Musicians have long criticized the streaming service’s paltry payouts, but a new wave of boycotts is emerging
You can download music via Newpipe if anyone is curious
I stopped using it. I have a navidrome server I run and purchase songs from artists directly when possible, otherwise, I acquire them and support artists directly in other ways
But how do you discover new things? I don’t mind paying for music but not if I don’t even know if I’m going to like it
Is there another service that has anything comparable to Spotify’s family plan? I have like 4 other people on the family plan I pay for and I really don’t wanna fuck them over by switching lol
I think that’s the point of all this. It’s currently way too cheap for the consumers. Adjusted for inflation from the 80s, an album would cost over $30 today. Each album. To get infinite music for $10 a month, yeah the artists are getting screwed.
I’m using Qobuz. As I know they pay the most to the artist ($0.01873 vs $0.004 ). Qobuz Family costs 20,83€ per months and I think you get free access to a service which moves your Spotify playlists to qobuz.
Is it user-friendly?
Yes. If your family knows how to use Spotify, they will be okay with qobuz.
Apple Music has a family plan, and it’s cheaper than Spotify’s, at least in Canada (16.99 vs 20.99).
Qobuz has a family plan too, a little more expensive than Apple’s here but still cheaper than Spotify’s.
Apple is hardly the giant corporation you want to be switching to, though.
None of us have apple devices.
Apple Music has an Android app.
Deezer? They still don’t pay artists much, but I think it’s still better than Spotify
The Artist-Centric model sucks. The artists that benefits the most is the biggest artists like Drake etc. This system does create a two-tier royalty structure that favors bigger or more established artists with a loyal fanbase
I’m switching to Tidal, they have a family plan
Is tidal user friendly? The people I share Spotify with aren’t tech savvy.
I don’t mind sourcing my own music, but what I want is to be suggested songs based on what I listen to. My musical horizons have broadened a lot thanks to that.
I can’t picture a service which beats Spotify in what they offer which isn’t just the same business model but more ethical.
Discovering music for free is an enormous benefit, and the fact that Spotify has practically all mainstream music is nice. People often cite that one quote by Gabe Newell that is “Piracy is not an economic problem. It is a service problem”, as a highlight for steam, but largely Spotify offers what consumers want in a way Netflix or Audible can’t. They have everything you want and guide your discovery in even more, and as long as their encroaching enshittification doesn’t undercut this service, they will continue to underpay artists and fund immoral activities.
The developer of Ultrakill, Hakita, said something which I’ve often thought about. “You should support indies if you can, but culture shouldn’t exist only for those who can afford it. ULTRAKILL wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t had easy access to movies, music and games growing up. If you don’t have money, you can support via word of mouth”. There are plenty of independent things I financially support, particularly things I attend in person in the city I live in. I may spend £100 per month paying for art and entertainment all said and done, and when that’s spent, I will pirate everything else.
I split a Spotify family plan between 6 friends, I think that’s about £3.50 per month, and I pay for no other media services. With video, I run a jellyfin server with a “parent friendly” interface, so they can have “netflix with everything”, which I have at my place too. I don’t read that much any more, if it’s physical I just go to the library and if it’s an audiobook I’ll just pirate it. The benefit here is that even if I’m on a reading binge, that’s not even a book a week. With Spotify, I often pick something and play it via song radio, which is probably 50/50 music I know and new music. Sometimes I just stick albums on, but it’s not like that’s harder. If I had a locally hosted music repository that I’d “paid for”, I could enjoy albums, but not as easily have a radio like discovery experience.
One day, a pirate tool may appear that rivals Spotify, but until that day, I can’t see myself moving away from it.
Go to your local live music, drag shows, theatres, independent cinemas and libraries. Don’t feel obligated to pay for any internet service.
I use both listenbrainz and chosic for suggestions. Both work well.
AOTY has algorithmic suggestions
Gnod
Pandora is still pretty good.
Where do I like… buy… music?
Bandcamp or many artists have digital purchase options on their website.
If you can’t purchase it online you could do physical media.
Otherwise you can find other ways to get the music and support artists in other ways. Shows, merch and patreons usually go directly to artists.
Bandcamp, qobuz, amazon
I do it on Bandcamp.
Bought myself a little digital audio player (basically the new name for mp3 players) and have been enjoying porting rockbox to it / listening to my local library.
There’s a still a few cd/record stores in town which is pretty awesome for second hand stuff.
Mp3s are at it. Because Spotty doesn’t have some of the songs I actually like, and record companies even remove tracks that were previously available on physical media.
I’ve been downloading FLAC (lossless), and when I transfer to my phone, I encode to Opus, which is supposed to have better sound quality than MP3 at comparable file sizes.
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320 bitrate FTW!
320 gang!
What are your thoughts about old music, should it be pirateable? I mean I don’t think those 1990 bands will get a cent from Spotify, or do they?
It would be lovely sharing songs with fellow online people IMO.
Bands? No or at least not all of them. Labels? Certain!
As a hoarder, I spend more time listening to new music than not, and Spotify’ features and personalized discovery algorithms help tremendously with that.
These days more and more AI songs are creeping into my Spotify and I notice them. That has caused me to be suspicious of every song I hear enough that even when I find a good real song, the enjoyment is undercut by that constant underlying feeling of “this could be AI” even though I know it isn’t.
I’m absolutely livid and disgusted at Spotify for making me feel that way. Discovery was the one thing keeping me on that wretched platform. I imagine I’ll be slowly migrating to a self-hosted solution. I just really wish foss had more private and open personalized discovery features (or any at all for that matter, and not just for music).
yt-dlp, ffmpeg, Picard, jellyfin, musicolet
Seconding Picard. MusicBrainz is the only part of my little ecosystem where I stick my neck out and constantly broadcast all my listening activity. The suggestions are awesome.
Spotify’s personalized stations kept me hooked for years but it was surprising how fast I got used to creating stations based on individual songs or artists in Apple Music, and eventually I do think I’m go back to having a music collection again, but it’s going to take time out of my week to collect and organize music again… in my 40s time is no easy feat
for anyone this inspires to make the jump, i recommend Tidal and Bandcamp.
Looking at tidal, there doesn’t appear to be a way to search for music? Am I losing it?
Edit: you have to login first. Honestly, bad first impression already.
Edit: you have to login first. Honestly, bad first impression already.
Spotify doesn’t even let you into the app without logging in
I was on desktop not app, where Spotify will let you search its catalogue without login.
Throwing out Stingray for people who often just need background music. Radio like music channels.
👀
They is also Mirlo which plan to federate
Link please ?
mirlo.space
Never even heard of Mirlo until now. Neat! Thank you for shining a light on it.
Nice.
I set up a Funkwhale but tbh it is feature-poor
Which would you suggest as a selfhost alternative ?
Funkwhale needs in app donations to artist moving from a platform that pay little to a platform paying nothing makes no sense
Become a developer & contribute code
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I was literally one day away from jumping onto Tidal, but then they dropped Plex integration. 😕
I cancelled my Spotify last night.
Went through my favourites list and bought a bunch of tracks on bandcamp.
Going back to my old ripped cds and mp3s is a nice feeling tbh.
I want to jump ship it’s just daunting when the other platforms I try can’t match the library. I ported a small playlist to Qobuz and only a third of the tracks were available. I have an offline library but I have been lazy and its unmaintained.
Try Tidal. At least it pays artists more and has better sound quality. Allegedly. The downside is that their catalogue is more messed up like albums from different same named artists grouped together.
Does Tidal offer trials or is there a way to explore the library without buying/ playing the music?
They have a 30 day trial yeah, you can also move your playlists over as well.
To clarify, the import is through a 3rd party. I paid like 2 extra bucks to subscribe to them for the 1 month minimum, took a few more clicks to import my entire playlist library. Really easy and high-value for the effort it saved, easy to unsubscribe, it did what it said on the box. But it threw me off since it was unexpected.
Also, about 95% of the library made it over, but a small percentage either aren’t on Tidal yet or didn’t have that exact version of a song with like 4 out there. A few songs got replaced by karaoke or covers as well, but they were few and far between. Just a heads up it can happen though. Just had to track them down and replace.
But as a listener and user, my experience has been almost entirely unaffected otherwise. And I have relatively niche taste in music, so I was surprised. They have curated playlists to explore and expand my taste, almost identical playlist creation features to Spotify, lossless playback, lyrics, artist info/bio, etc. Recently added custom pictures for playlists like Spotify has. Do not regret the switch at all.
Good for them. Bands don’t need ai training on their songs without compensation.
I started buying music in 2015 (mostly Bandcamp) and I have no regrets. I have a big library now of drm free music. Some months I spend nothing and still enjoy music, without ads.
What if I block all its ads?
