Habit is doing more work than value in keeping Spotify on people’s phones.
Spotify used to be the easy pick. Now it costs more than Apple Music, matches Qobuz pricing, and still comes up short in the places people actually care about. The price hike would be easier to accept if the service clearly got better. Instead, the value gap keeps growing as Spotify leans on habit, not improvement.
If you’ve been on autopilot with Spotify, this is your cue. Here’s why.
Premium Pricing Without Premium Value
I still hear people talk about Spotify as if it is the default option, the convenient and reasonably priced middle ground. The latest price increase makes that harder to defend.
An individual Spotify Premium subscription in the US now costs $12.99, which puts it above Apple Music, TIDAL, and YouTube Music that are all at $10.99/month.
Sure, Qobuz cost the same at $12.99/month. But considering its high-res positioning, the value gap is still lagging for Spotify.
Spotify frames the increase as a necessary adjustment to keep delivering the best possible experience. That argument only holds if the product has gotten meaningfully better.
From where I’m sitting, the pitch and the reality have drifted apart. At today’s pricing, Spotify is asking for premium-adjacent money in a market where competitors match or beat it on value.
Lossless Audio Arrived Late and Still Trails Rivals
Spotify promised lossless audio but delayed it for years. So, when Spotify HiFi finally arrived in late 2025, it felt less like a leap forward and more like catching up.
On paper, Spotify’s lossless streaming tops out at 24-bit/44.1 kHz. That’s essentially CD sample rate with higher bit depth, which is fine, but it’s not a selling point in 2026.
For instance, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, and Qobuz all stream up to 24-bit/192 kHz on supported releases, often for less per month. That means if you pay attention to sound quality even casually, Spotify is asking you to pay more while offering fewer high-resolution options than several rivals.
The rollout also undercut the “big upgrade” messaging. Device support arrived unevenly, and the same real-world limitation still applies as most people listen over Bluetooth, where compression can erase much of the point of lossless in the first place.
Those caveats aren’t unique to Spotify, but Spotify marketed HiFi as a major listening upgrade while delivering the minimum needed to stop looking behind.
Spotify Still Pays Artists Less Per Stream
Spotify’s higher price tag would be easier to swallow if more of that money clearly flowed back to artists and songwriters. Unfortunately, Spotify is still widely cited as one of the lower-paying major platforms on a per-stream basis, with typical estimates putting it below services like Apple Music, TIDAL, and Amazon Music.
The bundling fight with the Mechanical Licensing Collective shows why this probably won’t get friendlier on its own.
After adding audiobooks to Premium, Spotify treated its subscription as a bundle, which can qualify for lower mechanical royalty rates than a music-only plan. The MLC sued in 2024 arguing this move unlawfully reduced what songwriters and publishers are owed.
And, while a judge dismissed the original claim in early 2025, the dispute hasn’t simply disappeared.
In turn, MLC continued pushing to challenge that outcome, including seeking an immediate appeal.
What’s hard to ignore is the scale. Estimates cited around the case have pegged the bundling impact at roughly $150 million in U.S. mechanical royalties in a year, which is exactly why the sides are fighting so aggressively over the classification.
AI-Generated Music Is Increasing on Spotify Playlists
The clearest sign that Spotify’s priorities have shifted appears the moment I open a trending playlist.
AI-generated tracks are no longer a fringe curiosity. Artists like the likely AI-generated Sienna Rose have placed multiple tracks on Spotify’s Viral 50 playlists, drawing millions of monthly listeners.
Other platforms have started drawing clearer lines here. Deezer says it tags fully AI-generated content and keeps it out of recommendations. Bandcamp has gone further and announced a ban on AI-generated music.
But on Spotify, AI tracks blend in without context.
Spotify’s public position is that it does not promote or penalize tracks made with AI tools. They argue it is not always possible to draw a clear line between AI and human-created tracks. But that ambiguity conveniently removes any obligation to take a stronger stance.
That’s why playlists increasingly feel padded with generic, low-effort music that lacks the human touch.
The impact is worse for musicians. AI tracks do not tour, do not need studios, and do not depend on streaming income to survive. Still, they compete in the same algorithmic systems.
The Growing Spotify Boycott Since Mid-2025
Since mid-2025, a real boycott wave has been unfolding. It kicked off after reports that Daniel Ek’s investment firm Prima Materia led a €600 million funding round into Helsing, a defense tech company building AI-driven military systems.
Deerhoof pulled their catalogue first, saying they did not want their music tied to “AI battle tech,” and other artists followed, including Xiu Xiu and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard.
By fall 2025, outlets were describing Spotify as “haemorrhaging” artists, and even bigger names like Massive Attack said their 2026 releases will skip Spotify entirely.
At this point, the question is not why some artists leave. It is why Spotify is giving them new reasons to.
Complaints About Shuffle, Playlists, and Discovery Quality
Spotify’s biggest defense has always been discovery. Even people who don’t care about sound quality will say they stay because the recommendations “just get them.” That argument is starting to sound dated.
If you spend time in forums and Spotify-focused Reddit threads, the complaints repeat in a pretty familiar way. Shuffle feels inconsistent. Recommendations lean toward whatever’s already big. Playlists feel less like a person’s taste and more like a growth lever.
And now, with AI-generated tracks blending in, some listeners say they’ve had to look up artists just to confirm they’re real. That isn’t discovery. That’s unpaid cleanup.
In fact, Spotify has doubled down on social and engagement features. The list includes messages, collaborative playlists, AI-generated playlist prompts, sharing tools, and social discovery mechanics. None of these improve sound quality or increase artist compensation.
They do, however, keep users on the platform.
All in all, I’d say what keeps people subscribed is no longer value, but habit. Maybe the recent price hike will finally act like a wake-up call.