When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
Please, people, for the love of the gods, stop using Spotify. There are numerous other services that are so much better value for your money and don’t treat artists (as much) like trash.
And that being said, try to support your beloved artists directly as much as you can. Buying digital downloads or physical media will give them more money than a lifetime of streaming ever would. Plus you get to keep the higher-quality music even if the platform or artist goes tits-up.
It’s too convenient. Most people just want easy access and don’t even think of the downstream impacts. If a song or two goes unavailable, probably won’t notice. There is gonna need to be an alternative that is cheap and feature rich along with Spotify missing some steps. It’s here for awhile.
You are not wrong, but there are other services that are just as convenient and for less money. Spotify knows they are the “default” music streaming platform and they are exploiting that.
A quick Google puts the top two at Apple and Amazon. So that is a big no for me boss. I am pretty sure the next ones listed are just torrent front ends. I have a life now so no time for that…spotify it is.
What is a better alternative, aside from just buying the media directly?
Could you give me some examples of alternative services? I’m paying spotify right now, but i’ll love to ditch it.
Sure, although keep in mind this will vary by region due to licensing issues.
Deezer is probably Spotify’s best direct competitor. They are priced equally (depending on region) and now offer high-res streaming as default instead of a paid extra. They’ve been expanding with new features such as lyrics, collab playlists, song identification, and they recently improved their recommendation system. They also offer a discount if you buy subs yearly instead of monthly so you can save if you like the platform.
Apple Music is also an option now that Apple has put in some work to make the platform easier to use on non-Apple devices such as the recently added Windows app. It’s not as feature-rich as Deezer but if you don’t use those added features anyway then it is an option. I personally would phrase it as “has less bloat”. If you own any Apple devices already then it will have tighter integration with them.
Tidal is the old favourite of audiophiles and music appreciators. They have been expanding their platform with new features and music and, somewhat recently, have also lowered their prices. High-res streaming is now included in the base sub tier. All of these alternatives pay artists more than Spotify but Tidal has one of the best artist payouts.
Qobuz is similar to Tidal and is a premium platform with a focus on quality. They are a newer service and are still expanding their regions, so I don’t have personal experience with them as they only recently opened up to my country. Their price and feature set looks competitive, though, and their UI does look slick. They also have better artist payouts.
Amazon Music apparently has better payouts for artists but Amazon is a shit company so I’ve never looked into them further. I’ll include YouTube Music here as well which has shitty payouts and is a shitty company.
The interesting thing about Tidal is that is was originally owned by artists (Jay-Z, Beyoncé; Kanye West; Madonna; Jason Aldean; Alicia Keys; Arcade Fire; Coldplay’s Chris Martin; Rihanna; and deadmau5) Who have since sold off a majority share to Block, while Jay-Z kept a board seat and other artists still have shares. Curious if it will last.
Amazon Music
I invested heavily in the Amazon Music ecosystem, I bought hundreds of albums on there, and the platform is now very nearly unusuable. I cannot even listen to the songs that I paid for without also having to listen to ads. And the Android app now hides the downloads in some hidden folder so I can’t even download them and listen to them on another player. It makes me furious.
I’ve actually gone back to CDs, if you can believe it. It’s kind of nice sometimes, especially for full album plays, but I do miss a nice big playlist of my favorite songs from all artists.
Apple Music also has Dolby atmos and much higher quality audio files compared to Spotify.
The only thing Spotify has on everyone is excellent playlists. I just use SongShift to copy the playlists over.
Tidal is okay but I prefer Apple Music since it has a better UI, cheaper price and is more user friendly for my non-audiophile family members.
if you use Apple Music and have a desktop/laptop look into Cider 2. Incredible streaming music player. https://cider.sh/
Just looked into these. It doesn’t look like any of these have official Linux apps :(
Apple Music has a web based player
None of these have good app support compared to Spotify, sadly. Not supported by my car, nor my Linux desktop, or home speakers.
Oh and Deezer pays even less to artists than Spotify.
Oh and Deezer pays even less to artists than Spotify.
I don’t think that’s accurate. Care to provide your source?
“Let’s throw away all of our physical media! All digital streaming music, movies and books will be so much better! Everything we want, always available, anywhere!!!”
Somewhat true if you’re a seasoned sailor of the high seas, not so much if not…
I’m fighting this fight with phone and sd cards. It’s part of the reason they are killing sd card slots to get people to put everything in the cloud.
Sadly most people are morons and are doing exactly that.
You don’t need to be a “seasoned sailor”. It’s incredibly easy IMO to get what you want if you’re willing to put forth a tiny amount of effort.
The seasoning helps to know where it’s safe to put into port though.
More money for the executives and less for everyone else. People need to start standing up to this shit.
Spotify could charge ten times their current price - indeed, should have been, for nearly the entire catalogue of western music? even at $100/mo it would have been a steal - and even so, they wouldn’t be paying artists significantly more, or even at a reasonable rate.
The model is the problem. The middleman is the problem. The service itself is the problem. It can never work in a way that pays artists fairly as long as it requires human oversight, administration and intervention, let alone all the wasteful shit like advertising and legal overhead/payola for politicians.
Get an AI to do it right, though… puffpuff, pass
thank you. the fact that we aren’t rioting to have more automated services that pass the cost benefit on to the people is something i’ll never understand. we have the tools to build utopia but they can;t figure out how to make enough money from it.
The problem is, they’re all thinking that utopia will have money. Silly noobs
exactly
I love how no one mentions that the great success business Spotify got all their starting music from the mp3 warez scene.
Early Spotify songs still had the meta data from those files, including misspelled song names and years of issue.
Because don’t most people know their history by now?
I would imagine that the vast majority of Spotify’s listeners, and even critics, don’t care about where they got their initial music from
Definitely thinking about cancelling with this. I’ve used Spotify as long as I can remember, after finally switching over from pandora radio.
Their shuffle and discovery algorithms suck so much now that it’s nearly impossible to listen to more than 20-30 songs they just keep repeating.
Add on the extra, inserted ads in podcasts, there’s really no reason to continue to use their platform.
Then again, I’m probably going to YT music, which is only marginally better, but since I pay for YT premium already there’s no additional cost
I fucked off Spotify after the Jo Rogan debacle.
Joe Rogan debacle?
There’s plenty of info if you google your comment.
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/07/spotify-joe-rogan-artists-subscribers/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/arts/joe-rogan-spotify.html
Etc etc
They suck ass. Stop paying them money.
No matter what you think about Apple, Apple Music pays multiple times more than Spotify
And Tidal pays multiples more than Apple.
It’s up to you if you want to support artists or not.
Does YouTube music pay its artists? I prefer an Android platform. A lot of the stuff I want isn’t on Apple Music for classical is also why.
15 hours of audiobooks per month is a joke. That’s not even one longer book.
And it’s not every member of the plan, it’s only the primary user. Also the “buy more hours” of an audiobook is such a crappy idea to get us to buy an audiobook, and gosh it’s not even all audiobooks it’s only the first of the series. Even if you add more hours, you can’t listen to the 2nd book. This is half the reason why they had to raise prices. It costs them a bit for those 15 hours and the music lovers and creators are paying the price for their misunderstanding
I didn’t think it could be worse… I just bought one Dell mini PC and I will turn it into server and I will start self host a lot of my services. Audiobookshelf is going to be one of them
Spotify can die in a fire for all I care. Sail the high seas and if you like an artist buy physical releases/merch/tickets.
I still buy everything on CD that I can get from good bands. Nothing beats CD quality and durability. My CDs from 30+ years ago still play just fine except for the few that have too many scratches from abuse.
After I get a new CD I rip it to high quality MP3 and add it to my personal streaming library.
I’ve seen quite a few download codes included with vinyl releases that have 24 bit wav/flac files available. Some will even offer 88.2/96kHz files.
You could argue that the quality difference isn’t detectable between those and an MP3 rip of a CD though.
So instead of having the artists make the small per stream income, you suggest they get $0? Buying their releases/merch/tickets is irrelevant to the platform. If anything, the model of these streaming platforms is just further shifting to advertisement for artists to drive people to shows.
you suggest they get $0?
They make more from what I suggested than they do from Spotify.
Of course they do, but those suggested options are the same for Spotify users too. I’m not seeing the connection here unless you’re saying Spotify users are less likely to buy merch or tickets. Pirate what you want, but trying to spin the argument this way is just disingenuous.
Edit: and to add to this, I would argue that platforms like Spotify and other subscription models are key ways for new people to be introduced to a bad. (Short of having your song blow up on something like Tik Tok of course)
Pirate what you want, but trying to spin the argument this way is just disingenuous.
I’m not following you. Spotify is notorious for paying out very little to artists, so therefore they don’t deserve my business, fuck 'em.
Instead I like to support the artists directly.
As to your second point, I’ve never had a problem discovering new music.
My point is people saying “Spotify doesn’t pay artists enough so just pirate everything” is disingenuous. Nothing about paying for a platform (Spotify, TIDAL, Apple, YouTube, etc.) precludes you from supporting artists through other means as well.
The second point didn’t imply that this is the o ly way to discover music, but it absolutely is an avenue where many people discover new artists.
I don’t think you know what disingenuous means.
Doesn’t make me feel guilty using Soulseek. Artists get next to nothing but I’m refusing to give any money to Spotify. If there was a better way to buy and own music digitally from popular artists I would
Don’t use spotifly.
Give your money to SomaFM instead.
Spotify seems to be trying to transition to podcasts anyway - it’s harder to get it to recommend music. My guess is that eventually the Spotify and the record labels will have more disagreements about royalties, and that Spotify will pivot more towards podcasting - independent folks who have far less power in negotiations.
Metallica, Dr Dre, et al were not wrong in suing Napster. We’re seeing the fruits of the evolution of that format. I guess at least people aren’t downloading “Get Back ft Stevie Wonder - Oasis.wma” anymore, and somebody is making money off of it. Just (mostly) not the artists that make the music.
Low cost, distributed digital distribution is absolutely a thing. Phones have enormous storage anymore, so much so most people could have their entire music collections available on their phones or tablets - not everyone - but most people.
A distributed streaming platform would really be the way to do this and make it cost effective for everybody. An app that could stream from a list of sources (remember playlists? M3U files that could play from multiple Internet locations - yeah, that already exists and has since before 2000) would enable people to stream the music they haven’t found yet or are searching for.
Seems like an interesting open source software project, to be honest. Funkwhale is probably a good basis for extension, and could be run by the artists (or provided to then via a simple click to setup platform) for low overhead.
