I hate Spotify.

Not the musical selection, which is vast, but the way the mobile app seems to be constantly running in the background, whether I’m listening to music or not. There’s no way to close the app or keep it off without going into the app settings and manually hitting force-quit. Maybe this is an Android thing. I don’t know.

The incessant notifications, despite the fact I’ve turned-off notifications. The curated playlists ad nauseum, “This is Grunge”, “This is Lynyrd Skynyrd”, “This is Chris Cornell”, … The algorithm, trying desperately to figure out what I’m in the mood to hear; what genre or what artist that’s similar, based on what I’ve listened to before.

The bland visual design and the repetitive way artists and album discographies are presented. Everything looks the same — soulless and flat. Album cover art too, just sucks on a small screen compared to the 12-inch real thing.

But yes, it’s really convenient to have basically (almost) everything ever recorded at your fingertips, able to be streamed directly to your device anywhere — anywhere there’s a network connection that is, unless you’ve downloaded your songs to play offline. But oddly, that never seems to work very long before the app prompts you to re-download your songs again… and again… to play offline. Funny, this is Spotify’s way to gently remind us the songs we download aren’t ours to keep.

But all this stuff is trivial nonsense. I really don’t care because a few months ago I rediscovered the joy of listening to music on vinyl and find myself using Spotify less and less. I forgot how much better music sounds coming from a good analog turntable with a phono preamp, amplifier and pair of speakers.

Vinyl doesn’t need a GUI, network connection or paid subscription to listen. No fussing around syncing Bluetooth. No app notifications or software updates. No Ads. No promoted this or that. No screen required. Ahh… imagine that. No screen. Turn off the screen.

Spotify compartmentalizes the listening experience. I feel like I’m constantly jumping from song to song, playlist to playlist, whereas putting on a record I’m more inclined to listen to an entire side, very likely the entire album. This is exactly how Dark Side of the Moon was meant to be heard: each side [of the vinyl album] is a continuous piece of music. The five tracks on each side reflect various stages of human life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the human experience and, according to Waters, “empathy”. I can’t imagine listening to Dark Side of the Moon on shuffle, which Spotify will do unless you turn it off.

And this leads me to what I think is so absolutely great about listening to music on vinyl. A turntable forces you to slow down, disconnect and just listen. And that’s sort of the point. Long live vinyl!