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!

  • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
    6·
    7 hours ago

    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.

      • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        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.

    • uuj8za@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      6 hours ago

      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…

      • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        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.