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?

  • sanpo@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    51·
    1 month ago

    Tidal doesn’t even have anything over Spotify.
    Their version of Spotify Connect barely works at the best of times, on my AV I couldn’t get it to work at all.

    And Qobuz… isn’t even available in a bunch of countries.

    For me, the only real alternative is piracy and setting up my own streaming.
    But I’m too lazy for that, so with Spotify at least the artists get paid something, and I can be reasonably certain that whatever I want to listen to will actually be available.

    Also, Bandcamp was sold a while ago and fired half their staff, so not sure about ethics here.

    • rhabarba@feddit.orgEnglish
      3·
      1 month ago

      TIDAL has a lot over Spotify:

      • You won’t pay military robots with your TIDAL subscription.
      • TIDAL pays artists notably better.
      • HiFi for much less money.