Recent news revealed that Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek has been investing heavily in military tech companies, which adds another ethical layer to a platform already criticized for how little it pays musicians !
Spotify only pays artists about $3–5 per 1,000 streams, using a pro-rata model that directs most money toward major stars… By contrast, Qobuz (≈$18–20 per 1,000 streams) and Tidal (≈$12–13) pay far more fairly!
However Tidal is far from ethical. Most of its revenue is controlled by private investors and founders and small artists still earn very little…
More fair-minded platforms like Bandcamp, Resonate, Ampled, or SoundCloud’s fan-powered royalties prioritize musicians over investors.
With these more ethical alternatives available, why do we keep using Spotify?
I recently started using Qobuz also. I was impressed that there are Linux apps, including a (3rd party) downloader that lets me download FLAC. (Otherwise I think you need to use their app in Windows or Mac to download FLAC - the web downloader only let me grab MP3.)
However, although I have loved it, my use case is different than yours, so not really apples to apples. I have a media server running in a VPS, so ethical downloads are my primary requirement. For Download --> Self-host --> Self-stream they are a perfect fit, IMO, though I’m sure there are others.
I like it because I’m not buying music from Amazon, or Spotify, and that it’s DRM free, primarily. I will also buy from Bandcamp sometimes. (To be fair, some amazon music can also be downloaded DRM free, but I think anyone reading this probably already knows that. I can’t remember if FLACs were available to me never or rarely, because I didn’t use Amazon music much.)
Despite that, I’m watching this thread with interest, because I’m certainly open to other options.