They're not what they pretend to be!

When it comes to music streaming, it’s a little simplistic to state only their COO, also important to note how much each service pays out to the artists (many of whom are European). Tidal is originally Norwegian but due to financial difficulties now has majority ownership by Block Inc. its true, but it also has one of the highest per stream payouts to artists.
Qobuz does too, and that’s a French company.
Ofc music streaming in general is never going to compensate artists as much as buying a CD/Vinyl/Tape or going to a concert.
- Tidal is also the only streaming service that has a (albeit unofficial) HiFi linux client. At that point I don't care about whatever others offer, it's the only one that provides the service I seek.
  Pre submit edit: I searched if Qobuz had a hifi compatible unnoficial linux client and it apparently does (or you can WINE it without damages to the sound quality). I might swap to go full european...

I've been on tidal for like a year and like it. What's Block Inc and why shouldn't I support them?

Look into the extension player echo for an open source wrapper for these services. Best app on my phone right now. Its one of those annoying new wave projects that operates entirely out of discord for downloads and dev docs, but compiling from git is always an option.

come by anytime you want we can party. i have been online since forever and i have several mp3s
i have so many that weren't Tom Waits or Weird Al

I JUST signed up for tidal after dumping spotify wtf guys A LITTLE LATE
- Use spot tube

Oh fuck, I'm with Deezer... are there any options left?
- It's not majority owned. Also, the development team is in France. I don't think this is a problem. If you think this is a problem then you can't use any product from Europe. There is always some American who bought their stocks.
  
  Yes, after reading carefully I came to the same conclusion... there is simply no company that is "perfect", we can only evaluate what we can and decide if the level of "dirt" is acceptable
- I’m about to try Quboz from another comment I read somewhere. They’re a French company.
- SoundCloud has enormous variety. Are they jerks too?
- Spotube
- ☠️?
  
  Yes, I do for pretty much everything but it's a bit of a hassle for new music discovery and to play everywhere

I only use spotify for discovering music.
I then download it (lucida.to is the best tool I have used so far) or buy it.
I got an mp3 player for like €13 on aliexpress, but that broke a day or so ago (rip).
- Mp3 player
  
  No SD card, no headphone jack.
- it's definitely much more than €13, but if you're the right kind of nerd for that kind of thing, there's Tangara
  
  I've seen a lot of good things said about tangara. I'll look into it, thanks!

If you want to support musical artists, pay to see them live and buy a t-shirt or something.
But for listening... Don't pay some disgusting corporation to trickle a fraction of a fraction of a penny to your fave artist. That's not actual support, just corporate propaganda. Instead download or watch on youtube (with ad blockers).
- I'd love to see some of them live, but fuck all those bullshit ticketmaster fees. I'll stick to buying their vinyls.
  
  ~~Support by listening to them on a paid Spotify account~~ Trump supporter
  ~~Support by listening to them on a paid Deezer account~~ owned by some other big company
  ~~Support by listening to them on a paid Tidal account~~ owned by some other big company
  ~~Support by going to their concert~~ Ticketmaster fees and practices
  ~~Support by buying vinyls~~ ...
  Everything is enshitified and overrun by late stage capitalism

My perspective may be off but is €150000 a lot? I'd be curious to know if they donated anything to other similar Democrat events (and in other countries). I'd be more sceptical seeing Spotify donate to Trump's actual campaign, but donating to the inauguration of a democraticly elected president doesn't seem insane to me, even if the president is as awful as Trump.
- Another reason is that Spotify has been making AI generated music to try to avoid paying royalties to real artists.
- Couldn't find anything on Spotify donating to Biden's inauguration, but you can see an unsurprising trend in company donations: https://www.newsweek.com/tech-ceos-donations-donald-trump-joe-biden-inaugurations-compared-2010457
  Ideally, companies wouldn't use their massive wealth to bribe any elected president, much less with such a clear political agenda.
- They did also resign joe rogan in 2024 to give him a $250 million dollar deal. He's played a huge part in radicalizing his listeners.
  
  Ah, I read Re-sign as forced resignation.
  
  Much better example, thanks. I remember that deal really upset their staff.
- Doesn't matter if it's relatively a lot. It is objectively a lot of money. They could have donated it to a worthy cause like starving people.
  It's Trump. They should have donated $0.
  It doesn't matter if they're democratically elected or not. Being elected doesn't mean you're good.

Tidal is still the better streaming service, if you really need one, but it's starting to suck.... Bandcamp is the best of option to support artist.

I love every time this topic comes up folks be like "buy directly from the artist" or " use this other platform that is less evil" and the chads going on about "just pirate stuff, haven't payed for music in years ".
Hilarious. Myopic, limited, and / or dumb perspectives.
Would I love to pay directly to the artist? Sure, but their latest album costs as much as 6 months streaming in my country, and I only like a couple of songs, maybe. And let's not even go to the K-pop realm where I've seen a mini album with 5 songs cost as much as a year of streaming.
Pirate stuff? Well, excuse me for not dwelling in waters that may lead me to be drowned. Also, guess what? Some of us have niche or varied tastes that don't end up in some dark corner of the internet whilst most of these evil streamers have everything.
I prefer to wait every time one of these evil streaming sites puts up a 3 months free promotion or something like that and just use a new mail address with some fake info and enjoy.
- Pirate stuff? Well, excuse me for not dwelling in waters that may lead me to be drowned. Also, guess what? Some of us have niche or varied tastes that don’t end up in some dark corner of the internet whilst most of these evil streamers have everything.
  https://lucida.su/
  You're welcome.
- A lot of albums on Bandcamp are "pay what you want". I just got 12 albums last friday (Bandcamp friday, all the money goes to artists) for around 15$. It's not much but it's way more then they would get from my streams on Tidal. I do this pretty much every month, and I have hundreds of albums. There's ton of way to support musicians, even with a few bucks.
- the amount of money from your streaming subscription that actually goes to your favourite artist is negligible (especially with Spotify, as they won't even pay any money to niche artists before they reach a certain amount of plays). I'd rather get my collection stored for completely offline listening, available in a high quality format and playable through any music player that I currently fancy using instead of a clumsy streaming app that tries to shove podcasts in my face or doesn't know how to shuffle properly, and then every few months spend the equivalent of two or three months of Spotify on an album that I really like on Bandcamp, preferably on a Bandcamp Friday, when Bandcamp doesn't take any cut from the purchase.
- Drown? Does you country seriously pursuit piracy that hard? Sorry, that sucks. Us Americans have it lucky being able to just vpn that kind of traffic.
- If its on spotify - it can be downloaded.
- Some of us have niche or varied tastes that don't end up in some dark corner of the internet whilst most of these evil streamers have everything.
  As far as this is concerned, you can always use Spotify/deezer downloaders. Websites like squid.wtf work well. They even come with metadata.

Qobuz is a great French alternative
- I'm testing Qobuz right now and I really like it. I'm just not sure if I'm not going to miss the mixtape, song radio and user playlist features of Spotify. I do like that Qobuz is less bloated and more focused on music though and that Qobuz' "worst" music quality is Spotify's best.
- I haven't heard of it before - thanks for the recommendation!
  I've been without any streaming service since last autumn when I finally deemed Spotify completely unacceptable. Excited to try this. :)
  Edit: Signup through their website is broken, but the app works. :)
- I've been using and enjoying it! It's got some small quirks but I'm sure they'll be sorted out!

Serious question. Who’s the alternative to Spotify?
- Spotube uses Spotify and gets the music from YouTube. It's a little slow.
- The french Qobuz. Has close to perfect 1 to 1 match with content in my experience, and it has a service to help you transfer all playlists
  
  Ooooh, didn't know about the playlist transfer, I've got to dig into that!
  
  I'm looking at the reviews and they're not good. Apparently tracks just disappear from one day to the next, searching doesn't work, bad UI, hi res downloads often don't work, cancellations are being ignored, etc.
- 🏴‍☠️
- Soulseek
- Lidarr, Jellyfin, and Music Assistant
  
  Ok but serious question, I don't want to personally manage my music library on a server. For movies and TV this is fine, I consume a couple of these a day but if I want a steady stream of new music streaming apps have made all this very easy and very convenient.
  When my 4 year old yells out in the car for a specific song, will these cover it?
- Qobuz !
  
  Not available in my country (eu)
- Qobuzz?
  
  I can survive using a different service for my podcasts. So this sounds like a good shout. But I’m impressed by the fact they supposedly have as many tracks as Spotify.
  Will chase this down.
- Deemix
  
  and Lucida
  
  Will investigate. Fanks
- Buying from, and supporting the artist directly, IMO.
  Many European metal bands host their own webshop selling their merchandise, records, cassettes and CDs; many small and independent musicians sell their songs on Bandcamp (US based website that does take a cut from each payment, 15% I believe goes to Bandcamp, so that is something to keep in mind)
  
  Honestly, the benefit of streaming services is not being able to listen to music legally. It's discovery. Playing a song I like and getting recommended a similar song turn an artist I've never heard of has introduced me to a lot of great music. That's not something you can replicate by going to the webshop of your favorite band and buying their newest album.
- Does anyone here remember radio?
  
  Radio has been mostly bought out by corporations which seem to air more ads than music.
  I've got a college radio station for alt rock in my area though that has great music with lots of variety and very few ads.
  
  Fuck. I remember taping radio.
  
  Web Radio still exists. I use Shortwave for tuning in.
- I prefer Pandora's algorithm for music. But I haven't looked into their skeletons yet.
  
  Just noticed what community this is. Pandora might also be US-based.
  
  I believe they are owned by siriusXM since like 2019
- I still buy my music song by song from iTunes (I haven't done it since before the drumpfster came to power), I don't rent my music.

The fact that the company that owns cash app also owns a music streaming service makes me laugh.
I'm sure in a few years some Block exec is going to make hay by selling it for a loss to focus on their core tenants which is being slightly better than PayPal.
- To be fair, I have a buddy who works at square. He said that the CEO is actually really passionate about Tidal.

Source please
- I haven’t done any deeper digging than this. Shout if you find something that contradicts this, pls?
  Also, real talk: Bjork hating on a thing kinda makes me more inclined to dump it myself 🤣
  Edit: I fucking love this parenthetical here. “Byurk who, just for your information, is a musician who makes music and probably plays some instruments…”
  
  Joanna Newsom also hates Spotify and won't allow her music on it. She's on tidal though.
- I agree, source please.
  And also $150K is peanuts.
  I don't like Trump, but if any European Company finds it necessary to bribe Trump in order to make profits for their shareholders, then I am not morally opposed.
  The American people democratically elected a corrupt official. These are the new rules.
  Now Spotify signing Joe Rogan is a bigger slight, but even there, Joe was relatively OK when they signed him.
  Edit: you guys are naive and, I would even say, anti-European.
  Trump is selling American assets for pennies on the dollar. Saudi-Arabia, Russia and China have no qualms buying in.
  For some European businesses, the American market is key to their survival. You can take a principled stance, while Saudi pays the bribe and forever takes over that market
  
  Wild take. $1 is too many $ when you’re paying for a dickhead’s lifestyle.
  Edit: also. Rogan has 100% always been a cunt. Change my mind.
  
  And also $150K is peanuts.
  The only reasonable number here would be 0.
  
  You are not opposed to companies paying bribes and financing the establishment of a fascist regime? And Joe Rogan has always been an extreme-right promoter, he just used to play dumb about it.
  
  Replacing US big-tech with EU big-tech is the stupidest thing we could do. An oligarch is an oligarch no matter where he is and he will try to buy your government as Musk has done with the USA, the only solution is to prevent anyone from having so much money/power
  It's not that there are no millionaires, it's that no one has more money than the government that represents the people.
  
  These are the new rules.
  Maximizing shareholder profits at any cost is not new.
  What it is, is the thing you should be morally opposed to, instead of justifying it because "hey, that's how it is"
  
  “Edit”: you guys are anti-European -> Proceeds to spout shockingly anti-European economic talking points. Go team SAUD!