this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2025
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everyone needs to ditch spotify, artists and listeners
As an artist on the streaming platforms, I don’t just distribute music to one, it gets sent out to all. I put the most effort into growing my Apple and Amazon music streams as they actually pay. Spotify gives me by far the most streams but they don’t pay shit so I just don’t put much effort into that. YouTube seems to pay pretty well for music streaming, even got some royalties from TikTok even though I didn’t realize I was on there. I heard Tidal and Deezer pay well but I don’t have listeners there so not much I can do with that.
As a listener who occasionally uses tidal it seems like it is more likely to play more well known artists as opposed to Spotify which seems to tend towards almost royalty free soundalike stuff if you take your finger off the skip button momentarily.
So from that I would assume it's a lot harder to gain an audience on tidal and thats probably part of why they pay better, as the subscription pie is being split up into fewer pieces. Also maybe tidal are still manipulating thier streaming traffic count data in favour of investors like they have in the past.
Any alternatives you like?
I'll give you an actual answer as opposed to just going with another exploitative megacorp.
Buy their shit on Bandcamp or wherever full albums are sold. Use Plex or jellyfin to stream to your phone.
I’ve tried them all at some point from a hifi perspective. To me tidal is the one I keep going back to as the quality is great, music selection is superb, and discovery is good. I slightly prefer qobuz sound quality, but their new music discovery algorithms are sadly subpar. If you don’t care about finding new music outside the mainstream, buying directly from artists website is still best.
Tidal is what I like. Better sound quality.
Deezer is pretty good. https://www.deezer.com
I've been using it for years now and haven't come up empty on anything I've searched for. Their algo is good and doesn't push bullshit.
i have been using youtube music. i already had a google account and it is technically youtube which is one of the biggest payers. would like to find one that isn't owned by one of the 5 companies that own everything lol
If your objection to Spotify is that they don't pay artists well, YT Music is a strictly worse option.
Based on what? Spotify literally pays the least