You can turn off suggested music automatically playing on Spotify, and I do. I also like following friends on there and have picked up interesting music leads from their playlists and realtime listening. None of this prohibits me from talking to them about music or researching on my own in other ways.

Most of my life, I’ve had zero friends who shared my music taste, so asking them for advice would have made my listening much more mainstream. Before I had Spotify, I did most of my music research through YouTube, which is arguably much more algorithmic. But instead of directing me to popular channels, I used it to find even weirder, more niche stuff than I already listened to 😂

These things are just tools. It’s our job to have awareness and use the tool rather than let it use us.