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?
I moved to Qobuz. It costs a little more but that is something you have to accept for the ethical choice.
Unfortunately it’s not working for me. Many of my songs/libraries have not moved over well, can’t be found or have changed version etc.
The bigger issues for me are the terrible CarPlay functions of the app. It’s non existent. If I am travelling I need to see and search fast and easy. And I continually have to select Bluetooth when playing music, if the app drops out or I lose connection I can’t just pop on my phone and again select Bluetooth. It needs to recognise CarPlay and just switch.
Finally I it drops out and jumps a lot for me. Interruptions every 10 songs or so just isn’t great.
I wish it would have worked but it didn’t. I’m moving away from music streaming.
Personally I moved back to mp3, so much less hassle and if you don’t mind the high seas it’s super easy to rip off Spotify.
I recommend Opus as the lossy audio format.
I’ve been using Qobuz for a few years. I’m on android and the car app is fine, but not amazing. I haven’t had any drop outs but I choose CD quality on cell service and download a lot of my favorite albums.
Qobuz is missing so much music for me. Liking too many obscure artists is a curse.