The First Church of Lorenzo

A statement from the pulpit

Not on Spotify. Not Sorry.

Why this congregation does not worship at the house of the green circle.

People ask why The First Church of Lorenzo is not on Spotify. The short answer: Lorenzo would rather preach from a soapbox he owns than a cathedral he rents from a landlord who changes the locks for fun.

The algorithm giveth, the algorithm taketh away

Spotify decides what you hear. Not you. Not the host. A recommendation machine, tuned for reasons nobody outside the building is told, quietly picks which shows get surfaced and which get buried under a podcast about podcasts. In Lorenzo's opinion, that is not discovery. That is a slot machine wearing a lanyard.

Rules, enforced by vibes

A platform's rules are only as good as their enforcement, and in Lorenzo's view Spotify's enforcement has all the consistency of a weather vane in a wind tunnel. The explanation, when there is one, reads like it was written by a committee that never met. A church cannot run on that. Neither can a podcast.

Guilty until proven innocent

In Lorenzo's view, this is where it stops being merely annoying. As he sees it, Spotify points its machines at creators' episodes, scanning for a snippet of music, a borrowed clip, a bit that sounds like someone else's bit, and then reaches for the copyright strike first and the questions never.

The burden then lands on the creator. You must prove you have the right to use your own material. And while you gather the paperwork, the show sits suspended, or the episodes are simply gone. Not paused. Not flagged for review. Deleted, summarily, by a process that never had to prove anything to anyone.

Lorenzo cannot think of another platform that treats the people supplying its content quite this way. Creators hand over their work for free, hour after hour, and in his experience the posture in return is not gratitude. It is the posture of a host who believes he is doing you a favor by letting you in the door, while quietly charging admission to everyone else for the show you brought.

No landlords

Here is the part that matters. A show on someone else's platform exists at that platform's pleasure. They can demote it, hide it, or remove it whenever the mood strikes, and the host finds out with everyone else. Lorenzo declines to build a congregation on a lease that can be torn up on a whim.

And getting out is not exactly a revolving door. Even for shows hosted elsewhere and pulled in by RSS, Spotify's own help pages send creators to contact support to have a show removed. There is no button. You ask permission to leave. Noted.

What we do instead

This church owns its own building. The feed, the website, and the audio files are all self-hosted. Nobody can bury it, demonetize it, or algorithm it into a ditch. It is also free. It always has been. The collection plate is purely decorative.

Where to listen

The opinions above are Lorenzo's. The pews are open. Bring your own green circle, and leave it at the door.