When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
Please, people, for the love of the gods, stop using Spotify. There are numerous other services that are so much better value for your money and don’t treat artists (as much) like trash.
And that being said, try to support your beloved artists directly as much as you can. Buying digital downloads or physical media will give them more money than a lifetime of streaming ever would. Plus you get to keep the higher-quality music even if the platform or artist goes tits-up.
Could you give me some examples of alternative services? I’m paying spotify right now, but i’ll love to ditch it.
Sure, although keep in mind this will vary by region due to licensing issues.
Deezer is probably Spotify’s best direct competitor. They are priced equally (depending on region) and now offer high-res streaming as default instead of a paid extra. They’ve been expanding with new features such as lyrics, collab playlists, song identification, and they recently improved their recommendation system. They also offer a discount if you buy subs yearly instead of monthly so you can save if you like the platform.
Apple Music is also an option now that Apple has put in some work to make the platform easier to use on non-Apple devices such as the recently added Windows app. It’s not as feature-rich as Deezer but if you don’t use those added features anyway then it is an option. I personally would phrase it as “has less bloat”. If you own any Apple devices already then it will have tighter integration with them.
Tidal is the old favourite of audiophiles and music appreciators. They have been expanding their platform with new features and music and, somewhat recently, have also lowered their prices. High-res streaming is now included in the base sub tier. All of these alternatives pay artists more than Spotify but Tidal has one of the best artist payouts.
Qobuz is similar to Tidal and is a premium platform with a focus on quality. They are a newer service and are still expanding their regions, so I don’t have personal experience with them as they only recently opened up to my country. Their price and feature set looks competitive, though, and their UI does look slick. They also have better artist payouts.
Amazon Music apparently has better payouts for artists but Amazon is a shit company so I’ve never looked into them further. I’ll include YouTube Music here as well which has shitty payouts and is a shitty company.
Amazon Music
I invested heavily in the Amazon Music ecosystem, I bought hundreds of albums on there, and the platform is now very nearly unusuable. I cannot even listen to the songs that I paid for without also having to listen to ads. And the Android app now hides the downloads in some hidden folder so I can’t even download them and listen to them on another player. It makes me furious.
I’ve actually gone back to CDs, if you can believe it. It’s kind of nice sometimes, especially for full album plays, but I do miss a nice big playlist of my favorite songs from all artists.
I can believe it. I still have multiple libraries of physical media, and I pretty much never buy anything new that I can’t likewise physically own. I might rip and make MP3’s or transcode or emulate, or whatever, for convenience, but sometimes it’s just nice to be able to stick the disk or cartridge in the machine and have it just work without any of the associated modern ancillary bullshit.
Everything wants to be a service now. I just find that so irritating.
Apple Music also has Dolby atmos and much higher quality audio files compared to Spotify.
The only thing Spotify has on everyone is excellent playlists. I just use SongShift to copy the playlists over.
Tidal is okay but I prefer Apple Music since it has a better UI, cheaper price and is more user friendly for my non-audiophile family members.
if you use Apple Music and have a desktop/laptop look into Cider 2. Incredible streaming music player. https://cider.sh/
Just looked into these. It doesn’t look like any of these have official Linux apps :(
Apple Music has a web based player
Tidal is the only one for me since it’s the only one with an unofficial HiFi Linux client, which is a wrapper around the web version but with HiFi enabled.
I’m happy reading that they are decent on pay for artists.
The interesting thing about Tidal is that is was originally owned by artists (Jay-Z, Beyoncé; Kanye West; Madonna; Jason Aldean; Alicia Keys; Arcade Fire; Coldplay’s Chris Martin; Rihanna; and deadmau5) Who have since sold off a majority share to Block, while Jay-Z kept a board seat and other artists still have shares. Curious if it will last.
What’s the USP of Deezer over Apple Music now that the latter has lossless streaming as well (and live lyrics for longer)?
I’m enjoying Tidal
Thanks for the recommendation, I was worried they would be missing some of my artists but they had 99% of my music. Can’t wait to ditch Spotify.
ETA: dear lord the sound quality is so much better. I had no idea what I was missing.
Yeah, happily using Tidal as well. Haven’t missed any music that wasn’t also missing from Spotify, so…
Yeh, it’s pretty amazing.
Only thing I miss from Spotify are the user generated playlists, where I can search for something like “liquid drum and bass” and get a bunch of playlists
Does Tidal have a lightweight Linux client that’s kept up-to-date?
Tidal on Linux is a crap shoot, which sucks because pipewire is awesome for HiRes music since it can change sample rate on the fly to match a source. Best bet is Firefox and their web player, and using the middle tier “high” that’s blue colored, and letting pipewire play @ 44100
Check this web player wrapper, it allows for high and Max quality
https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi?tab=readme-ov-file#features
That runs on chromium, which in Linux is HARD locked to 48000, so every single song will be resampled.
Unfortunately, I’ve only found a wrapped up web client thing. Using the web page is probably similar.
The wrapped up web client works better than the native client on windows, tho. Not sure on sound quality, I haven’t had an issue tho
If you are talking about Tidal HiFi, the UI might be similar to the web version but apparently itbruns on a modified version of chrome that allows HiFi music? I did test it some months ago and the quality difference is noticeable.
Yeh, the electron wrapped Tidal HiFi for Linux. I just checked the GitHub, and it says it supports High and Max settings thanks to Widevine.
I swapped from Spotify to Tidal on windows and was blown away. Shortly after I started daily-driving Linux. I haven’t done an A/B between the Linux electron version and the windows desktop version, but it hasn’t annoyed me like Spotify did.According to another commenter chromium on Linux is hard capped on quality, so although it’s noticeable vs the web version, it’s not actual Max quality. I haven’t noticed it although my headphones should be able to show the difference (sony MDR 7506, I know, yes, for everything, people say that it doesn’t sound nice, I don’t care I love it) so idk.
Idk what the other two are saying because Tidal HiFi is an unofficial client that let’s you reproduce high quality music, being basically the only one that let’s you do it on Linux. Yeah it’s a web wrapper but with HiFi enabled or whatever, I don’t really remember but the default web version doesn’t have HiFi and the app does and it’s noticeable.
https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi?tab=readme-ov-file#features
As an Apple hater; Apple Music. Cheaper, good cross-platform frontends, more equitable to artists (though by no means satisfactorily so), has a Wrapped equivalent (though who actually cares). Maybe Spotify added something it doesn’t have in the several years since I switched but, I doubt it
Apple Music is on Android?
Yup
It is, but the app is frustrating. It has a mind of its own sometimes and, subjectively, basic UI functionality was an afterthought. Also no support on a galaxy watch.
That said, it sounds great and has a solid catalog (except the DJ Krush/Toshinori Kondo collab, Ki-Oku. Grrrr)
Qobuz/Tidal/Deezer?
Apple Music and Tidal.
Napster pay decent artist royalties and offer a Spotify migration service for your playlists etc. as well as lossless music.
It’s too convenient. Most people just want easy access and don’t even think of the downstream impacts. If a song or two goes unavailable, probably won’t notice. There is gonna need to be an alternative that is cheap and feature rich along with Spotify missing some steps. It’s here for awhile.
You are not wrong, but there are other services that are just as convenient and for less money. Spotify knows they are the “default” music streaming platform and they are exploiting that.
A quick Google puts the top two at Apple and Amazon. So that is a big no for me boss. I am pretty sure the next ones listed are just torrent front ends. I have a life now so no time for that…spotify it is.
I use Tidal. It may not be much better than Spotify, but it’s better than Spotify.
Audio quality is better and they pay the artists the most of all the major streaing platforms. I’ve been using Tidal for 2 years and have been very happy with the switch
While it doesn’t have well known artists, indie streaming Resonate prides itself as having the most generous (or at least, close to) payments to artists. To support this, it has an innovative payment model akin to higher purchase. You pay a little for the first listen to a track, but the price increases through subsequent listens. After 9 listens, you own the track outright. The total cost of ownership is around $0.9
That’s a cool model, at least at first glance
What is a better alternative, aside from just buying the media directly?
Well better than Spotify is a real low bar. I’m on an apple music family plan and I like it but if I weren’t I’d probably get tidal. And they actually dropped the price of their high quality tier.
And they actually dropped the price of their high quality tier.
This is what we call competition, kids… i know most people don’t understand the concept but it is supposed to make consumer make a change by providing a good deal.
This is the opposite we see nowadays, where they fuck you and say it is fine because “reasons”
Tidal will no longer keep its high-res, lossless and spatial audio content locked behind a £20/$20-per-month “HiFi Plus” subscription. Instead, it is now moved into a single individual user plan, costing a lower-cost, Spotify-matching £11/$11 per month.
Previously, users paid that price for CD-quality FLAC files, but needed to opt for the pricier plan to unlock 24-bit/192kHz tracks and Dolby Atmos content.
That’s now all changed as of 10th April, which saw the new £11/$11 per month plan implemented.
And specifically to your point
This price drop only puts further pressure on Spotify to improve the quality of its catalogue, which is currently capped at 320kbps in its Premium tier, and has no native support for spatial audio tracks.
That alone should be enough to get people considering other options. I’m sure there’s more beyond the big three too.
I got a few months of Apple Music with some device, was happy to ditch Spotify. Not very good, preferred Spotify’s UI and logic, but still a better alternative, and at least not pushing podcasts in my face (which I have zero interest in). I will never use Spotify again
That’s another big one to me too. I opened Spotify recently and you can plainly see the music is no longer the focus.
I used Tidal for a year but went back to Apple Music. I don’t understand what people like about Tidal that Apple Music doesn’t offer.
They pay the artist more. And I like how they handle interacting with collaborative works.
It’s really 3 peanuts instead of 4. Streaming just doesn’t provide a lot of money for artists.
That’s true. I still use Bandcamp. But as someone who listens to a lot of rap when I’m on a track and “view artist” I appreciate Tidal allowing me to choose which artist. Apple music defaults to the firs listed artist.
I’m enjoying Tidal
One of these services needs to release a feature like Spotify Connect, can’t switch without a replacement for that.
Spotify Connect
Unless I’m reading this wrong, is this just Spotify’s solution for listening with friends? If so, that’s far from a Spotify exclusive feature.
Edit: Okay. So it’s their version of Airplay. It’s too bad Apple never opened it up. Streaming to remote devices has works for almost 20 years now in the Apple ecosystem.
Pretty much, I use one computer to remote control the music on my computer that is hooked up to my headphones or speakers.
Nobody else supports that functionality last I checked.
It’s not really just Spotify. I’m a hobbyist music producer. I uploaded my entire catalog through Distrokid about two years ago. Distrokid serves just about every streaming service. It costs $20 a year for the most basic package. I’ve got ~8 million listens according to Distrokid, and that nets me about $40 US. So, I made my money back. Not bad for 20 years of work. Haha!
I don’t really care about the numbers, like I said, I’m a hobbyist. I make music because I enjoy making music. It would never be my career unless I dropped everything and struck out touring trying to make it in an industry that traditionally chews up and spits out hopefuls. I’m not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect in a touring musician, either.
not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect
What gets me is that, for the right style of music, age or attractiveness shouldn’t matter as much as it does. You should be able to create your art, whatever kind of art it is, and have the art itself be judged on its merits. Instead we’ve got a bunch of our culture still somehow wrapped up in these veneers of attractiveness. It’s kind of maddening, to be honest. If you’re in your 50’s and making 90’s style Acid House or 2000’s style Trance it shouldn’t matter what you look like. If you’re a DJ it shouldn’t matter if you look like Shirley Temple or Shirley Manson. And yet here we are.
8 million listens netting you only 40 bucks really is insane, isn’t it? I used to think radio royalties were bad: I remember Sting talking about how every time Roxanne got played on the radio someone somewhere got 3 cents. He didn’t say who got the 3 cents, nor did he say how much of that 3 cents went to him. I’m not 100% sure about those numbers (“my memory is muddy, what’s this river that I’m in?”) but they’re a damn sight more impressive than whatever crumbs the streaming companies are paying, somehow a thousand times less than the radio. Spotify’s announcement last year that they weren’t even going to bother paying for songs with less than 1000 streams per month was a shocker - what stops them from making it 2000, or 10,000?
Still, being a hobbyist isn’t all bad. I’ve been releasing jazz cover-versions of pop songs for about 2.5 years now, and have netted about 25 bucks so far :) Who knew jazz versions of Toxic or Rusted From The Rain could be so popular?
If I made 3 cents a stream, I’d have a quarter of a million…
You could always don a stage persona like Marshmello or Daft Punk. Then nobody cares what you look like under the mask.
I appreciate this. Can I have a listen? I also make music… Sometimes.
I release everything as “Underwaterbob” - my username. You can find me just about everywhere. If you don’t have a subscription, it’s all on YouTube, too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ_MZ9yX0STsY1l2Ml2zBFw
I make a wide variety of music.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/channel/UCQ_MZ9yX0STsY1l2Ml2zBFw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I’m in a similar boat, but I never feel fully satisfied to release a song (probably cuz I am a hobbyist and I suck lol).
But regardless, I think there is an element of selling your soul to Hollywood to really make it big, and I just don’t have that kind of commitment at this point in my life. I like relaxing and anonymity.
I’m in a similar boat, but I never feel fully satisfied to release a song (probably cuz I am a hobbyist and I suck lol).
There’s never a better time to put yourself out there! I resisted it for twenty years. My most “successful” release is one of my least polished tracks. I recorded it just out of university on a Pentium with a stolen microphone, pirated software, a freebie guitar, and a ZOOM 505. It’s got 4 million listens and is responsible for half my income. By comparison, I’ve released stuff that I think sounds like it was professionally recorded in a studio that no one listens to.
It’s funny like that, isn’t it?
You catch lightning in a bottle in 5 minutes using Reaper, then spend 100x the time on another song that just vanishes.
Peaches most popular song was a tape recording off the sound desk in a German bar.
Yep.
Another one of my most popular tracks is an atonal hour-and-twenty-minutes of cubic spline curves, granular synthesis, and other assorted noises I programmed in Csound.
I’m not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect in a touring musician, either
Idk. I was happy to pay to hear Mic Jagger live and he looks like shit.
Worst case scenario, just become the new Gorillas
Not sure I’d use one of the most iconic sexy lead singers in history as an example. No matter much how much he looks like shit now.
I’m not exactly the age or attractiveness that most people expect in a touring musician, either.
Just start making IDM. Looking weird and/or unattractive seems to be a requirement (and, don’t get me wrong, I’m here for it)
“Let’s throw away all of our physical media! All digital streaming music, movies and books will be so much better! Everything we want, always available, anywhere!!!”
Somewhat true if you’re a seasoned sailor of the high seas, not so much if not…
I’m fighting this fight with phone and sd cards. It’s part of the reason they are killing sd card slots to get people to put everything in the cloud.
Sadly most people are morons and are doing exactly that.
Most people do not understand that there are many ways to burn a book.
You don’t need to be a “seasoned sailor”. It’s incredibly easy IMO to get what you want if you’re willing to put forth a tiny amount of effort.
The seasoning helps to know where it’s safe to put into port though.
We are entering the golden age of self hosting and I’m gonna go all in!!!
And for those wondering what about artists, two words: live shows
Yeah I’m done with spotify.
Back when it was a fiver, I could get the appeal and had a subscription myself.
At 11 bucks it comes at the price of a CD per month, every month. I didn’t buy that much music annually, ever. So right now we are entering a territory where streaming is exceeding the price of my regular music consumption patterns. I’ll go back to buying physical media and torrenting whatever old stuff is no longer available and can’t be found on ebay.
Fuck 'em with a cactus.
CDs are cheap as fuck now.
I’d cancel my Spotify but my teenager would drop dead.
That’s what’s stopping me too. I’ve tried to convince them that Youtube Music (I’m a holdover from the Play Music days, RIP) is good enough but they won’t have it. I miss Songza.
I typically like to just buy my music but the appeal of spotify, to me, is the algorithm and being able to play random singles and one offs from artists I would probably not ever hear a single thing from otherwise.
I like bandcamp a lot more than spotify for finding new music. A lot of it feels less soulless because it is (presumably) written by real people.
https://daily.bandcamp.com/essential-releases/essential-releases-may-10-2024 - timely https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/japanese-acid-folk-list - genre deep dive
Plus on a given album page, like https://castleratband.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-realm-2 , it has links to “Other people liked this”, and the genre tags. It’s pretty good for discoverability, though maybe not as smooth as the soulless algorithms of spotify.
Bandcamp sold to epic and then got sold to some other vultures so they might turn to shit, but until that happens it’s a good, profitable, seemingly equitable platform. Artists got a big cut, you got drm-free music. The idea seems solid, if you can avoid the “infinite growth at all costs” and “i’m gonna sell out, fuck you” traps.
I use Spotify regularly on my PC without a subscription and an ad blocker running. Does that qualify as fucking them with a cactus?
I do the same with youtube and adblock, so I guess that qualifies.
Yeah, people forget that the appeal of Spotify was being able to make a free account and listen to any music. It was okay that it was worse cause it was easy.
Idk how paying for it became common… maybe cause those free users got too comfortable with it.
I don’t subscribe, bit I wouldn’t think about it compared to the price of physical media. I would compare it to satellite radio. Or cable radio. (Does Spectrum still do that?)
All three are paid, ad-free radio, sorta, though streaming services are on-demand.
Just cancelled, have been a customer since 2015 or so.
I’ve said many times I would gladly pay more, if it were an elective extra cost that goes 100% to the artists you listen to.
So $11/mo to Spotify, then I could elect to pay another amount of my choosing that gets split up based on what I’m listening to and goes 100% to the artists. I don’t love it but it would be an acceptable solution to me.
A better solution would be for Spotify to be fair and pay artists accordingly from the start… buttttt Capitalism, and Spotify is publicly traded so no chance of that ever happening. I’m out.
Tidal is your friend
The nice thing about Tidal is the attention to detail about the music or album you’re listening to. You get writers, producers and recording musicians for all the tracks. Sometimes additional Artwork.
Apple had the right idea all those years ago when they were selling those enhanced digital albums. Almost felt like purchasing a vinyl or cd and getting all the goodies that come with it. INCLUDING properly crediting the artists. Not sure they do that very well anymore.
I wish. But it says it’s not available in my region. Which is really weird in the current globalized world.
(Note I’m not super familiar with Tidal)
I had a look earlier in the year and I believe Napster pay very decent artist royalties and offer a Spotify migration service. I will be moving to them after this.
This is why I went for Tidal:
Tidal takes a look back at a HiFi Plus subscriber’s top streamed artist at the end of every month, and then allocates the direct payment to that listener’s most played artist. Qualified artists who enroll in the Direct Artist Payout program will be able to collect the payouts allocated to them on a monthly basis.
But they recently changed their pricing and I’m no longer paying 20 so I’m not sure if they still do that or not. I have heard good things about napster too.
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I cancelled too. they were resetting my password and forcing me to create a new one once or twice a week. all because i would use spotify on my desktop and my phone.
they only help they would offer was “you password is not secure”. yes, my 16character random generated password is not secure. fuck em.
“but if we pirate things the singers won’t get anything!”
yeah, fuck the music companies and fuck the movie companies. The moral thing to do is to pirate everything you want to watch, read and listen to.
the actors, writers and singers and everyone working behind the scenes are already getting next to nothing for their hard work compared to what the executives at all those corporations are getting for just sitting on their asses.
…sorry I blacked out, what were we talking about?
You should never pirate anything! that would be bad!
Pirate and go to live shows.
Companies love selling you digital stuff cause they are essentially giving you nothing (as in it doesn’t cost them anything).
Or buy (also) via something like bandcamp, when the artist is on it. They cut only 10% IIRC
On Bandcamp Friday they take no cut at all. All money goes to artist after payment processor fees. https://isitbandcampfriday.com
go to live shows
Live shows not put on by Ticketmaster! Shit …
I agree that live shows (and buying merch) is the best way to support artists.
But the CDNs required to run a music streaming service are anything but cheap.
But the CDNs required to run a music streaming service are anything but cheap.
Yeah, I still think music streaming makes little sense cause usually people listen to songs over and over. Movie streaming makes more sense cause most people watch one title and not watch it again for years or ever.
God I wish more artists would support direct donations. Yoink the file from wherever and in exchange sneak 10 bucks into the artists pockets.
I already commented somewhere else in this thread, but I’ve been just buying music via bandcamp and I feel pretty good about it. If I buy about one new album a month for $8, it’s cheaper than spotify and after a couple years I have a large library of music I own outright.
This works with my listening habits, which are something like “I have like one new (-to me) album on heavy rotation every couple of weeks”. Someone who’s more of a “i never listen to the same song twice” extreme wouldn’t have as good a time.
This works with my listening habits, which are something like “I have like one new (-to me) album on heavy rotation every couple of weeks”
I actually kinda do the same thing, so you’ve got me thinking I should start just buying albums. Build a Jellyfin server so I can still stream music, and just not deal with subscriptions.
And actually, most of the time I buy records that come with digital downloads anyway. Time to rethink my Tidal subscription.
More money for the executives and less for everyone else. People need to start standing up to this shit.
It would be nice if we had a monetizable platform on the Fediverse for vocal artists and musicians.
Definitely thinking about cancelling with this. I’ve used Spotify as long as I can remember, after finally switching over from pandora radio.
Their shuffle and discovery algorithms suck so much now that it’s nearly impossible to listen to more than 20-30 songs they just keep repeating.
Add on the extra, inserted ads in podcasts, there’s really no reason to continue to use their platform.
Then again, I’m probably going to YT music, which is only marginally better, but since I pay for YT premium already there’s no additional cost
I wish they had something between “top songs” and “completely random” when listening to a band.
Like, sure, Sweet Child of Mine, Welcome to the Jungle, and Paradise City are great and all, but there’s only so often you can listen to them, and the only alternative is to be reminded that Chinese Democracy exists.
YouTube music has something like this. You choose a few artists you like then tune the randomness of what it plays. I have discovered more new artists Ina few months of using it than I have in the decade before that.
Never used it, but I just want to appreciate the design of these three icons: just a speaker radiating sound coming to something resembling a solar system. Simple, yet cool.
Where can I find this setting in YT Music? I’ve had them for a while and never knew this existed…
For me it’s near the top on the apps homepage. Looks like this
If you find a better place to discover music please lmk (no sarcasm)
Their discovery sucks lately and I hate it.
I like Tidal and rhey pay the most per play to artist’s.
I thought that was Qobuz. At least I can actually buy music through Qobuz I guess.
I have tons of playlists and saved music on spotify; how is Tidal at importing data from other services? It’s not really a deal breaker, but I’m really picky about my music (so I don’t really care about “radio” features or curated playlists), so it’d be a real pain in the ass to start from scratch.
They have a feature to import your music from other sites…
It does have Spotify in it.
Technology is so amazing. It is finally possible to pay artists in exposure
Not that anyone does that either
Stop using this shitty service. There are much better options. I like Tidal, but even Apple music seems decent compared to Spotify.
The audio quality alone should be telling people just how bad spotify is.
If I still used Apple products I’d still be using Apple Music. Good sound with the ability to upload my own music library to mesh with it seamlessly to cover the gaps of what wasn’t available? It was my ideal music streaming service.
Now I’m on Deezer but every streaming service has gaps in their catalog for what I listen to.
Slowly working on getting my own music library together to get rid of streaming services entirely. Plan on using Plex for now, but eventually I’ll just move to a phone that has an SD card slot.
Mix of purchases and stuff downloaded and saved from Deezer.
I am okay with YouTube premium with the music app. I am no audiophile so I can have all the gaps filled with music videos and just play the audio.
I dunno. Spotify stopped billing me for the family plan I was paying for some years ago and at this point I’ve got five accounts mooching off of them and I’m using powershell to download gigabytes worth of music off of them…
Like, Spotify is evil but at this point I’m a negative number for them every month. I’m gonna keep on going until they decide to shut off the hose.
Oh, but I do go to concerts and buy records.
Does Tidal pay artists better?
Two to three times what Spotify pay artists per stream.
Thanks for including the link!
The trouble I’ve found with Apple music for me is that a lot of the classical stuff that I listen to on YouTube Music (RIP forever GPM you were the best) isn’t on Apple, but a lot of other content that isn’t anywhere else is there. So you’re having to choose between one or the other and their stuff kind of sucks.
No matter what you think about Apple, Apple Music pays multiple times more than Spotify
And Tidal pays multiples more than Apple.
It’s up to you if you want to support artists or not.
I switched to Tidal after Spotify announced the price increase. The catalogue is basically identical, the apps are much more intuitive, and the audio quality is higher (they recently rolled their premium FLAC subscription into the basic one).
I had to retrain the algorithm for a bit, but that was not so difficult. There are services that can migrate/convert playlists which might actually work for favourites as well.
Also, it’s easy easier to download stuff from Tidal, which is very nice for listening to Audiobooks with a dedicated player.
Thank you for the information. Not a fan of putting the blame on the consumer here though. Spotify is the asshole here, not the people who want to pay for the music.
Just want to add an extra FU to Google as a consumer and Android user. Killing off GPlay Music for YT Music was just a nasty nice, especially given that the latter has no mechanism to purchase music and a lot of the content or mixes in from YouTube uploads seems of pretty dubious legitimacy
I wouldn’t assume a corporation is a moral entity, Spotify’s only goal is to maximise profit. Maybe it’s a problem of our economic system or regulations around monopolies.
I don’t think it’s about assuming anything… it’s about not burdening the consumer with regulating industry when it is clearly impossible to do so.
OP (of this thread) pitches Apple as an alternative… do you want to help artist a tad while also assisting a multi billion dollar company to continue to squash any possible ownership and right-to-repair chance the consumers has?..
There isn’t ONE large corporation that has not shown they would kill people if that made them money… so no, the consumer cannot, in practice, “vote with their wallet” into forcing any corporation anywhere near an ethics “green ground”
It’s worth noting though, that Spotify has been bleeding money since the start. I know they may be wasting a lot of money on side hustles but still. They’re not raking home any money. The only way the founders got rich is by the overinflated stock price.
E: typo
I think they actually just started making a profit.
Does YouTube music pay its artists? I prefer an Android platform. A lot of the stuff I want isn’t on Apple Music for classical is also why.
I love how no one mentions that the great success business Spotify got all their starting music from the mp3 warez scene.
Early Spotify songs still had the meta data from those files, including misspelled song names and years of issue.
Because don’t most people know their history by now?
I would imagine that the vast majority of Spotify’s listeners, and even critics, don’t care about where they got their initial music from
I fucked off Spotify after the Jo Rogan debacle.
I’ve been with Tidal since. I miss the Spotify recommendation algorithm but that’s it.
I’ve been a paying member for almost a decade. I’ve been training it that entire time with what I do and don’t like. I’ve also been using their suggested playlists for years and further refining what they recommend. So their algorithm is a huge part of it for me. I am constantly finding songs and artists I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise.
That said, I’ve been holding my nose while I renewed the service for the past couple of years. I’m willing to part ways for Tidal if it’s a comparable service with better benefits to the artists.
Same
i paid for the best tier Tidal for a year and it was a worse experience than spotify. Their catalogue is incomplete compared to spotify
Joe Rogan debacle?
There’s plenty of info if you google your comment.
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/07/spotify-joe-rogan-artists-subscribers/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/arts/joe-rogan-spotify.html
Etc etc
And 99.99999 percent of musicians lament being humiliated and poor.
Stop releasing your music on Spotify. They depend on you for their reputation as having all the music and will give you nothing in return except ever-broadening inequality and ever-narrowing artistic culture. People have mocked boomers for claiming that music is dying but that’s exactly what is happening.
