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?
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With these more ethical alternatives available, why do we keep using Spotify?
- Brand recognition
- Availability
- Library
Integration is the big one. Spotify is built into nearly every smart device. Phone? Spotify. Smart speakers? Spotify. Alexa spy puck? Spotify. Cars? Spotify. Even my hifi system has built in spotify.
I want to use different services. Right now I’m using Tidal, which is only integrated with my speakers and phone - not my car. Hell, they don’t even make a proper app for my computer.
TIDAL works well with CarPlay.
I recently switched to TIDAL as a stop gap to ahem other options, and I’m relatively pleased.
My biggest gripe is it doesn’t let your search your playlists when adding songs on the phone app.
It’s not the best option, but at least they pay artists a little more.
Apple definitely punishes you for using Tidal on CarPlay. It’s bullshit. Plug in your phone while listening to music and the app goes into limbo for 45 seconds while Apple Music decides it is in charge.
Once again, the industrial-consumerist complex has chosen platforms over protocols.
Library is very close from a service to another
All of three are also available on Deezer and TIDAL.
Music streaming has gone the same way as video streaming for me. All my music is in Jellyfin and music is all purchased from Band camp where I can easily add on a few extra £s for tipping the artist. And if it’s not on Band camp, then it’s time to dust off the old skull and crossbones hat.
This is the way
You want to do something ethical with Spotify? Find a way to rip music from the platform. :)
Though preferably find a way to pay the artists in a more direct way. Especially if they’re smaller artists.
I once heard that artists get more money from merch than plays or record sales (per dollar spent). If you want to support them buy a tshirt or something from their official site.
I use CDs, Records and occasionally bandcamp - usually just for a free listen before I go to their concerts and buy from them there.
But just to be clear I also buy a lot of used records and cds; which I think can be seen as similarly immoral. Evil used record stores hoarding all the margin and never compensating the original artists. Again if they’re any good and ever play nearby, they’ll get a ticket sale and maybe I’ll by a record direct from them if they do a good show.
Mostly I only care about the morality for small/new/unpopular bands, first few albums and so on.
I couldn’t give a shit about compensating large successful artists like the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan - or more accurately, whoever they sold their catalogue rights to.
I moved to Qobuz. It costs a little more but that is something you have to accept for the ethical choice.
Unfortunately it’s not working for me. Many of my songs/libraries have not moved over well, can’t be found or have changed version etc.
The bigger issues for me are the terrible CarPlay functions of the app. It’s non existent. If I am travelling I need to see and search fast and easy. And I continually have to select Bluetooth when playing music, if the app drops out or I lose connection I can’t just pop on my phone and again select Bluetooth. It needs to recognise CarPlay and just switch.
Finally I it drops out and jumps a lot for me. Interruptions every 10 songs or so just isn’t great.
I wish it would have worked but it didn’t. I’m moving away from music streaming.
Personally I moved back to mp3, so much less hassle and if you don’t mind the high seas it’s super easy to rip off Spotify.
I love sailing.
I recommend Opus as the lossy audio format.
And ogg?
I recently started using Qobuz also. I was impressed that there are Linux apps, including a (3rd party) downloader that lets me download FLAC. (Otherwise I think you need to use their app in Windows or Mac to download FLAC - the web downloader only let me grab MP3.)
However, although I have loved it, my use case is different than yours, so not really apples to apples. I have a media server running in a VPS, so ethical downloads are my primary requirement. For Download --> Self-host --> Self-stream they are a perfect fit, IMO, though I’m sure there are others.
I like it because I’m not buying music from Amazon, or Spotify, and that it’s DRM free, primarily. I will also buy from Bandcamp sometimes. (To be fair, some amazon music can also be downloaded DRM free, but I think anyone reading this probably already knows that. I can’t remember if FLACs were available to me never or rarely, because I didn’t use Amazon music much.)
Despite that, I’m watching this thread with interest, because I’m certainly open to other options.
Qobuz is missing so much music for me. Liking too many obscure artists is a curse.
I’ve been using Qobuz for a few years. I’m on android and the car app is fine, but not amazing. I haven’t had any drop outs but I choose CD quality on cell service and download a lot of my favorite albums.
IME it’s because of the playlist sharing and the ability to collaboratively queue music (a ‘jam’). AFAIK none of the other streaming providers have that. They may be fine for single users, but (for example) you can’t put up bandcamp on a dorm smart tv and have people queue up the music they want to listen too.
That’s what gives spotify an edge over everything else, the social aspect of it’s platform. OFC I only know that bandcamp and tidal don’t have those functions, not sure about the other ones.
Tidal doesn’t even have anything over Spotify.
Their version of Spotify Connect barely works at the best of times, on my AV I couldn’t get it to work at all.And Qobuz… isn’t even available in a bunch of countries.
For me, the only real alternative is piracy and setting up my own streaming.
But I’m too lazy for that, so with Spotify at least the artists get paid something, and I can be reasonably certain that whatever I want to listen to will actually be available.Also, Bandcamp was sold a while ago and fired half their staff, so not sure about ethics here.
TIDAL has a lot over Spotify:
- You won’t pay military robots with your TIDAL subscription.
- TIDAL pays artists notably better.
- HiFi for much less money.
in comparison, the artists gets 4x more money when you listen with Qobuz :)
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.
Probably Vendor Lockin
buy the digital releases from the bands Bandcamp
Daniel Ek is Europe’s Peter Thiel.
Vinyl. The answer is Vinyl.
Why is investing in military tech companies bad when someone is from a country so close to Russia?
Also who gives a fuck that artists get paid little?
They get paid.
