I currently have Spotify, mainly because I signed up a while ago and never really bothered to explore alternatives.
I pay €13 every month these days which I feel is quite a lot. I was already thinking of getting a few friends together and sharing a family plan, which would make it cheaper. But if I’m doing that I might as well take a proper look at my options.
What are some good, hopefully ethical, European alternatives? I know Spotify is from Sweden so good in that regard (?). Deezer is French, but also mostly owned by some American investment firm. If I can believe what I read they pay artist a bit more, which sounds like a good thing, but I don’t want my money to mostly go to American investors…
Any advice is highly appreciated!
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Spotify is not very ethical. They are the worst platform for artists for getting paid. The CEO Daniel Ek is a billionaire asshole that has called music ~“content without production cost”. They were early to encourage AI slop, including that creepy ass “virtual radio host”, because hey zero production cost content. They are aggressively pushing podcasts and label sponsored content to paying subscribers as covert advertisement income. They also have ancient sketchy history of having clients do peer-to-peer distribution without telling that your bandwidth is used to cut their server costs. In short, Spotify is not a company that cares about music or musicians or even their customers.
I was on Spotify from the early days of invite only until a few years ago when I had enough. I jumped to Tidal that was ok but I was never quite comfortable. They don’t do podcasts but their search function is garbage and pushes selected artists ahead of your search terms. Their overall UI/UX experience is ok but not great and I must admit that here Spotify has got a lot of things right. Tidal pay artists better but I feel like they are aiming for the Spotify business model in the long run.
Now I’m on Qobuz. They are the highest tier in paying out to artists. I was surprised that I noticed a difference in their high resolution quality. While their search function doesn’t push artists like the two above, it’s not great and their recommendations for related artists is not good. Their catalogue is pretty good, though I miss some more obscure stuff, but I guess that’s really up to the smaller labels to make themselves available. I do, however, get the feeling that they care about music more than for money and their developers give the impression to listen to the community. I’m sticking to Qobuz for now and I hope they hire some more devs to iron out the quirks.
I’m currently on a trial month of Qobuz and I think it’s pretty good. It’s from France and it has a similar price to Spotify, but you get actual hi-fi music quality. They also pay the artists better than Spotify. Plus you can also just buy the music as DRM-free downloads and you get a discount for that on the higher subscription tier. The music library is a bit smaller than Spotify, but it still has like 90% of my library, despite my taste not being very mainstream. Works with Android Auto as well.
Kind of thought it would be available in all EU countries, cosidering its from France, but apparently not?
True, didn’t realize that either. Currently available in 26 countries it seems. Hopefully they’ll expand to the rest of Europe soon!
Thanks, this sounds great!
Any idea if they care if people not in the same household share a family plan? I know it’s a bit cheap but life is expensive :(
It’s supposed to be for the same household, but I have no idea whether it’s enforced or not.
Yeah I read somewhere Deezer doesn’t enforce it for example. I mean I always use a VPN and people of course are often not in their own home and want to list to music. But sharing it with friends in other countries might make it a bit too obvious
I’ve been on Qobuz for a year:
- overall the apps are good
- desktop app doesn’t support your algorithmic weekly or daily playlist still, which is weird
- Qobuz connect lets you play to your other devices, so that makes point 2 kind of moot.
- I like the prominent human influence on the discover page
- I never hear about them doing stupid or evil things.
Would recommend.
If you have a qobuz subscription you can use tools such as https://github.com/vitiko98/qobuz-dl to download the music at high quality, also works with trial subscription
I try to avoid that type of thing because I don’t want them to lock everything down and enshittify.
I do use a third party Qobuz TUI player on desktop.
I recently signed up for Qobuz as well… The plan is to stream for a while, but buy music along the way so I’m not left with nothing at the end like Spotify.
I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong but… Do recommendations not work at all? It seems like the recommendations are some global list for everyone, not a personalized list based on what I’m listening to. I’ve been trying to click the heart icon for stuff I like, but it doesn’t seem to change the recommendations…
Recommendations only appear in the mobile app. The Discover page on desktop doesn’t have your daily or weekly feeds.
And the daily feed doesn’t seem to update reliably. I don’t really know, I liked some Spanish songs and my recommendations were all tejano music for a month. When I liked a kpop song that happened with Korean music.
It’s definitely not Spotify quality in recommendations.
Is Deezer any good?
Apparently they tag AI content at least
I have been using Deezer for the past 4 months and it works great for me
Qobuz.
Enough said.
But if you want more said, it is better quality audio (especially useful if you’re into hifi and/or headphones. You can also buy audio tracks directly from their store too. Oh and if you also like classical nothing beats it.
Full disclosure, I also use YT Music as I pay for YouTube Premium and it comes with and it has a bigger range but the quality is only about as good as Spotify. It’s fine…but qobuz tracks have more “feeling”. It’s weird. Minimum quality is CD level but,.and especially for classical, higher dynamic range makes tracks just more. If you’re listening on quality open-backed headphones with a wide soundstage, your ears will love it.
I’ve bought music on Qobuz and if I ever have the need for a streaming service this is what i would pick.
I’m really enjoying Qobuz
For some reason Soundcloud never comes up in these conversations, but that’s what I use and I’m perfectly happy with it. But my second option would probably also be Qobuz.
no mainstream music on soundcloud
I agree that Spotify is too much for the price, and despite not being American I have a problem with the shows they platform.
If you don’t find any of the paid options morally tolerable, I would submit that pirating and self-hosting what you need is the most ethical option.
Yeah I just read they donated to Trump! I had no idea but that’s terrible.
Self hosting will make my partner unhappy haha, unless I can make everything work seamlessly and I doubt I can. And the music recommendations are genuinely useful.
I have Kodi for my shows and movies though! I’m definitely not opposed to pirating and think self hosting is fantastic
Yeah I haven’t figured out / put enough time into getting Navidrome working, and I’m not happy with using Jellyfin for my music either. Can’t say I have a great answer to that, but it certainly ticks the ethical box for me.
Self hosting is cool, but you miss out on the discovery that the streaming platforms provide.
It’s true, my way of discovering things is kind of random walk, or sometimes from following musicians I like and seeing who they talk about. That or browsing bandcamp and scraping whatever seems decent.
If you don’t find any of the paid options morally tolerable, I would submit that pirating and self-hosting what you need is the most ethical option.
youtube music revanced is also an option
It is, and thank fucking god I’m not an audiophile. I bet it would suck to notice when my audio has a low bitrate.
It’s bourgeois.
I agree. As long as it has a good beat that I can dance to I don’t need to hear that somebody dropped a pin onto the studio carpet and if you listen closely you can hear the impact between the drumbeats at 2:47.
https://www.radio-browser.info/
Shoutcast (Icecast) streams are still going strong if you’re willing to put in some effort uncovering ones for your genres. SomaFM is still going strong, Big Sonic Heaven is online, DecayFM, Voice of Doom, Dark Asylum, even public radio like CHIRP (Chicago) are pumping out streams run by humans playing new music.
I’m using Transistor on Android (one of the apps mentioned in their page) and it works.
I also have a Raspberry Pi media player with Moode and my day goes from NTS (my favorite), FluxFM, NME, KEXP and SomaFM. Internet radio has been my biggest discovery and I use it every day.
I have Spotify as well and i agree with all your negatives about them, but at least there is some money flowing towards the little guys. I am keeping an eye on all the alternatives in the comments here though, although personally i feel much better about pirating a movie made by a billion-dollar company than an album by a small band that’s barely getting by.
