Wildly disrespectful to any artist that ever lived. I’m all up for sharing alternatives that are good/better towards actual artists. Still evaluating my choices, but meanwhile this seems like the only and rather easy signal the streaming community can give as to spread the word if they agree (next to stopping your own subscription). Context: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/22/spotifys-ai-bet-more-of-everything-less-of-what-you-want/
Or maybe just don’t use Spotify at all?
‘Please leave Spotify’ full stop.
I left Spotify two years ago and haven’t looked back. I’ve been happy enough with Tidal but eventually I’m going to start self-hosting.
Spotify is the death of music. It has already been happening now just start to randomly slip in AI generated music and soon your biggest cost, the artists goes away.
Maybe jot today hut in two years. Likely. Fuck Spotify. Streaming music was convenient but it broke incentives for artists.
just so you know: big tech apps have 4.5+ rating cause of bot ratings. the only way is to just use something else. qobuz simply bans ai music from the platform, deezer has better artist recommendation by having people correct the algorythm a bit. there are alternatives out there, you do not have to live in shame anymore.
I left Spotify when they paid Rogan a shitload of money to peddle his crap while making efforts to reduce the share of streaming revenue that independent artists received. Guess we all have our tipping points but I’m surprised it has taken some this long while claiming to care about artists.
I’d have to actually use Spotify for that. No thanks.
I’m all up for sharing alternatives that are good/better towards actual artists.
- Tidal
- Qobuz
- Deezer
- Apple Music
Literally everyone pays artists more than Spotify. Even fucking Peleton, apparently.
Tidal seems to be the best option overall. Deezer pays artists less initially than the other services (but still more than Spotify), but the royalties increase for tracks with at least 1,000 streams from 500 unique subscribers each month. Popular artists with more play make more royalties. You benefit Deezer, they benefit you, which makes sense to me.
Qobuz seems to pay highly to artists, but their library is a bit more limited compared to Tidal and Deezer, and their radio functionality is utterly shit.
Apple is the only one I don’t have much info on. I’ve used all four at various points, but Apple Music the least because I don’t like my options being limited to playing it on my Apple TV, and Apple devices are limited to 24-bit/48khz, and Apple has weird EQ that pushes vocals way forward in my experience. I don’t like the music fucked with, just play it without DSP and let my equipment to the work, okay?
Currently subscribed to Qobuz and Deezer, and seriously, fuck Spotify.
I’ve had the opposite experience with Tidal vs Qobuz. Tidal had almost none of what I listen to, but Qobuz did the best job of catching my library when I migrated.
I think it depends entirely on what your music interests are. But I’ve been pretty happy with Qobuz.
I was referring mostly to balancing out artist royalties with service quality/content, but preference is all subjective and their libraries are all huge. I mean, I’ve got several thousand albums, over 54k tracks in my local library and it would barely scratch a tiny percent of these services.
I actually like Qobuz as well, and it’s great for jazz and classical in particular. I have it integrated with Lyrion, but my wife prefers other services, and Deezer is the currently preferred option. We tend to rotate music services periodically and generally have two at any time. We don’t do much with video services, neither of us watches stuff frequently, but we game and listen to music often.
———
Edit - I really do find Qobuz’s radio feature to be shit, but with Lyrion I have integrated “Don’t stop the music” plugin that pulls related artists via LastFM’s API and keeps an indefinite music queue going.
In general I prefer owning my music locally, and mostly use the streaming services for discovery.
Better yet, unsubscribe
The only “review” that Spotify will understand.
And get off play store.
I’m kind of afraid to send any kind of feedback to Spotify because for the last few years, they haven’t actually charged me for my premium account. Literally the only reason I still use it over something else. I don’t want to give them any excuse to look at it and fix the “problem.”
Please leave Spotify
a disappointed review…Fixed that for you.
I am proud to admit I have never subscribed to shit. You give them an inch then they make you their bitch. They already get the ads even if you pull your pants down. Repect yourself and drop all subscriptions and get a library card nerds
My argument always has been that torrenting is still better and more ethical then subscribing to spotify. Vindicated once again
You can always buy the music directly from the artist? Why steal it from them just like Spotify does?
ITT: People who don’t deserve music. Learn to play it yourself or buy it, there is no other moral option.
I buy music, but pirsting is not stealing
It sure is. Can you explain how you receiving a product from someone while they receive nothing is not theft?
Yes
I buy albums regularly, but what, you think I have money for a gazillion cds? Lmao
Yeah… it’s called a music collection? Why should you have access to other people’s work for free?
Because right click and save
Copying data is not theft. Cut it out.
So wrong. Why should you have access to other people’s hard work and creativity for free?
Isn’t… literally anything but Spotify better? There are dozens of streaming services, many of them great, and websites to export your playlists.
I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to unsubscribe.
FWIW, I do believe there are Spotify-exclusive artists and Spotify-first releases.
But, Qobuz and Tidal both pay artists significantly better than Spotify; I recommend Qobuz. YT Music might be slightly better than Spotify for now, but Google is taking all the enshittified parts of Spotify and trying to do the same things to YT Music as fast as possible.
Yeah, YT Music is even worse because of the monopolist concern. If they replace Spotify, they basically own the entire music world. Artist literally could not reject YT Music without throwing their career in the toilet (via being absent from all of YouTube, and undiscoverable on what’s left of the web).
Anyway, I was also thinking of Pandora. But there are tons of good music streaming services, big and small.
I just exported my playlists as csvs and have switched to VLC with downloaded music. It has playlists and works with both my Android Auto and my Cardo for my motorcycle helmet. Spotify has been cancelled.
If you don’t mind me asking, when I have tried using VLC with music, there seems to be like 1-3 seconds delay between songs which is a deal-breaker for me when I’m listening for whole albums. Is there a way to work around this, or do you just not have this issue at all?
Haven’t had the issue at all, though I’m using it on Android, not PC, so not sure if that makes a difference.
I also have this, with videos too and on pc, android and ios…
I use the SMplayer, do the same as VLC, but faster and easier (also FOSS)
SMplayer is not available for Android, which is where pretty much the entirety of my listening takes place (car or motorcycle).
Well, that is certainly a drawback.
You’d be surprised at how addicted the kids are to their brain rot. Look at how much hate YouTube gets, and yet- they’re more profitable than ever.
Stockholm Syndrome of the modern tech world. And it gets so much worse from here.
I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to unsubscribe
May be hard to grasp for someone on lemmy, but some people have a social life
Ah yes, who hasn’t heard about the social life on spotify
Sounds like you don’t get invited to parties, or you’d know what a Spotify jam is
Don’t need it. Just built my own.
Yeah no, that’s not how that works. You can use any other streaming service for that as well. It’s not inherent to the app, thus not a social life IN Spotify, but a social use OF it. My parties are very fine without Spotify ;)
It sounds like you only get invited to some very weird parties and that you’re also dumb for not understanding how it works.
Well done doe outing yourself for Spotify out of all things.
Because then I lose all my playlists
No you dont, every streamer from spotify to apple music to qobuz and deezer allow for a full import. I switched to apple music and it pulled everything.
It is a worse service though which says a lot, spotify does suck but AM has a terrible and boring UI and UX
My wife and I ditched streaming for just owning music through bandcamp or CD. We’ve exported her Spotify playlists. If anybody has a link to a tool for generating local playlists from exported Spotify JSONs (for tracks you own, and a list of tracks you need to complete them), I’m all ears.
I’d try to write one in PowerShell, only to lose interest halfway through the project, but I don’t have Spotify, sorry!
I actually prefer the Apple music interface. Easier to navigate, and their queuing system isn’t horrific. Having play next be different from add to queue is essential. Spotify’s “add to queue” feature playing what you add next instead of the album you started playing was infuriating.
In Spotify, add to queue adds to the end of the queue for me. But the queue is always ahead of whatever you were previously listening to. I prefer it to be this way, for me. The queue is the additional songs I want to listen to, ahead of the main thing ive selected, which I eventually want to return to.
When I want to listen to first this, then that, then that, etc., I “add to playlist” instead of add to queue.
Now, if I do have a queue already but I want to select a new song to jump to the front, I do have to go into the queue and move the song I want next to the next spot, so I’d appreciate a play next button also.
In apple music, does play next always become the next song, and pushes the other “play nexts” further back? And does add to queue add to the very end, or is the queue a special list in front of your main playback like in Spotify?
Yes exactly. Apple Music play next puts the song or album next always and add to queue to the end always. So the way you prefer is possible with play next, and how I prefer to queue after albums is possible with add to queue. It makes it much easier for DJing on the fly too when you find a song that would be perfect next. I missed this feature from Google Play Music for years while I used Spotify in its place once Google shut it down and folded into yt music.
It is still not to hard to DJ on the fly, but it does take a few more taps to move a song from the back of the queue to the top. IMO it encourages you to organize the play next queue every time you are adding a song though which is nice. A lot of times when I’m on aux I end up removing a bunch of songs from the queue because the vibe has changed since I added them, but if I leave it alone for awhile, it gets back to my playlist on its own.
I think in apple music I’d miss the ability to add to the end of the “play next” queue but ahead of the playlist, but I would like the play next button!
Oh interesting. Except I hate apple and never heard of the others
Qobuz is awesome, still growing though.
It’s so weird that you just have decided that’s the case and there’s absolutely nothing that’s available to help or do anything about it. Even if it wasn’t a thing most services already have and is super easy, you should realise it’s something others need and there are third party tools available.
And even if that wasn’t the case you could literally just take screenshots or write them down and manually recreate them.It’s just mind boggling to try to understand how and why you’re this willfully ignorant.
Here, this will hopefully put your mind at rest:
when i switched from spotify to Qobuz several months ago they gave me access to a third party playlist conversion site https://soundiiz.com/ with premium features free for the first month of my subscription. Conversion of playlists and liked songs was easy and done within minutes of signing up for Qobuz. I can’t recommend moving off spotify enough; Qobuz won my pick because how they pay artists (seemingly) the highest rate per stream.
Same, worked great!
However, a significant number of songs didn’t exist on Qobuz—including my favorite song at the time. Sadgeyea there’s still honestly some downsides to Qobuz, including:
- Artist profiles: lack of consistency on details like images, descriptions
- Generated recommendations: magazine articles and album reviews (sometimes) written by humans are top notch; the tradeoff is that recommendations based on specific playlists are often far less “close” musically and I often get random and unexpected auto plays; there is no “daily mix” or “similar artists” or good recommendations for adding new tracks to a longer playlist
- Library: across the many diverse genres I listen to, frequently newer releases are delayed on Qobuz. Older music library is outstanding, extremely few of my 10s of thousands of total tracks of jazz records were unavailable
there is no “daily mix”
Actually, there is, but it’s only visible on the mobile apps, and not on the website. It’s called “DailyQ” and there’s also a “WeeklyQ”. You can start it on your phone, and once it is your play queue, the web app should pick it up almost immediately.
It used to be on the web app too, but in some “minor” redesign it dropped out of the “For You” section, and I can’t even find it when I search from the browser app.
I’m also disappointed in the auto-play. Both YT Music and Tidal seemed to stay much more “on theme” and I could start from one album or artist’s radio and listen for several hours on auto-play. With Qobuz auto play, it’s usually migrated away from what I was wanting within 4 tracks.
My adjustment is to find “shows” like ASoT (A State of Trance) and ABGT (Above & Beyond: Group Therapy) and queue them up to get more than an album’s worth of songs without having to fiddle with a playlist. I wish FYH (Find Your Harmony) with Andrew Rayel was on Qobuz; I got really into that the last 2 months I was on Tidal.
You can transfer your playlists to any other streaming service. It’s super easy to do.
FYI, Qobuz pays artists very well (the most of any streaming service last I checked) and they have a ton of audiophile-grade quality stuff. Been using them for a couple years, highly recommend.
I wish Qobuz was available in Slovenia 😓
And even if you don’t want a subscription service you can still buy stuff from them :)
Did that the other day for an album i couldnt find elsewhere. Not an unpleasant experience. Will repeat in the future if needed.
Is there a way to see their library without signing up? Ive ditched spotify already but the problem i have is half the artists i like seem to only be on yt and spotify
half the artists i like seem to only be on yt and spotify
That’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever had this problem. Mine seen to be everywhere. What kind of stuff do you like? I’m into lots of indie rock and I always figured if any artists would be missing it’d be my obscure little indie bands
Mostly rock and pop stuff, a little bit of rap. Ill admit i havent looked recently, it was a couple years ago at this point. But Tidal and uhhh idk some other one i cant remember the name of didnt have a bunch of stuff I like, like deathbyromy, bodyimage, demondice, TRiDENT, and some others(probably not an exactly perfect list of what they were missing at the time bc like i said years ago, but ya).
But im pleased now that i got around to checking out a bunch of artists qobuz seems to have everything. And as others have attested to, the quality is good.
Even better than show the library, you can buy without subscription
You can view a large chunk of their library via their download shop e.g.: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop
I do think they have some things that are streaming-only, and those might not show up in the download shop.
I can warn you that they don’t have all the artists / songs I used to be able to get on YT / Tidal, but they have enough to keep me happy.
If you can’t figure it out any other way, DM me a list of Arists / Titles / Tracks to look for and I’ll search from my account for you.
I’ve been using Qobuz for a while and it’s fine. I feel like I lost a bunch of niche artists when I moved from YT Music to Tidal and then more when I moved from Tidal to Qobuz. Still, it’s got a wide selection and much of it is absolutely audiophile quality.
I wish their Android app had a legitimate offline mode. I have a playlist downloaded that I use when driving, but I often have WiFi in the driveway when I start it. This cause Qobuz to decide to stream the song, and then it continues streaming instead of using the downloaded songs, while I drive around and using way more data than I’d like. I’ve started turning off mobile data, and only hitting play once I think I’m far enough away from the house, but sometimes I’ll drive past somewhere I have the saved WiFi for and Qobuz will switch to streaming, and then just stop playing with no error message in Android Auto once I leave the WiFi and the buffer runs out.
I wish their web app would allow me to access the “For Me” “Daily Qobuz” and “Weekly Qobuz” dynamic playlists. They are a fine way to start my day with a mix of stuff I know I like and new experiences – but I have to open up my phone to start them, because that section is just compeltely missing from the web version.
I still recommend Qobuz every time I’m asked because they both pay artists more and aren’t based in the United States (so they are less likely to kowtow to Trump); I even did the 3-year plan when it was offered. But, my personal experience is worse with them than the other services I’ve used.
I wish their Android app had a legitimate offline mode.
This is my main gripe too, but you can set the playlist to only show and play your downloaded tracks.
What I do occassionally run into is that when I stream one thing on my PC and play a different offline playlist later (without having internet), then when my phone has a connection again, it starts playing whatever my PC was playing. Full offline mode would help here, but the real fix would being able to let my devices independently decide what they’re playing rather than all devices being a hivemind once on internet.
I’d also still recommend them though. I have my gripes, but they’re pretty minor overall. Being able to buy the music is also amazing.
you can set the playlist to only show and play your downloaded tracks
That doesn’t seem to work for me. I’ve dowloaded my driving playlist, and hit the toggle to only show downloaded tracks, but for some reason the Android app still wants to stream sometimes AND when it does it evidently deletes the downloaded version. I haven’t change the playlist in months, and I keep having to hit the download button, because one or more tracks is somehow no longer downloaded.
I have checked both my Qobuz and system-level storage allocation and availability. I’m no where near running out of either.
when my phone has a connection again, it starts playing whatever my PC was playing
Yeah, I do wish I could disconnect those. I understand why someone would want a playlist to “follow” them across devices, but I don’t, usually. Right now, it’s the only way I can get the “DailyQ” to play on my laptop or desktop. But, if I could I’d keep the phone just on the few playlists that I have downloaded on it, and do streaming / exploration / auto-play / weekly shows on my laptop and desktop.
I haven’t change the playlist in months, and I keep having to hit the download button, because one or more tracks is somehow no longer downloaded.
Ah yeah I have that too, but that doesn’t seem to be for the same reason as you.
Feedback provides them unpaid market research data, and they do not give a single fuck about artists anyway.
Just stop using it, that hurts them the most.Spotify? Being disrespectful towards artist??
Not to Joe Rogan.
I don’t generally leave reviews for products I don’t use but I don’t think a few bad reviews will have the same effect as leaving the platform would.
Well, the review/opinion is there for others to see, while just leaving would not make any waves at all. Granted, it may as well be both, but I’m not sure where to go, yet. For instance, as Deezer’s Android app are just 0.1 out of 5 behind it might just tip someone in a better(?) direction. Honestly I thought most of the competitor apps would have been better by now, as they were pretty slick back in the Zune days already from what I remember.
I like Band camp but I buy music a lot instead of streaming it from a service.
I’ve heard good things about Tidal, and Deezer (I’ve never used either of those).
