Actually, being able to listen to anything at any time has made me more distanced from music because I have stopped learning about artists and just used the Spotify “radio” of artists I knew from before Spotify.

After I cancelled Spotify I but buy stuff from Qobuz and Bandcamp, and I really consider before buying. Cheap self-published stuff I usually buy without thinking, but anything that has a label I only buy if I’m more sure about it.

I mostly buy albums which had also the advantage that I get to know an artist more deeply rather than just knowing their 5 most popular songs that appear in Spotify radios. Also, albums often have a theme or story that give them some personality that Spotify radios don’t have. Arguably you can also listen to full albums on Spotify, but somehow I never ended up doing that.

Another advantage of at least Bandcamp is that you can filter artists by genre and country or region, which helps discover artists from cultural contexts you are interested in. That’s one feature I love it for. Because this way I can find artists that I could actually see live one day, and I understand their music better because I know better where their perspective is coming from.