[platelminto]

I'm also not a fan of the direction Spotify is going, but if I want to keep listening to music, I don't see a way around it - and I don't think other music services are materially different. I support the artists I care about most by going to their concerts and/or buying merch. I use services like last.fm for better discovery. Spotify doesn't have to be the only way you interact with music.

The author doesn't say how they're going to keep listening to songs. Are they going to start buying/torrenting all their music? Are they going to switch to a different service, and does that service address any of the listed issues? Or are they simply giving up on listening to music (in the quantities/variety available through a catalogue like Spotify's)?

[danpalmer]

I find Apple Music materially different on some of these. The UX of the music app for Mac sucks, but I use other software to interact with it (Raycast) so rarely touch the app itself – you can't do that with Spotify with anywhere near the same success. The Music app for iOS is really nice in my experience. The Podcast experience is entirely separate, and based mostly on open standards (although Apple have an opt-in additional proprietary layer). And Apple pay ~2x what Spotify do for streams. Lastly, it syncs my music that isn't on Apple Music, which Spotify cannot do, so I can still buy music elsewhere (like Bandcamp) and have it all in the same library.

It's not perfect, I'd still prefer streaming money to be distributed in a better way, and the apps could be better, but for me it's noticeably better on many fronts. I've also heard good things about Tidal in a few different ways – they pay even more for streams and have higher bitrate streaming I think. Both are good ways of pushing back against Spotify's control of the industry.

[threeseed]

> I don't think other music services are materially different

They very much do if you care about audio quality.

Spotify still doesn't support high-res audio e.g. CD quality and above.

[platelminto]

For people that used to enjoy Spotify, such as myself & the author, this was never a main concern.

[nusl]

Which services would you recommend as alternatives for higher quality audio at similar price points?

[Scarjit]

I have Tidal HiFi-Plus (19.99 Euro/month [up to 24-bit, 192 kHz]), but i can't really say that i would recommend it. There is also HiFi (10.99/month [up to 16-bit, 44.1 kHz]).

My biggest problems with Tidal (except for the price) are: - Music suddenly becomes unavailable (greyed out), only to be become available under the same name later again (but you need to manually re-add it to playlists). - Sometimes it just stops the playback and if i resume it always jumps to one specific song.

I cannot say anything about the mobile player, as i only use it on PC.

Alternativly: Just buy the music you like as FLAC.

[nusl]

Thanks. I tried Tidal for a while. The experience was pretty good and audio quality too. Not quite worth the price for me though. Will try Apple Music since I have that with Apple One.

[jm547ster]

Apple Music if you're in that ecosystem

[robin_reala]

What ecosystem? It’s on Android and Windows too, and has a web version for Linux use.

[richrichardsson]

> I don't think other music services are materially different.

I'm afraid you thought incorrectly, the following is true for basically every other service available:

* Better quality sound

* Payout to content creators is higher

* Cheaper

The nail in the coffin for me (as a consumer) was Ek's €100m A.I. arms tech investment.

The nail in the coffin for me as a content creator is likely going to be the new 1000 streams per song before getting ANY royalties; will have to see how it plays out, but I'm not having my music on that shitty platform if they're going to profit from it without recompense.

[theshrike79]

Apple Music pays artist pretty much double per stream vs. Spotify.

Just that alone is enough for me to support them rather than Spotify.

Along with the fact that Apple's discovery and new music playlists have gotten a lot better than Spotify's in just a few years.

[Astraco]

Piracy, It works. You can even keep using Spotify without paying them or listen to ads.

[Semaphor]

> but if I want to keep listening to music, I don't see a way around it

Buying albums works. It’s what I do. It is markedly more expensive than Spotify, though.

[Zambyte]

> It is markedly more expensive than Spotify, though.

A big reason I switched away from Spotify to buying DRM free albums is actually because I realized it's significantly cheaper to do the latter. I plan on listening to music for the rest of my life. I'm in my mid 20s.

Let's say I live for another 60 years. At current Spotify prices, that is nearly $8000. Obviously the cost of premium won't be $11 for the next 60 years though, so that $8000 is an extremely optimistic minimum.

While the cost of albums generally increases with inflation also, the cost of albums I already purchased never increases. For the rest of my life, an album I purchased for $10 will always be an album I purchased for $10. Even if that seems absurdly cheap in the future due to inflation.

Once you build up an initial library, it's very easy to spend less per month buying albums vs Spotify Premium. Over the last year, I would estimate my monthly average spending on music is around $2-3.

[skydhash]

And the fact is that you don't even need to listen to that many music. When I had Spotify, I only have an handful of playlists (managing albums sucked), that I listened to every day. Same with Apple Music, I only added the albums I already have in the library. I have like 500+ albums and when I want to add something, I spend time listening on Youtube (could go back to free spotify) if it's worth the effort to get them in my curated local library.

[Semaphor]

I have a very large library. My monthly spending (over the last two years) on Bandcamp is 20€, and I don't even spend that much there compared to others. I do spend a lot of time listening to music

[speedgoose]

Playing them can also be expensive. A record player diamond tip can usually last 1000 hours, and they cost about as much as you are willing to pay, from a few € to idiotic amounts.

[master-lincoln]

Are you talking about vinyl records? I don't think this technology from the last century has any benefit to digital recordings and apart from nostalgia or doing an archival it has no reason to be used still.

[speedgoose]

Yes, and I agree.

[Semaphor]

I have no interest in physical media, it’s all FLAC.

[advael]

I use bandcamp, which is vastly materially different from spotify (at least for now) in both its value proposition to me and its commitment to fairly compensate artists. It offers phone apps on which I can trivially stream any music I've bought there as well as lots of music I haven't (though artists can also opt out of allowing this).

I can also purchase the music, which the artist gets a fairly significant cut of, and which the apps start yelling at you to do if you're repeatedly listening to the same albums. Doing this also lets me download it, either to local storage on one of the proprietary phone OSes so I can play it when I don't have signal, or as actual files I can put on my computer, which I personally then use to also stream it to myself on any linux device using freely available tools (mpd and shoutcast, often through an ssh tunnel)

I get that the last part of my use case allegedly requires me to be "technical" (IE set up a config file and use a command-line application or two), but the baseline use case of bandcamp provides streamable music without that, and it's not like it's some obscure thing no one's heard of either. What are you talking about?

[ant6n]

I got pissed off by their product, so I just stopped paying them. Now I just hear ads every 10-20 minutes, which pisses me off even more. Now I really don’t wanna pay for Spotify anymore.

…it’s probably not the best business relationship, but hey, I didn’t start it.

[probably_wrong]

If only it were the ads... I accidentally let my subscription lapse and the experience was so bad that it convinced me not to renew and leave the service altogether.

I mean yes, you get ads, but also your playlists get added random songs (which are pretty bad for my music), they play in shuffle only, and you can only skip a small number of songs per hour, turning the service into a radio you can sometimes fast-forward. I also had to reinstall the app because downgrading to free got it stuck - it wouldn't let me play my offline songs but it also wouldn't show me anything else. And for well over a year the only way to pay with a gift card on Android was exploiting a mild privilege escalation bug.

I imagine that there's someone at Spotify whose job is to identify how annoying your product can be before the number of lost ad plays surpasses the income from paid users, and I imagine their free tier is as close to that as possible. But that's a risky play considering they are not the only game in town.

[rchaud]

Spotify are pioneers in brazenly enshittifying free tiers to bully users into paying for Premium.

I remember them pausing ads when they detected I turned the computer volume down or muted it, and resumed the ad when I turned it back up. This was in 2015 or so.