Canceling my Spotify subscription

As part of a process of taking the advice in Stolen Focus I have cut out nearly all notifications, turning off all sounds, and indications of message waiting on email, slack, whatsapp, messenger and everything. The only way someone can interrupt me now is by text or phone - and this for the past 2 months has made a huge difference in the amount of time I have spent on my phone or distracted from what I am working on.

My next move has been to cancel all subscription services. I remember the good ol' days before you had to subscribe to things, where you would pay money and have that thing 'forever'! Subscription services obviously make more money than that, as basically, they trick you into thinking something is cheap, because you can't keep track of how much you are using it or need it.

The issue is that for me my interests in various stuff is very boom and bust, so I can be very interested on one thing for a few months, and then not do anything with it. Having the subscription causes me a feeling that I should be using it, which means at least with Netflix I ended up watching rubbish...

Spotify was the last hurdle as I do like to listen to a lot of music. But it's always been a slight source of guilt in the back of my head that of my £120 a year only a pittance goes to the artists - and in fact lots of my money presumably goes to popular artists who I think are, at worst, actively harmful to their listeners (😆). So instead, I am now looking forward to actually buying a new album to keep, each month.