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!
Self hosting is cool, but you miss out on the discovery that the streaming platforms provide.
There’s lots of free Internet radio—some commercial, some public/community—that are good for that. For example:
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.