I stopped using it a month ago cause of the big label cartel, low payouts to artists per stream and using ai generated songs in big playlists to pay more money to the cartel. I'm with tidal now and it's nice. Don't give a damn about the extra quality even despite being an audiofool. I also have been using soundcloud all this time cause it has by far the largest song library and it's full of underground stuff.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Bandcamp. You can pay the artist or indie label directly. Sure, you might not find really big name artists on there but you wil find a lot of classics from yesteryear. For example, Mastodon's (the band) first two albums from they were signed to Relapse Records. Plus you can download in high quality formats like FLAC and WAV.
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Physical media like CDs and vinyls. Super high quality but three things to consider: money, space and patience
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Ad-silence. Works with both Spotify and Tidal. There's also xmanager but that only works with Spotify.
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My personal favorite: Sailing the high seas.
Ublock origin also blocks Spotify ads on desktop.
I buy music for download and stream from my self hosted Jellyfin. I buy music mainly from Bandcamp and Steam. Buying 1 album from Bandcamp is worth more to the artist than listening 100k hours on Spotify.
In switched to tidal a while ago because Spotify was investing into other areas I don't care for, hosting Rogan and other shit podcasts paying plenty of millions and finally because they poorly pay music owners.
Switched to Deezer yesterday after I learned they sponsored Trump. Apart from that their music recommendations really suck in my opinion.
I've never heard of Deezer but you like their trump support?
They pay hundreds of millions to Joe Rogan, who was one of the vectors of getting young men into the far-right “manosphere” radicalisation pipeline. Were it not for him, and Spotify’s part in his reach, the US may now have President Harris.
They pay Joe Rogan, they pay Trump, they back "Europe needs AI" to lobby against the rights of EU citizen.
It seems the only people they don't ducking pay are the artists on their platform.
Switched to deezer and wrote that in the "why are you leaving us" section.
They subsidised years of huge losses with blood money from oil company investors from the Middle East just to gain market share and they screw over artists. Horrible company.
I use Tidal which is sadly American but does have their ethics a bit better. Bandcamp is best for artists but it's still American and partly owned by Tencent which is Chinese so part government.
Wouldn't Qobuz be interesting to you as a replacement?
Biggest issue I see so far is that there is no 'connect' type streaming possible to my Samsung Soundbar, but I bet I can still cast so it'll be fine. I wasn't very impressed with Tidal's apps anyway.
I just looked into it and it might be. Thing is I now have a family subscription for 17 euros which only my mother uses. She's just gotten used to Tidal so it'll be a stretch for her to switch.
I'll keep it in mind for now, thanks for the tip!
I understand haha, at least you know you have options should you/she want to make the switch sometime. Certainly use up your subscription first tho!
I had another look at things and I'll stick with Tidal. As I read it, Tidal was originally European anyway (Swedish) and it's still Europe based even though they also have a location in the US. All those musicians that bought into it sold their majority (Jay-Z sold 80% of his shares).
They are transparent about what they pay artists and are second to Qobuz on that. Qobuz is more for scouting music and even though I wouldn't mind doing that sometimes, I can't see my mum browsing catalogs to find hidden gems.
Switched to Qobuz (French). Works well although I miss some features from Spotify. A quick search and saw that their payout to artists is the largest among the big streaming services. A large margin down to Spotify.
Also switched to Qobuz. They pay their artists better and the music is high quality.
I would recommend Deezer, because they are trying to pay artists in a better way, via its "artist-centric payment model".
Tidal is probably paying music owners better (no service is paying artists directly unless they are independent).
They severely underpay artists while continuously raising subscription prices because of some contract loophole involving podcasts bundled to subscriptions. Avoid if possible.
What do you use?
Tidal. The company is Swedish-Norwegian, but an American company owns the majority of the stakes. They supposedly pay artists more fairly, which I believe holds more weight. Their music library is similar, but they don't serve podcasts. The mobile app is just barely acceptable, but streaming quality is good even on the lowest tier subscription. The biggest drawback is the lack of a proper Linux desktop app -- all we have is an Electron wrapper around the web app.
Honestly, I use youtube music because of revanced.
I don't use anything with DRM generally.
switched to tidal after spotify's bullshit price hike, and since i have less than zero interest in audiobooks or podcasts. haven't looked back.
I leech from a family subscription from someone that's not gonna stop the subscription whether I use it or not. So I cost them money by using it, would never pay for it regardless.
Personally if I paid for spotify I'd just transfer over to Qubuz, they pay artists more AND have better music quality.
I really liked it and the ability to discover new music (when that actually worked) but its price hike and how little they pay artists and the fact that you don't own the music...
Well I moved over to soulseek, buying independent artists music either directly or via Bandcamp (a necessary evil I guess), put them all onto my Jellyfin which I connected to listenBrainz that then can recommend me fresh tunes just like Spotify did.
To get the recommended tunes I use then Explo which downloads from YouTube and pushes them into my music library.
Nothing. Bad quality, Bad artist pay. The usual streaming shit. I prefer bandcamp and sync my mobile playlists with my vast MediaMonkey-Database at home.