Recent news revealed that Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek has been investing heavily in military tech companies, which adds another ethical layer to a platform already criticized for how little it pays musicians !
Spotify only pays artists about $3–5 per 1,000 streams, using a pro-rata model that directs most money toward major stars… By contrast, Qobuz (≈$18–20 per 1,000 streams) and Tidal (≈$12–13) pay far more fairly!
However Tidal is far from ethical. Most of its revenue is controlled by private investors and founders and small artists still earn very little…
More fair-minded platforms like Bandcamp, Resonate, Ampled, or SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalties prioritize musicians over investors.
With these more ethical alternatives available, why do we keep using Spotify?
Qobuz has been good for me so far. I ran out of data the first month just because of the increased quality, so I may have to upgrade to an unlimited data plan. I mostly just use it to download albums rather than stream.
The increase in audio quality coming from Spotify is absolutely noticeable, especially for certain bands who put a lot of extra work into their production. Listening to Tool albums on Qobuz is like a brand new experience.