Goodbye Spotify
Today I said goodbye to one of my favourite apps in the world. I started using it more than 10 years ago and at some point I've even paid for the service via monthly direct debit. When it came out, it was a much needed disruption and as a small startup, it enjoyed the backing of cutting edge tech geeks the world over. It grew so large over the years, becoming the number one music streaming system we have today. However today, I waved goodbye to it after over a decade of passionate curation of playlists. I deleted the app from my iPhone and MacBook. Goodbye Spotify.
So what happened?
Well, I went to log into it to listen to some music with my new headphones that I've been enjoying for more than a week now. I've been delving into my old stash of music because I thought I lost my Spotify password as mentioned in this post. However, when I contacted Spotify support in order to resolve the issue, it turned out they'd "disabled" my account due to "suspicious activity".
"Well alright then, thanks Spotify. Can you verify me so I can get my account back?"
Apparently not. All my playlists had been wiped. There was "no other information" on my account apart from songs I'd liked. I don't do that very often, so any "liked" song would have been from many years ago, which I don't remember. I tried guessing some, which were "incorrect", of course.
This is clearly a free account. Actually it's not free - it's ad supported, plus they harvest my data and listening habits amongst other things. So it's not free-free, but you get the picture.
I was advised in the end by the agent to create a new account, at which point I politely thanked him for his help and ended the conversation.
Hacked?
Maybe. It could be that my account had been taken over by someone else. I noticed today that many accounts, premium and otherwise, are being advertised for sale on Twitter. These accounts must come from somewhere. The agent told me that the "suspicious" activity was multiple password reset attempts. It could be that someone attempted a brute-force attack on my account.
I don't know why someone would want my free account, apart from the fact that it's location is the UK, so it has access to music that may not be available in other regions of the world. Why they'd not just use a VPN instead, I don't know.
Yes, of course I could create a new account, but what would be the point? I'd use it for another ten years, curate new playlists of my favourite songs again, all so that it could be wiped once again whenever Spotify's defences get breached?
I'm very careful with my things. I have only ever used Spotify on my iPhone and Mac, and have used Keychain to store passwords cryptographically, so there is no way someone got a hold of my password. Any breach would have been on Spotify's own end, which isn't rare. My account had been hacked before back when I was paying monthly for it. It was the reason I decided to move the the free option. That time, I could be verified via my debit card details.
Moral of the story?
Spotify is a private, centralised and very insecure data leaking service. Not only are they mining our data, just like Facebook, Instagram and Google services, they don't give a damn about data security.
Another moral of the story, which is recurring at this point is this. Not your keys, not your stuff. That playlist data was important to me, not the account itself. The decade's worth of curation. That's what was sad to lose.
Way forward?
Again, what we need is a decentralised version of Spotify. A service where I can own my own data which sits on a cryptographic blockchain so that it cannot be "wiped" or "disabled" at the whims of some guy sitting in a call centre in India, or anywhere else for that matter.
Thinking of it, this could be yet another Hive based project. I'm not saying the music itself has to be released on a decentralised system, just the curation system. A kind of blockchain playlist maker with the ability to point to other sources of music. I don't know what that would entail, but it's just an idea.
What I'd done in the past 10 years was decorate my dream home in rented property. The landlord has now decided that someone else tried to get into the house so he's trashed all my decor and renovated the property while I was on holiday. What I should have been doing is building my own house.
I'm going to miss Spotify, I'm not going to lie, but it's probably time I start weaning myself off these centralised services one by one anyway.
Peace & Love,
Adé