Today has not been a good day.
This certainly isn’t how I envisaged launching this Substack.
I’ve spent months working hard towards fleshing it out, writing articles and editing podcast episodes so that when this went live people might see the value in it.
Today I had that rug well and truly pulled by Spotify.
So here it is.. the Substack.. in bits.. elements of that torn rug wavering in the wind.
The plan was for the Substack to fund the podcast.. and in the future, ‘the arcing, shimmering, rainbow dolphin leaping gleefully on the horizon’.. possibly make time for me to pursue other creative endeavours as well.
However the whole plan was built around a formative podcast, ‘Interconnector’.
A podcast I’ve spent years working on and which last year won a New Zealand Podcast Award. It’s been a proper labour of love, a chance to give back to those who sat down with me for a chat - but the show itself was built around being able to play music.. an element Spotify has now taken away.
This choice by Spotify doesn’t make sense to me. The genius of the set up was that rather than license the music for insertion, Spotify enabled the tracks to be part of a small contained playlist.. a show.
It was an elegant solution which benefited the artists by providing quantifiable listens to their tracks and lead to several great podcasts. It was essentially radio in the podcast world, but unencumbered by the restrictive commercial imperative of modern radio airwaves - the shows could breathe.
Ironic then that the air should be sucked out of them by a giant corporate entity.
I’m not sure Spotify knew what it had.
This story goes back to a time before Covid, when Spotify was making major moves to corner the podcast market. It purchased Gimlet Media, it purchased Joe Rogan and it picked up a plucky podcast platform called Anchor.
It was Anchor who made the music shows possible. Spotify bought it, absorbed it, hobbled it and now, finally, killed it.
I don’t think it was Spotify’s intention to kill off a competitor in the market, but that’s what they’ve essentially done. Bought out the competition and shut it down.
What’s strange, is why? I believe they saw something in Anchor, and it wasn’t just the market leader, it was their concept. Did Spotify think that everyone would be starting their own radio shows? That millions upon millions of people would play out their childhood dreams of playing songs off the radio?
If they did, they were wrong. The format was undeniably hard work, but that’s also what made it special. It was a touch clunky, but done right, the shows were creative, engaging and building fan bases and communities around them. What Spotify missed here was a chance to engage with those communities.. they’ve completely overlooked the slow burn of truly hardcore fans which was emerging.
The strangest thing for me is, I believe, it wasn’t costing them anything. So why turn it off?
This thought is going to haunt me for a while I suspect, as through this one decision, I’ve personally lost so much.
You may have read the previous articles, I’ve left them untouched, a time capsule to what I was thinking, planning and my fears around all of it.
It seems absurd in the extreme now for me to have placed so much stock in trusting a major company to continue to provide anything and I wonder if this is a lesson for all of us around the faith we put into huge corporations like Spotify, Meta or Google.
Their ability to hold such sway over our lives, their indifference to their decision making on us, their total lack of customer service or belief that we even are customers. Their wholehearted derision at having to deal with us at all. To them we aren’t customers, we are livestock, to be cultivated and harvested.
Why did I think they’d hold my interests at heart or care what I have to think?
I kept the logs of my discussions with Spotify, they probably won’t like that. I might elaborate further on my dealing with them as my despair turns to rage.
The whole reason I discovered Spotify’s changes is because I was locked out of my account. I was attempting to upload the last episode of series two, to glue the narratives together between what happened before and after all my equipment was stolen at the end of last year.
It was only then I discovered the changes that came into effect at the end of June - a bit later than my contemporaries to be certain. Indeed some found out in February, a post from Spotify that clearly passed me by..
The cynicism of them phrasing it like it’s a positive development makes me taste sick.
So what to do now?
What to do about all the invisible work I’ve done before?
I lost so much when my possesions, my tools and my work were stolen - the resolve to start again and re-interview people came from a very deep place. I grieved before I believed. I’d only just processed the BBC starting a show with the same premise as mine, now I’m staring into the stony coalface of square one all over again.
I can’t hide how hard that is.
I am desperate to do justice to every person who’s sat down to talk to me. I owe them.
I also know a music podcast with no music isn’t nearly as good a show.
I need to go away, absorb the reality, wrestle with the ramifications, muse on a solution.. or conclusion. I don’t know how many times I can pick myself up off the canvas with this project.. the weight I place on myself sucks the air from my lungs on its own.
I’ve uploaded the latest episode with the snippets of songs interspersed throughout, but who knows how long it might stay up for?
..maybe now is the right time to pick my own song?