5 a month**, much of which goes to the DJs. *Particle FM as the San Diego equivalent.
- Crowdsourced methods. YouTube live-set rabbit holes, following critics, record shops, Bandcamp (the website, not the app), Rate Your Music, Last FM, borrowing CDs from the public library, compilation labels like Music from Memory, and going to shows.
She closes with 10 standout albums of 2024, including Metronomy, Broadcast, Caribou, Bar Italia and Dougie Poole, with Chappell Roan as her top artist, plus five-star films including _Perfect Days_ and _The Zone of Interest_.
Why it matters
Most "quit the algorithm" writing stops at the complaint. This one costs it out: which platform, what it pays, what it costs you in convenience, and what you get back. The friction argument is the useful bit. Attention is not restored by willpower, it is restored by rebuilding the small obstacles that convenience removed.
Key takeaways
- Interface design decides listening habits. If albums are buried, you stop hearing albums.
- Friction was doing real work. Removing it removed the intent along with the inconvenience.
- Human curation, meaning radio, friends, librarians and record shop staff, is the practical alternative to recommendation engines, not abstinence.
· End of dispatch ·
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Dead Good Club
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