alright. for real, this time, I think I’m finally done with lastfm. like, for real, I’m done. and fuck spotify wrapped and apple music replay and all of that BS, too.
I don’t know if it’s OCD or something else, but the amount of pain and frustration and agonizing it has given us is awful, and we hate it, and we never, ever want to go back to it.
i have never felt more convinced in my life that this constant tracking of play stats - whether through lastfm or statsfm or even just spotify wrapped or whatever - is quite literally one of the worst things to ever happen to the modern music space.
i hate feeling like everything i listen to is a part of a game. i hate feeling like music has a score, that i can achieve. that i can do better at if i listen to that song, or that artist, more. no one should ever listen to music for the sole purpose of being that artist’s “#1 listener” for that year or whatever. it’s all just continued bullshit designed to increase Engagement™ on platforms that directly profit off of said Engagement™. it’s fake, it’s artificial, and most of all, it takes away from one of the most meaningful art forms in the world, and turns it into a Competition of Consumption.
i was happier without all of this. i listened to whatever i wanted without fear of judgment, or worse, fear of missing stats. i went from happily listening to a song for three hours straight to spending every one of those minutes worried that “those plays won’t count” or whatever. and that fucking sucks! that’s fucking miserable!! no one should ever have to live like that!!!!
art isn’t a Game. you can’t turn art into a Game. the longer i live like this the more I realize that it’s so aggressively anti-art to boil music listening down to just fucking numbers like this.
so i refuse. i’m done.
so maybe i’m stupid, and overblowing it. maybe a normal, well-adjusted person can handle these kinds of things well. but i know that i can’t, and i know so many other people (especially neurodivergent folks) that can’t, either.
music was never meant to be numbers. it wasn’t meant to be play counts or listener stats or whatever the fuck a “scrobble” is. so, consider this my last “fuck you”.
all scrobbling-related tools will be removed from my website within the coming days.
i’m done.
oh, and fun fact: did you know that lastfm is currently owned by Paramount, the company currently trying to suck off the fascist regime to allow them to create a media and news monopoly? just thought that was fascinating :)
