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?
Because no one cares.
Bandwagon, Faircamp, Love a Brother Radio, The Indie Beat. Probably not what you’re looking for, but direct creator support, Fedi powered, all wonder folks.
It’s worse. My music is on Spotify - while I would no longer meet their minimum for payments, even before that change they refused to pay me or provide stats until I provided a twitter or Facebook page/IG page, none of which I have - despite publishing through an established publishing company who could absolutely handle payments and play stats.
Spotify is cancer.
I’m still on Pandora and honestly have no idea how they stack up. I just use it as a radio station on long drives.
Pirate and pay creators directly.
Pirating is the objectively best, most private and future proof user experience you’re gonna get.Pirate and pay creators directly.
How does that even work?
Personally I do this by buying merch. If I buy a shirt from a band than not only do I get a cool shirt but the band also gets paid more in that single transaction than if I listened to their music 5000 times on spotify.
Sure, but that doesn’t give you rights to pirate their music, does it? There is also the problem who gets paid what when you buy their merch.
go to their gigs
Contact them, ask for ways to donate. Until they publicly provide that info.
You realize that bands have by their choice a contract with a label which in turn provides services to them (bands without a label don’t count since they would sell their music themselves)? If the band sells their music directly is one thing, but what you’re suggesting is simply wrong. Also donations are not meant as a mean of purchasing stuff. 🤷♂️
Yes, it is well known that Band merely contract out the business of distribution and they are not being exploited by this arrangement. Lars Ulrich told me that.
However, I still think all intellectual property should be abolished and all art should be paid in full before production starts and I will pirate everything until then. I may send donations with my own terms to certain artists as I see fit, I do agree this is not “purchasing” I do not “purchase” art, I take it and do not recognize any need or right for compensation.
But I do like giving them money regardless, I sent 1500$USD last year to various small artists I like to motivate them, make of that what you will. This is the only arrangement that I find acceptable.
“I think that something has to be cheaper or have a different business model” doesn’t give me rights to steal it.
Focusing on one part of your response that really rubs me the wrong way, you believe artists don’t need to be compensated for their work?
I think their point is that in an economy that isn’t profit-driven, artists (just like everyone else) would not rely on their art/labor for survival.
Artists generally prefer this model as well, since they don’t have to tailor their art to anyone else’s tastes. We already see models moving towards this, like Patreon, where you pay the artist to produce whatever art they want, rather than buying a completed work. The next step is this being UBI (which is essentially a public patronage system), not private patrons.
No, it is an artefact of a heinous economic system that they are made to “art for money” which is gross. I rather there be no art until the economic system perishes.
Old fart checking in … why not just buy the tracks instead of paying for monthly access that screws artists? I mean, each song is unlikely to be more than $1.49, and then you own it. I don’t have a streaming music account and never will because the idea of paying repeatedly for the same thing – with the option of it being pulled at any time – is nauseating.
Why would I? Pay $1.49 to listen to 1 song over and over or pay $12 to listen to basically the entirety of human creation any time I want? Not to mention custom playlists and whatnot.
My music collection spans some 1,700 tracks and several full albums. It’s not difficult to create local playlists, I don’t pay monthly, and I don’t have an excessive data plan because I need streaming. Look at the knock-on costs. It’s not $12/month.
I listen to probably at least a dozen new songs every day. If I bought them that would cost me $18/day. Or $540/mo. Not to mention the absolute fortune required to store them all locally.
I’m in the phase of my life where if I encounter a new track I like in the wild, I’ll buy it. But I’m not seeking out new stuff because (cracks open a PBR and grows a goatee) everything feels homogenized today.
Perhaps it’s just different use cases. Still, you’re dependent on a company to be able to continue listening to the music you like. That’s worrisome. If a company took away the collection I’ve been building since the '80s, livid wouldn’t begin to explain my reaction.
An old fart listens to entire albums! Fake!
I’m an old fart.
I prefer buying individual tracks to the Tower Records model of $20 before you know if that one song you’re getting it for is the only good one on the album.
I like getting the whole album because it exposes me to the whole brainchild. It’s a gamble but sometimes my favorites are not what I would first have thought!
So much money dropped at on cue / sam Goody’s back in the day only to get that tape / CD home and realize that one song on the radio was fire… but the rest of the album was just a train wreck of flaming garbage.
Isn’t that why we used to buy 45s? And if you discovered the B-side was good then maybe someone would buy the album and everyone else would tape it?
I buy on Bandcamp Fridays, but am suspicious of that platform since they changed owners so often without any input from the community or musicians.
I’m keeping my eye on https://subvert.fm/ as a hopefully more democratic option.
Why?
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Lack of Feature Parity
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Stickiness of library transfer
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Stickiness of social network effects
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It’s still better ethically than Apple Music or YouTube Music, which behave anti-competitively
1: I’ve tried out Quobuz, it’s pretty good, but it does not have the Jam / Group Session feature which me and my friends use constantly while gaming remotely. It also does not have an Xbox app which I use while playing games. I find Spotify’s recommendations somewhat underwhelming, but Quobuz has a noticeably worse recommendation engine, at least for my genres and tastes. Those are the features that lack parity that matter to me, but for some others, it’s things like amplifiers having built-in Spotify, or there being a Roku or Playstation app or something.
2: Quobuz uses a third party service to automatically transfer your library, which worked pretty well, but did require jumping through a bunch of hoops and subscribing to a trial subscription that I then had to cancel. It also did not find matches for some songs. Could I make it work if I had enough reason to switch? Yeah, probably, but the lack of feature parity (/roadmap that includes them) is enough to dissuade me from really trying.
3: In addition to friends on Spotify all using Jams, there’s also an inherent niceness to just being able to text people Spotify links, especially since there’s no cross platform linking service that would otherwise make sharing music easy.
4: Supporting Spotify may not be great, but its still better than supporting trillion dollar anti-competitive corporations like Apple and Google.
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Why? They have more prog than the others. Believe me, I’d love to stick with Qobuz as the sound quality is magnificent. Unfortunately they just don’t have the music I listen to.
While I agree with you for most alternatives to Spotify, I have yet to not be able to find any song from anyone on SoundCloud particularly in more niche genres. I obviously don’t know everything you listen to but the reason you describe is the exact reason I can’t always use Spotify
I’m curious, which prog artists do you find on Qobuz that aren’t anywhere else?
I’m meant Spotify has the larger choice.
I had this problem at first, then I realized there’s so much music I never listened to before and I have enough new music between Qobuz and Bandcamp that I’m satisfied. But I see your point. I have pirated some music when the creator don’t allow me to purchase the songs.
Because Spotify does everything better in every way possible, there is literally no way to argue this fact without baseless opinions spoiling the discussion.
So much so that, short of an angel investor coming from heaven itself to pay billions of dollars with zero stipulations, there is no way for any other company to catch up without being offered an extremely ridiculous lucrative buyout from Spotify that only the dumbest of MAGA cultists would refuse.
Not if you want a music player. They’ve added podcasts everywhere possible
