Spotify has fostered a music-distribution model that is singularly hostile to the interests of working musicians. While being the largest music streaming service in the world, it is the one of the worst paying, with roughly 0.3 cents for each stream, translating to approximately three dollars for every thousand streams.

A company whose entire business depends on the work thousands of artists, compensates them with basically nothing (and has plans to make it even worse). All while their CEO invests millions into military AI companies.

Spotify does not care about artists.

The rest of the post hinges on this argument. If you're wondering why you should care how much artists get paid, I don't believe I can convince you, and you should probably just close the tab and not waste your time. If you're even asking that, then I think that we're fundamentally different people who won't be able to agree on values. I don't know how to tell you that it's good to care about others.

I don't normally like telling people what they should spend their money on, I generally like to respect people's opinion on why they choose to do business with a company they know is morally bankrupt and actively making the world worse. Sometimes there just is no alternative, and even if there is, no matter where you go, in all likelihood - someone, somewhere down the supply chain is getting exploited. That's just how the world is right now.

However, this is not one of those times. There are many alternatives. Pretty much all of them more ethical just by virtue of actually paying artists.

I'm here to tell you that you won't miss anything by leaving Spotify.

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We're going to go through a comparison of streaming services that I've personally used over the years.

• Spotify (2014-2019)
• Apple Music (2019-2023)
• Tidal (early 2023-present)
• Qobuz (late 2023-present)

I don't actually really use Qobuz in the same sense that I use Tidal, so I'll skip it for now and return back to it later.

Apple Music and Tidal both pay significantly more than Spotify (0.8 and 1 cent(s) per stream respectively) and from my experience, are honestly better services. ^{(1) (1)} I understand my knowledge on Spotify may be outdated since the last time I used it was 2019, so I spent a day before writing this using Spotify again so I could see if anything changed. There wasn't really anything new (on the music side). Reading peoples thoughts on the Internet also confirms this. For transparency, I wasn't aware of all the bullshit Spotify was doing until 2020, but I wasn't planning on going back so it never affected any decisions on what service to use.

Out of the three I consider Apple Music the best. The only reason I keep a Tidal subscription is because they pay more as well as something else related to that thing about Qobuz I'm going to get to later.

The most obvious advantage of the two is the fact that they offer lossless audio quality. This means the audio better preserves the original quality of a recording. Unlike lossy formats, which compress audio by removing certain details to reduce file size, lossless audio retains every bit of the original data. This results in higher sound quality, with more depth, clarity, and a broader dynamic range.

If you've never heard good lossless audio quality, you probably won't notice anything different at first, but stick with it for a while and it will be very noticeable if try you go back to lossy audio (if you're a gamer, it is a bit like going from 60 FPS to 144 FPS). You may also need decent audio gear if you want to get the most of it, but AirPod Pros or their Samsung equivalent are good enough I believe.

Spotify has been planning on offering a lossless tier, it's been delayed for over two years with no release date in sight and will most likely be only for a higher tier of subscriptions, whereas Apple Music and Tidal offer lossless on their standard tiers.

Most people seem to like Spotify for music discovery by using recommendation algorithms like "Discover Weekly."

I can't speak for how you'd find the recommendation algorithms of Apple Music or Tidal, since they're supposed to be tailored for each individual. But I've seen many people on the Internet vouch for each service. Anecdotally from what I've seen with people who have used all three, Spotify and Tidal and generally the best, with a bias towards Spotify.

Personally, recommendations never worked all that well for me on any service. I have strange listening habits, and the music I listen to most isn't the music I like the most or even want more of. This pretty much always fucks over any machine learning algorithm as the music I want to discover, aren't anything like the ones it thinks I listen to.

Most of my new discoveries come from word of mouth, or by going into the artists page and clicking on other related artists. The "clicking around" experience is pretty much the same on every service.

However, that isn't to say machine learning has been completely useless. Earlier this year Apple Music introduced "Discovery Station" which is just an infinite radio of recommendations. For each song that comes up you can favourite it or tell it to "suggest less" which is a nice and easy way of tuning the algorithm. After about a week of telling it to "suggest less" whenever stuff like this came up, it actually became pretty good for new music as well as just being good a background radio while I do work.

Spotify also seems to have something like this with an "AI DJ." I didn't get anything out of it, but I'm sure that's just because I tried it on a new account without a large listening history.

All services also have a way to create a radio mix from a song/album/artist to find similar music. And they're all okay. Tidal was probably best at it.

In my opinion, computer generated recommendations are better served by a service that specialises in it. I've just started using last.fm two months ago and have already gotten more discoveries from that than my entire Tidal subscription, but that may be because I've only recently started to lessen the amount of J-core in my music diet. Here's my page if you were curious. ^{(2) (2)} Please ignore the amount Fr*nch 🤮 music I listen to.

In terms of music availability, it's Spotify tied with Apple Music for the biggest catalogue. Tidal has a few gaps with niche and non-western artists. This more or less just correlates with how popular the service is, so the obvious solution here is to be the change you want in the world :)

Somewhat related, my favourite feature of Apple Music is actually how it allows you to upload your own music to your library. I buy music from Bandcamp (for those unknown indie bands not on any service), so it's great to just upload them to Apple Music and have a single place to listen from.

Spotify also lets you use local files, but it's ahh… how do I put this… complete ass and was originally THE reason I switched. Not only does it barely function most of the time, you can only listen to your files on the device they're originally on; It isn't uploaded to your library like it is with Apple Music, ^{(3) (3)} BTW, you don't need an Apple device to use Apple Music, I used it on Windows all the time and it worked fine. There's also an Android app, but I don't have an Android phone so I can't attest to it's quality. The web version is decent too. making it completely useless.

If you have huge playlists and are worried about the time sink moving them to a new platform, you can use a service like Soundiiz to transfer them. I used it for both migrations into Apple Music and Tidal without any issue. The free plan is capped at 200 songs per playlist, but you can just subscribe at €4.50 for one month and just cancel it immediately (you'll still get the entire month, so do it immediately and you won't have a chance of forgetting to cancel).

Spotify also seems to branched into other non-music related industries like podcasts and audiobooks. Obviously neither Apple Music or Tidal do that, ^{(4) (4)} I guess there's Apple Podcasts and Apple Books, but they aren't Apple Music so they don't count. so if any of those are what's keeping you on Spotify… fine, I guess.

I'd stay away from keeping all your eggs in one basket though. You'll get burnt when your overlords start wanting to make omelettes. ^{(5) (5)} Fuck this is an awful metaphor. I love it.

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I want to experience good art. Artists need money to stay alive. I pay for art so artists can stay alive and make good art.

The issue is, moving to a different service won't solve the fundamental injustice of the streaming economy. It just not reasonable to expect unrestricted access to the entire history of recorded music for $10 a month and have it be sustainable.

So really: You Should Stop Using Music Streaming Services.

Yes, Apple Music and Tidal pay better than Spotify, a lot better - but it's still not all that good. Paying more is mostly just a marketing shtick more than an actual desire to pay fairly. They are companies after all, paying artists by it's very nature means they get less profits, why would they want that?

I don't normally like telling people what they should spend their money on, mostly because I know I have a position of extreme privilege. I'm in the top 1% of incomes for my age bracket, and the top 5% for everyone in Australia. I don't really ever have to worry about money ^{(6) (6)} In fairness, this is why I'm so insistent on paying people fairly for their work. Everyone should have what I have. (if that isn't obvious already from all the dumb shit I spend my money on), and the only time I've ever had to tighten my budget for a few months was because I dropped all my savings into a deposit for my apartment.

And yet here I am, a 1%er, ^{(7) (7)} I only like to use that statistic because I can technically say this. about to tell you that you should stop using the, frankly incredible (and unreasonable) value streaming services give you, and instead go back to buying albums individually for $5-20.

So, I won't say that.

Instead; You should go back to piracy.

Haha jk… or am I? ;)

No but seriously, just get off Spotify.

epilogue

If you want to know more, the unsustainability of music streaming is pretty well documented. While mainly focused on Spotify, here's a good video by Benn Jordan that goes through most of it.

This video from Some More News is also good for more Spotify hate fuel.

Anyway, I've kind of forgotten to talk about what the deal with Qobuz was, so here it is.

Qobuz ^{(8) (8)} FYI, it's pronounced /ˈkoʊˌbʌz/ (koh-buzz) in English at least. I don't care how the Fr*nch 🤮 say it. is an interesting because it's Fr*nch 🤮 it's both a streaming service and music store, where it's entire catalogue of music can be streamed or bought DRM free to download. This is cool, and aside from other, even smaller services like Resonate, it seems to me like the most sustainable way of doing streaming.

Now, you might be thinking, "isn't this just iTunes all over again?"

Yeah I guess so. I'm pretty sure music you buy in iTunes can be streamed from Apple Music too, but you don't get to download them DRM free.

I didn't talk about it in the comparison because Qobuz's catalogue isn't very big, so I wouldn't recommend it for most people. But it seems to have improved a lot over the last few years, and from my experience is much more expansive than what reviews from the past few years have said.

Another reason is because I've never used Qobuz's app to stream music before, so if it's complete garbage, I wouldn't know.

Basically, there's this thing called Roon which is software for music playback and library management. You know how I said bringing my own music from stores like Bandcamp was my favourite feature with Apple Music? This is that but like a hundred times better.

Roon has seamless integration with Tidal and Qobuz, as in you can stream Tidal and Qobuz through the Roon UI. So I essentially have a hybrid library of streaming and owned music. And I use the streaming integration to play new music I get recommended from Roon, last.fm, etc, and if I like it enough, I'll eventually try to find a place to buy it (most likely Qobuz) and move into the owned music collection.

I think this is about as good as a compromise as I can get. And it works very well for me, but other people would likely take issue with how Roon needs server to host it on, and requires yet another subscription, meaning I'm literally paying for three subscriptions ^{(9) (9)} I'm still evaluating whether or not I need Tidal since Qobuz is still new to me. It will probably get dropped at some point. to access music.

I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to go this far.

You're probably fine with just using Apple Music and hoping the music economy doesn't completely collapse.