YSK: Deezer, the music streaming service, is owned by a company whose Founder and CEO is a Russian Oligarch with connections to the Kremlin and donates to the American Republican party.
The company is Access Industries and the Founder and Owner is Leonard Blavatnik
Along with what's in the title, he is accused of reputation laundering against Ukraine and has been personally sanctioned by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He was also part of a WhatsApp group involving some of the United States' most powerful business leaders with the stated goals of "changing the narrative" in favour of Israel and "helping win the war" against Gaza.
Everything is in the linked Wikipedia article about him, mostly under the "Controversies and disputes" part.
I switched to Deezer after seeing it recommended as a better Spotify alternative here on Lemmy, but after finding all this I immediately stopped using it. It's as bad as the shit Spotify does and has done IMO. I'm not here to recommend or push an alternative, but if I can give info on what I use now if someone asks.
Since we are on this topic I would incentivise everyone to take a look at resonate.
They are, AFAIK, the only music streaming service where artists, workers and listeners are owners (aka it's a cooperative)
Looks like new sign ups are paused right now, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
Its not even a flatrate
The pricing looks like its stacking quick if you do neither listen to the same songs over and over or entirely new ones, i dont know if I find the pricing fair for the consumer.
Yeah this is not a transparent pricing model. You start at $0.025 and “go up” from there but I can’t find how much. After you listen to a song 9 times and have paid $1.40 you “own” it but can still only listen to it on their service?
This sounds like iTunes with more steps.
I'm not sure where you get the information that it's not DRM free
They explicitly say you can download songs while not mentioning the inclusion of any DRM
I'm curious where you found that
It's still not possible, according to the FAQ: Q: Can I download music I own on Resonate? A: In the future, we intend to offer the ability to download tracks that you own on Resonate to your local device. This feature is not yet available.
So for now, it's just streaming.
Oh wow, so you never own anything then
So for now the owning part is you won't pay more money after you stream a song 70 times basically ? Not sure there are that many songs I actually only 70 times...
This is an interesting idea, but I would assume that over time, the number of "owned" streams would dominate the number of "new" streams, and thus eventually their operating costs would reach a point where they don't have the revenue to cover it...
At that point their governance structure would show it's strengths by enabling a democratic decision taking that could solve the issue
Workers, for example, could suggest a small subscription fee that would cover the infrastructure cost, while listeners will most likely object, their view would be valued and impact the approval of any proposed solution
That's fair, just...for this to scale, it needs to be competitive with existing streaming services. And if the experience for a listener is the same whether a democratic panel raises prices, or greedy enshittification raises prices, there's not going to be an upside.
To me, the potential upside is identifying the problems with their revenue stream now out in the open, and addressing it now, rather than trying to build a captive audience now and pivot to something more sustainable later (as is the strategy for capitalist startups).
I guess it depends on how much new music is released, added to the library, and then streamed by the users. It's a valid concern to be sure, but I wonder if it could be offset by user growth and new music to be a non issue
Even if we assume there's an achievable rate of growth that can consistently outpace owned plays at any given time, as with every business, there will come a day when growth slows. And at that point, they'll be forced to solve the problem.
And then there's all the questions of, can I download my tracks to play offline? What if they go out of business? How many artists/labels are even going to agree to this? What about tracks I buy outside of their platform? And what does "own" actually mean given that you never "own" music you buy physical media for, you don't have any copyright, you can't play that media for profit, you just have a license to listen to that copy personally. By default the artist "owns" their art. But do they have to give that ownership up to the co-op?
It's going to be tough to convince people who don't care to switch away from spotify, and there's no reason for someone who can self-host to use it unless it's somehow more effective at funding musicians than just buying their tracks directly.
I wish them luck making the idea work, but I think they have their work cut out for them.
I think that's all fair.
I was really interested in the idea of using it as a way of growing my offline and/or self hosted collection. Fair compensation for artists while still being able to have good new music discovery and grow my library at the same time would be really cool.
Still to be seen if they can manage, to your point, but I'll hold out a little hope until they lose their goodwill
Yeah, i couldn't find anywhere on their site that indicated I would be able to download tracks I own. That would change the equation I think. Then maybe they only charge for streaming and track download bandwidth. I could behind something like that. Then it feels like a better version of Bandcamp.
Currently I use Tidal to supplement my self-hosted library, but that's primarily due to music selection and artist compensation. If they didn't have random tracks I want to play, I would use something else.
I think the stream to own MP3 like you just downloaded from Bandcamp or something definitely has to be the model from the start. Then they can tweak it from there.
This is an interesting idea, but I find their catalogue to be quite terrible for me (so far). Service like this really, really needs big names and much broader catalogue to attract people and start moving. Even though I'm far far from listening to mainstream I literally could not find a single interpret I looked for, and believe me I tried.
Uuuugh shit, I liked Deezer. :(
Ok, so, Qobuz then?
Edit tired of jumping ship all the time. Going to try going back to local rips and jellyfin server.
Your subscription costs as much as a CD and a half each month.
Go buy your music and host a jellyfin instance, stop paying these fuckin scammers
I would need to buy a lot of CDs at this point and I'm not doing that anymore.
I don't think they are all scammers. It is convenient.
But maybe it is time to just go back to the 80s and make mixtapes off of the radio.
I'll consider your suggestion. I'd need a CD reader again to make lossless rips. It's been awhile.
And it DOES give me an excuse to selfhost another thing.
It also kind of forces you to consume music in a more focused way. Instead of cycling through hundreds of songs in a few minutes you are forced to preselect what you really want to hear. Which has both its pros and cons, but I enjoy the "slow pace" when discovering new songs.
This is how the music industry is screwing artists.
Think about it. Hollywood is union, which ensures money and jobs make it down to every blue collar worker involved in every Netflix-funded project. But music isn't union, there's just a bunch of random bands, and middlemen who will gladly take everything. The record labels and streaming services turn a profit, pay their execs, and get away with sending fractions of a cent per play to the artists. Most artists don't post to streaming services for the money, they do it just for the convenience of fans.
Giving money directly to an artist in exchange for their tracks or merch (CDs, Vinyls, etc) is the best way to fund an artist. Bandcamp is another middleman that enables this, but at least they have Bandcamp Fridays periodically, which is where they waive their cut and give the bulk of your payment directly to the artist.
IMO buying tracks on Bandcamp Friday + self-hosting Plex/Jellyfin + using Plexamp/Finamp on mobile is the best way to support music right now, and also future proofs your library.
Bandcamp Friday this Friday!
Time to buy everything from Gunship! XD
Sooo, Qobuz?
Yes. They’re pretty good
For anyone checking this thread in the future. Qobuz does seem to be the only one not owned by demons. Deezer's owner was personally sanctioned by Ukraine for his support of the invasion, Spotify pays artists incredibly poorly (and is partially owned by Tencent and Black Rock), Tidal's largest shareholders are investment banks and Black Rock, and Napster is owned in-part by Live Nation.
Ugh.
Qobuz sells music as well. It's not just for streaming. High quality downloadable FLAC audio too.
I buy my music on Bandcamp and Qobuz and put it on my Jellyfin server. It's great! Also I don't need 10.000 songs at once so it's not really that expensive, I end up paying a little more a month now than for streaming, but I build up a library of music I actually like and don't have to think about losing it when yhe service get shit.
Why are you paying these oligarchs at all? Pirate your music
Well, I'm not opposed to paying for a convenient service that gets money to the artist.
Of course, the more they enshittify and mistakenly believe they are indispensable, then yes, the more I return to the high seas.
Btw, afaik we are now at a point where artists earn next to nothing from streaming and make the bulk of the money from tours, shows and the like.
Most of the money from your streaming subscription goes either to the service provider (Spotify, Apple etc) or to the major label.
I feel you. Yeah I think I'm out on streaming services. They killed the golden goose.
I'm going back to 1984. XD
None of the online music streamers are ethical. Every single one, to varying degrees, robs the artists and enriches their CEO's and shareholders.
Do the ethical thing.
Don't use them, and instead, use a Youtube-to-MP3 converter and steal the music.
Bandcamp is pretty good, though. Especially on Bandcamp Fridays where all the profits go to the artists. Plus, I like getting FLACs.
Problem with Bandcamp is they got bought out, first by Epic Games and then by Songtradr, and each time it's gone through enshittification. Bandcamp Fridays used to be a weekly thing but got changed to (EDIT: semi-monthly) with little announcement, and then half their staff got laid off to pad the bottom line. Even with all that they're better than the alternatives, but they're still on a decaying trajectory.
And included in half the staff was every member of their union bargaining committee. The workers got done dirty when that sale to Songtradr happened. I'm not even sure if Songtradr has recognized the union yet. They had just won their election (overwhelmingly) and the sale happened right after that.
Yeah I agree with all of this. Shame there isn't a better option at the moment, but they're the lesser of a bunch of evils - so I guess I'm sticking with them for a bit longer.
Absolutely. At the end of the day the main point here is just don't use the major streaming services.
Oh, my bad: I thought bandcamp was part of the major services. Shows what I know 😅
Are you under the impression that this will pay any artist anything?
It's fine to take a pro-piracy stance, but pretending that you're doing it out of concern for the artists is grade A-bullshit.
You're right.
I should figure out a way to replace the income these artists get for my individual stream. It comes out to fractions upon fractions of a penny.
The point here is robbing the CEO. There's no meaningful impact to the artist (unless you're Taylor Swift) thanks to the way these services are structured.
I have some music on streaming services, and get a couple of coins every month. If you pirate my music instead, I'll get nothing.
Set up a Patreon and offer exclusive music content to subscribers, sell directly to fans through Bandcamp. With good marketing and social media presence you would get several times what any streaming service will pay you ever. Even if most people are pirating your music. If you are being pirated, you are worth listening to, and that means that people are willing to pay you something. I tell this to all aspiring musicians, companies are not your friend, labels are not your buddies. The pirate is not your enemy, the megabillionaire monopolistic corp is. Many musicians owe their popularity because a music pirate put their stuff online and got them noticed.
Are you suggesting in the end here that music pirates are paying artists in exposure? Musicians really can't catch a break SMH
Not at all, that's a straw man attack and a complete misread of my comment. Acquire reading comprehension skills then come back if you can come up with a non bad-faith comment.
Go a step further and use something like Deemix to grab FLAC files from their servers
This is the only reason to use Deezer.
That works too.
Or Tidal-dl-ng for Tidal
I dunno, Qobuz seems pretty fucking solid, and still allows for purchasing your music directly in FLAC and other formats. What drama is there about them?
Guess how much money the artists get when you do that?
I've already addressed this. They don't get fractions of fractions of a penny.
We know this because Weird Al used his year-end video to make the world aware that, in return for his tens of millions of streams, he got around $80.00 from Spotify for a whole year.
The artists aren't losing anything meaningful when rip songs off Youtube, but the CEO is for sure, at least he would if we all did this.
How does that work? 10 million Spotify streams should pay more than $20k in royalties.
If you mean that video where he talked about getting $12 for 80 million streams....he was very clearly taking the piss.
He made closer to $200k, which is still pretty low (hence, the joke) and doesn't account for his labels cut.
As a fan I kinda view the music business this way
That's how I see it.
I saw a documentary one, and one artist said: back in the days, you made shows to sell your music (vinyl, later CDs), but now you make music to go on tour and make shows.
This past week I found DoubleDouble.top which has superior quality that YouTube converters IMHO.
https://us.doubledouble.top/
I've been buying mostly mostly from Bandcamp. It's worked out well. I have a big library, and the people making music got paid.
FYI bandcamp was acquired by Epic and subsequently sold to Songtrader 2023
Really it was re-sold I actually didn't know that.
I don't know much about Songtradr, all I can find is that they let half the bandcamp staff go when they took over, is it a well known company?
Its an Australian company founded by this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wiltshire and this guy https://www.songtradr.com/helge
Songtradr is a fairly boring ecommerce platform for music from what I can read. Boring is good though, I don't see any dramas / issues in my brief web traipsing.
Thanks for doing so early legwork on this, I might consider using the site once I check these people out.
I am buying music as much as I can, and build my own streaming service with Jellyfin. To this day, Bandcamp is were you can find the most music for purchase but not all artists are there. Often, I don't find any place to purchase albums from artists, then I pirate as a last resort, sorry for that. I'll go to the concerts when I get the chance, to make up for it.
If you want to support local business, you could dig through some crates at a record store. Most shops have metric shitloads of CDs on the cheap. Idk if lossless audio is a big deal to you but that's a surefire way to get lossless files too
I appreciate lossless quality, although I don't have any fancy audio equipment at this time. When I move to a bigger place, maybe I'll start to build a CD collection. I'm not so much into Vinyls, somehow they are so popular right now that artists will release a vinyl disk buy no download nor CD purchase possible...
Surprised nobody mentioned 7digital, a store to buy music in mp3 or FLAC format. They have both mainstream and niche stuff
7digital is owned by the same people as Bandcamp BTW. Not that it changes your point, just interesting.
Ah, every single rich person. So predictable at this point it's like a Tinder profile. It's what most billionaires are and what most right-wing idiots want to become.
Fuck streaming. Pirate all the things!
Libraries have a ton of CDs too... even newer ones.
Yep, but only local artists, this is why I buy CDs when I travel internationally.
That's how I know my money doesn't end on fifhty hands!
I just wish more artists had like a direct donation address (or do some direct sales on their website), without absolutely any intermediates, so I could pay them for their work. But I'd rather not pay anything that pay most of my money to undeserving people.
Bandcamp should be used by more musicians.
Any way to get recommendations while pirating?
Last.fm, but pay the artists somehow, concerts, merch or imo one of the streaming platforms.
Those duckers, who used to have a free database where users would collect users ' playing list until they decided they have enough and turned into a subscription?
Thanks but maybe I'm a bit slow, how does that work?
Say I use
mplayeroraplayto play from my local~/Music/directory, or even VLC to play from my minidlna server on my RaspberryPi. Say I play a tune namedtune.oggwhich has metadata saying "Tsunami" by the artist "R3HAB" and it ends. How could my player then pick the next song, from my library or elsewhere, not randomly but rather because it's related somehow to this song?Oh, I took your original question more generically. You can use last.fm to provide you with recommendations in general according to what you listen to (after scrobbling your library for a while), but acquiring the recommendations (and/or integrating into your active playlist) is a whole other thing. I'm sure it's possible but I don't know of out of the box way. Might be a plugin or something out there for it somewhere. That's why the convenience of streaming can be pretty nice.
Potential paths that could be interesting :
That way the artists get even less than with Spotify.
Tidal was originally European but
DayZJay-z bought it up so it's technically American now; Qobuz is french but it doesn't have a "brain-dead radio mode". Both have unofficial Linux clients.Rn I use tidal because it's on the top 3 of the ones that pay the most to artists iirc(quobuz is up there too) and it hasn't had a huge American influence that I know of, but do your own research on the alternatives to see which suits you the most, there are tons of articles about them all.
Do you mean Jay-Z?
It's now owned by Square, the same company behind squarecash
I used it for awhile, specifically because while Spotify promised lossless for years, they never delivered. A bonus is, as you said, that it is the platform that has the highest payout for artists.
That being said, when I stopped using it, it was mostly due to the UX decisions they had made on the platform to force videos on everything. It's a music app, and yet, one of the main navigation options in the app was for videos. Spotify also fired their original designer and has focused on "engagement" over actually good UX.
What’s brain-dead radio?
You click on a genre and let it play mindlessly, like when listening to radio.
It seems to have an endless radio mode. Am I missing something? https://community.qobuz.com/news-en/l2cyyji08ktj0w94hcfcjbbuyui2dw
Compared to Spotify's artist/song radio feature, Qobuz attempt at radio is absolutely horrible. They seem to sort everything into a literal handful of genres. The "similarity" seems to stem from song features like "has a singer" and "uses chords". I switched from Spotify to Qobuz a few months ago, it's comparable in available content, has much better audio quality but is severely underwhelming for discovering new music.
You kids with your newfangled ideas!
I was referring to you having a "daily recommendations" playlist that just keeps going after it finished by appending similar music, or "radio based on playlist" kinda things. Also, Qobuz's recommendations are way too generic, the lists are hand made for everyone which ironically doesn't cater enough to individual tastes.
Qobuz doesn't?
Sticking with Spotify for now, it supports Linux and has last.fm integration (and is amazing)
You appear to be looking at their official website. Services tend to not advertise unofficial clients
yeah shame
https://www.spotify.com/au/download/linux/
not first class support but close enough i can’t tell the difference
this is where mullvad and spotify are tops to me, no one comes close
uh, same. https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi
In fact spotify doesn't support arch at all, all there is is user built stuff too. You have a flatpak version of spotify but sod o you of tidal-hifi.
Sorry if I sound rude but your jerking of spotify when it offers the same capabilities of user made stuff rubs me the wrong way.
I've been just pondering between tidal and spotify, and I primarily use Linux and Android. Tidal's client doesn't seem to support outputting to devices like Wiim in Linux. The Spotify client does.
Spotify's client can be installed via AUR (a repackaging of that DEB essentially) on Arch Linux.
FWIW, both tidal-hifi and the official spotify client are available in NixOS's repository.
Yeah I know of the AUR package, in fact I checked right before writing xD, that's the "user built stuff" I mentioned, since the AUR is the Arch User Repository after all.
About the Wiim, I'm reading about it for the first time but it seems like it's a LAN based audio device, right? I bet there's some Linux application that is able to connect to it and create a virtual output device you can pick for the tidal app, or any other audio.
Me from the future before posting the comment: Yeah no, I checked, there isn't. That's weird because Wiim does have an open API to send an audio stream into it so you should be able to create an audio stream from any app and then link them... Like, an app that creates a local audio streaming server, links any app output into that server and then sends it to Wiim via its public API. It should be doable and offer a lot more flexibility, but I guess there's not enough interest for someone to bother doing so. The one doing it should have a WIIM device to test too and the overlap between the people able to do this stuff and the people with a WIIM might not be that big give that's a device that does a lot of stuff for you in theory.
Yeah I should've been more clear what I'm looking for. Obviously I can stream via Bluetooth or perhaps even something like Airplay. But the native Spotify client uses Spotify Connect also on Linux, which means that the device can independently play the music. I just issue it commands from the client.
A similar thing exists for Tidal: Tidal Connect. But unfortunately the Linux client does not support it. Android, MacOS and iOS do, though.
https://github.com/mattipunkt/qobuz-linux This is the unofficial client and it's pretty good
They have a web player that's OS agnostic and can Bluetooth link multiple devices.
But then, you use Spotify so your ethical considerations are pretty loose anyway.
He also owns Warner Music, so revenue from that David Bowie or Charli XCX track you stream goes to his empire.
He can take Bowie if he wants, but Charli???? This is not what PC Music fought for :(
Either of themCharli could stop working with Warner Music, she isn't a slaveEdit: I originally said David Bowie, too, meaning his estate, but they sold all of the rights of his music to Warner
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59860096
Well, David Bowie stopped working for anyone years ago. RIP
Oh, yeah sorry, I guess I meant his estate, though it's certainly possible that Warner just now owns his music in perpetuity
Uhhh… not sure Bowie can do much
Yeah I meant his estate, but I updated my comment, because it appears his estate sold all the rights of his music to Warner
Depending on the contract she signed: maybe not.
Then she has a shit agent, who probably has an in with Warner. Record labels should be competing for wildly popular artists, not the inverse
You don't usually sign those contracts when you have leverage. But heard
I don't know if it's any better than the other options out there, but I like tidal.
Qobuz!
Tidal is cool but it lacks a lot of vocaloid and some japanese songs for me.
Respect their artist payout and the nice link site which lists a bunch of different sources of the shared song, so that Spotify or other streaming users don't need to manually search for that shared song.
Qobuz is awesome and still 100% french. Also the platform which pays artists better then spotify
Thanks, I'll prefer Bandcamp.
Now seriously: Does Qobuz have a equal catalog to Spotify and a bigger/more mainstream catalog than Bandcamp?
Yes, Qobuz is significantly more mainstream than BandCamp. I don't know if the catalogue is on par with Spotify or AM or whatever, but most popular music is on it.
Bandcamp is like an indie zine that occasionally ships with a burned CD from a local band that has to live in the same rented house with no A/C and a half empty bottle of makers mark in the fridge.
Qobuz is a record store.
Good to know.
Didnt get that impression from Bandcamp but maybe that depends on the artists you listen so.
I'd say I get the impression way more with Soundcloud.
Holy shit 😂😂 Accurate
I switched to Deezer because I found reasons why all of the others were unethical. What would you suggest for a streaming service whose services are ethical?
I would personally suggest Qobuz, as it is demonstrably the service that pays artists the most and has multiple tiers of lossless audio options. The next best thing would be to buy from artists directly, whenever possible (maybe even physical media, if you have a good sound system for that).
People here advocating for piracy sound cute, but I wonder how actual musicians would feel about that.
Pirate everything. Pay directly to artists only when they allow you to do so (like direct sales on their website). If they don't allow you to make money go to them without also paying pigs then don't pay them at all.
i wish people would understand that copyright and the entire existing economic system built around art are all intended to oppress the little guy.
i think getting a grip on what you just said here is probably the first sort of real step in that direction for people.
can’t even count the number of times i’ve had someone respond to me with some variation of “oh so you don’t care about the artists’ WORK/LABOR/BALLS then, do you??” as some sort of accusation because i said something negative about copyright… when that’s not remotely the case - for me it’s based in a sentiment very similar to this ethos here regarding piracy. to me, the brain dead people rabidly defending a system where leeches can MitM artists and their clients are the ones who don’t care about artists or their work.
What options are there for pirating music? I felt Lidarr was not particularly useful due to the lack of indexers. Unless you like mainstream music it's quite difficult to find many tracks online (and I'm too picky to be okay with YouTube rips).
Considering music streaming isn't fragmented in the same way video streaming is, it's still well worth paying for a music streaming service as part of a family plan imo. There's no other hassle free solution to instantly listen to anything I want and be recommended new tracks based on my listening preferences.
I don't think there's any particularly "ethical" option, until now I've just used Spotify knowing that they're losing money anyway. But it turns out they posted their first profitable year last year so who knows what the move is now. Qobuz claims to be ethical and high quality, but I don't know how good the library is and like with any company they can become evil later.
Soulseek has practically everything, outside of the most niche stuff
Download MP3's or FLAC's
I'm autistic. If I'm not using some kind of a subscription service I will end up listening to the same one song on repeat literally thousands of times until I hate it. I would prefer to not hate songs I used to love. It's happened too much. I need some kind of service to introduce new music into my rotation.
Download thousands of songs. Use a service like Lidarr to automatically download new releases or import entire genres using MusicBrainz collections
There's no ethical consumption under capitalism
host it yourself.
Dammit, I was pretty happy with it :(
Yeah, me too. I left Spotify because they support right wing dumbfucks. Then went to Deezer because "Buy Form EU". And now this shit ... Why can't we have nice, morally okayish things?
I've been on Tidal for some time but noticed that Qobuz has released a connect service that seems to work like Sp*tify Connect so that you can remote control one instance from another. Like, playing music on computer connected to amp can be controlled through the phone.
I'd appreciate if somebody using Qobuz could confirm?
I'm using Qobuz, can confirm, it's just like Spotify. I use a Raspberry Pi with Qobuz.com open and using my phone as a remote.
Can you start a session where your friends can add music to the queue and control it?
It has shared/collaborative playlists, but I'm not sure about a session queue.
Thanks! Do you know if it possible to run Qobuz headless or in a docker container or some of the sort? I did some searching but couldn't find anything.
I'm using volumio on a RPi4 to do this. It's, unfortunately another subscription layer, but I got a lifetime license, which they may do again? I believe there are free options too though
I literally switched from Spotify yesterday…
Everyone says bandcamp is a good alternative but the main added value from streaming services, for me, is discovery. I don’t think I can afford the time to go on bandcamp and download every song I like one by one. I would also be lost when in need to discover new music.
Had the same issue, but between Bandcamp and Qobuz I find I'm not lacking much. Since I'm buying the songs anyway I don't care too much about having multiple apps for my music.
I like Tidal, it pays the artists the most of all services.
Tidal might pay the most of streaming services (others in here are claiming it's Qobuz) but Bandcamp pays the most to artists in general as the purchases pay much higher than streams. Bandcamp charge 15%, everything else goes to the band/label until they hit $5k in sales, and then Bandcamp's fee drops to 10% and stays there for additional sales. If you wait to buy in bulk on 'Bandcamp Fridays', which happen about 10 times a year, the artists take 100% on those days.
Imo Bandcamp is by far the best service for supporting artists.
You can also buy music on Qobuz, I use it together with Bandcamp to get more coverage.
Oh yes, true. I do forget. Their catalogue in Australia is quite pricey which doesn't make them a very good value proposition here.
For example Random Access Memories by Daft Punk is $27.09 for HiRes or $23.49 for CD resolution. I bought that album on physical CD from a brick and mortar store (JB HiFi) for $14.99. It was not on sale, that's just a fairly standard price for a major release CD at the time - reissues of very popular releases are cheaper than that now.
A more recent example, Igor by Tyler the Creator is $23.99 at physical stores, or on Qobuz is $27.59 for CD res or $31.79 for HiRes.
(All these prices are in AUD).
It does get cheaper with their 'Sublime' subscription but not to make it worth it (33%) - unless you were buying heaps of music off them, or already using their streaming.
I find that it's really easy to find new artists and albums I like on Bandcamp. I just started by following a few genres and listen to a some music at random. If I like it I add it to my whislist and carry on. And I just listen to the "new and hot" section. Gives way better results and more variety than Spotify ever did for me.
From time to time I go to my whislist and listen to some of it again and usually decide to either buy the album or delete it from my whislist.
I also use Qobuz for more mainstream artists that's not on Bandcamp.
Recently started to put all my purchases into Jellyfin for easier management between the services.
I also have a few pirated playlists of my favorite songs from years ago. I go through them when I have time and money and see if I like the songs enough to buy some albums or songs from the artists.
YSK he's ukrainian and has since decades lived in the west, US/Shitrael.
He's a jewish zionist POS.
So he's a western oligarch, but don't let facts keep you from blaming 'the Russians'
YSK that he grew up in Yaroslavl, Russia to Russian-speaking Jewish parents. Calling him "Ukrainian" just because he was born in Odesa during the Soviet Union is misleading. He had/has close ties to the Russian state and became wealthy off of Russian oil and aluminium deposits in the 90s.
So yes, you can blame "the Russians", but you should rather blame the system.
He emigrated to the US in 1978.
He has dual US/UK citizenship,like many horrible zionists. Studied at Columbia.
"became wealthy off of Russian oil and aluminium deposits in the 90s."
Like many western oligarch who leeched the ex-soviet states under Gorbachev and Yeltzin, the sell outs.
These are facts, completely ridiculous to demonise Russia for this american-brit POS just bcs he has Russian roots.
" but you should rather blame the system."
What system?
If you mean the US/UK horrible imperialist and colonial warmongers and genocide supporters causing misery in the world then yes.
Glad they are circling the drain, their time is over.
You can cry about evil Russia, China or whatever, that won't change reality.
You know what's completely ridiculous? Your black or white view of the world. Reality is that there is no benevolent state or any kind of financially succesful entity that isn't built on some form of exploitation. The Western system is evil. So is Russia for sure. China. UAE and the Saudis. You have India now rising by building strong ties with USA and Israel. There's no geopolitical force that's built on good. That you're incapable of realising that and just go "West bad so everyone else good" is quite telling about you. Besides, Russian Jews - strongly overrepresented in the oligarchs statistics - traditionally have strong ties to the Israeli state and Zionism. Russia's - like everyone else's - current interests are only based on what they perceive to be the most gainful. If Putin could've benefitted from siding with Israel instead of the China-Iran-Assad axis he would've done so immediately. To even suggest that Russia is anti-Zionist out of benevolence is insane.
Besides you now say he has "Russian roots" but right before you were attempting to convince people that he was "Ukrainian". So
There is no discussion which one is the evil one.
The US (and vasals) with it's eternal wars, meddling and regime changes, 800 bases around the world threatening their enemies.
Or Russia, that had no choice but to react against NATO and their expansion right up to the border with the inevitability of nukes too close to defend against.
Oh no, they're so horrible!
Really give it up, the majority of the world doesn't give a fuck about the western russophobia and knows who's at fault.
Asia, Africa or S-America know who to xhose between Russia, China or 'the west' who have done nothing their entire existance but colonialism and leeching.
Now go cry somewhere else, you bore me and haven't got a leg to stand on.
Might as well be shilling for Shitrael, which I also have no tolerance for.
Blocking you.
Don't you tell me Russia hasn't been waging wars. That's an insane statement. Even looking past Ukraine, since the breakdown of the Russian Empire 2.0 (aka the Soviet Union) Russia has invaded Georgia twice, Transnistria, Chechnya twice, and Dagestan, as well as having upheld Al-Assad's regime - don't tell me that guy isn't evil even if he stood up to Israel - and are now heavily involved in Burkina Faso, Mali, and the CAR. Now do you want to talk about all the shit Russia got up to between 1920 - 1991? Or the countless genocides of the Russian Empire as well as the continuous oppression of ethnic minorities in the Caucasus and Siberia, including using them as human meat shields in Ukraine?
The West deserves hate, but so does Russia. Don't be a tankie idiot. No one is choosing Russia because Russia isn't that important anymore. Others are choosing China and that makes sense.
you guys need to understand that there are no goodguy rich folk
Hi, I’m interested to know what you’re using now!
Get Tidal instead
Or better yet buy directly from the artist
I don't understand the mental gymnastics some people do to reach the conclusion that piracy is the "ethical thing" to do. What about the artists? How is that any better for us? If you all pirate then we go from getting peanuts to getting nothing.
In fact, piracy sort of birthed streaming in the first place. There were Limewire and Napster, then streaming platforms came along to basically legalize piracy... Hell, the Spotify CEO used to be the CEO of uTorrent
People used to upload pirated music to YouTube. So you know what happened? YouTube came up with their song detection system that now pays artists when their track is streamed, even if it was uploaded by someone else. Even if it plays in the background of a vlog. See what I mean? Legalized piracy.
PS: I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed
Tidal is ok, its american though and they suck.
the megastars aren’t the ones we care about making money, they’re fine. it’s the 99% of the rest of the artists that either get screwed by the labels or are independent and rely on fan support
Well if you only listen to Taylor Swift then that's valid, but most people have a more diverse music taste so for them this doesn't apply. The artists I personally listen to (and the labels they're signed to) are often relatively small and genuine, and to them every bit of income is appreciated. Obviously merch, shows, and direct music sales help more, but getting paid more by streaming services sure would help a great deal as well.
@[email protected]: Qobuz is awesome and still 100% french. Also the platform which pays artists better then spotify
Bandcamp?
(ignoring the fact that it was owned by Epic. But they still do Bandcamp Friday)
Interesting and mostly agreed.
There's barely any ethical options anymore...
Piracy!
The two sides of Lemmy, Just a few posts over users were raging that Spotify only pays out billions of dollars to artists, now you're suggesting you just take their work and don't pay for it at all
If I were a musician it'd be hard to be mad at someone who pirated my music but still came to shows, and importantly bought merch
Which is to say, dear reader, that if you pirate go buy a t-shirt or something. You need t-shirts anyway.
they didn’t say go to shows and buy merch, just piracy
They didn't, but I am.
At this point in end stage capitalism, yes.
what is end stage capitalism? is this a euphemism for you can’t afford spotify?
Can't afford any freakin thing, really.
I want to go see a live show to encourage an artist directly? It costs an arm and a leg in fees because one company owns all the show ticket offices in all the venues.
damn! hope you are able to get a good job soon and make loads of money so you can afford things
Spotify is really one of the best things ever invented for me :)
Or how about we break up the monopoly for the event tickets business and make the outrageous dynamic pricing tactic illegal so we can finally afford to go see live events at decent prices.
I only use it for deemix for easy piracy. I often use SoulSeek too. I was using Qobuz but most of these "we give more to the artist" services have their flaws, disorganized or missing bands.
As a music artist and software engineer, I wish more self hosted options were accessible. I’ve tried and stopped a few times to build an open source platform like that but there’s always some kind of software knowledge needed, whether it be just for deploying. Faircamp is a really neat project, but it’s not really accessible to most artists. Till then I think Bandcamp is the best option.
For me personally, I’m no longer planning to release music to most of the streaming services. It’ll be either sold directly on my website using Stripe for payments or via Bandcamp.
There are ways import downloaded music to local libraries on apps like Spotify which helps a bit. But still an inconvenience for the average fan of music that just wants to search or discover and hit play.
They treat non mainstream artists badly. There is no reason why some artist should get bonuses
https://www.musicradar.com/news/universal-deezer-streaming-artist-centric-royalty-model
This is good to know!
Signed up and paid for Deezer but it doesn’t work with my vpn (Mullvad) so I cancelled.
Now I’m in a similar situation as others in this thread - looking for a non-US music streaming, other than Spotify :-)
Qobuz baby! French owned, hi-res, lots of human-written articles. The library still isn't as big as some, bit they've made insane strides in the last year or two (in app UI too). And they pay out good rates - for a streaming service. 🙄
This plus bandcamp.
How about Soundcloud? I ended up there and have been happy but knowing my luck someone will tell me that Putin and Netanyahu own it! :)
Mullvad works with deezer on my Droid and imac?
Best to move on anyway.
+1 for tidal
Never used it because of the stupid name, which happens a lot, figures though. I'll stick with Bandcamp.
The best Russian music service ever was allofmp3. Sadly long gone but fondly remembered.
It was just a pirate server that charged for mp3s you realize, none of that money ever went to the artists.
I never understood the appeal over Soulseek/emule (at the time).
Of course it was piracy but it was friction free piracy. Not just the price which was low but having a really cool webstore and client application. There was nothing that the music industry offered that was remotely comparable in terms of the convenience that allofmp3 offered at the time.
suck deezer nuts
They also removed regional pricing, which made it expensive in countries that have lower value currency.
So deezer is owned by a geezer.
good thing i've only been pirating songs that were ripped from deezer instead of paying for it.
wtf are russian billionaires doing supporting America's attack dog in the middle east anyway?
He's pro russia, they like that
And America is anti-Russia, so why would they support America's attack dog?
Trump and his party are ruining that horrible country rapidly so it's normal a great part of the world likes that.
The slightly less fascist dems keep their regime's fascism and horrible abuses for their many many foreign wars so the imperialism keeps running like clockwork because their voters who only care about themselves aren't bothered by what they do elsewhere and don't need to complain as they do now.
They are here every day crying about how they want to get back to their perfect democracy.
Genocide, regime changes, wars, kids in cages were OK right up to Trump, as long as it didn't inconvenience them.
Ok, but that doesnt answer my question. What does a Russian billionaire get out of supporting Israel?
Well to start he's not Russian but ukrainian and since decades a western oligarch spendig a lot of time in the US. (but always nice to smear Russia for everything imaginable) Those countries are 2 birds of a feather and support eachother.
And he's a jewish zionist with a lot of business interests in Shitrael.
Have you tagged as sneaky Russian shill and you never seem to disappoint.
LOL can't take facts?
Anything against western nazi propaganda is a Russian troll.
Pathetic.
The majority of Israelis are of Russian descent
What does this mean?
This needs a side of creamy Italian
Of course I read this the very same week I migrated from YouTube Premium / Music specifically since it looked like it did not have unitedstatian links.
Really sad, I can recommend tidal though
I'm quickly running out of options.. Apple Music was honestly really decent, then the US did their thing so I looked for non-US options. One of my requirements is lossless quality, so Spotify is out (regardless of their own ethical issues). Tidal is also out as it has been a US-owned service for a long time. The remaining options are Deezer and Qobuz. Qobuz seems good in terms of ownership and whatnot, but their catalogue is missing things I listen to quite often, or at least it did when I last checked it out a few months ago. I think I'm staying with Deezer for now. It's not ideal as Access Industries own 41.4% of Deezer whose owner this post is all about, but it's the least bad of all the options I've found. They also don't have every song I'm interested in, but they're pretty close.
I can recommend Qobuz. I've tried a bunch of them and it's the one I stuck with. Actual high quality audio without ridiculous extra fees, lots of information including CD booklets and complete credits on each track, and they pay the artists a bit more than most streaming services do. I haven't hit any notable gaps in their catalogue compared to others (though some artists just don't stream), and they have things Spotify doesn't have. Qobuz is also better for classical music than others, because they understand how to properly group and credit the tracks.
Thanks for the recommendation. Qobuz has lots if things I would appreciate, but the last time I tried it it was missing a lot of the music I regularly listen to. It has only been a few months since then, but I will give it another try to see if it has changed.
Doesn't that make it 41.4% US-owned? I don't see how your criteria make Deezer better than Apple Music. Plus Access is the same company that owns Warner Music Group, and I'm fairly sure it's only 41.4% because they later went public in 2022; the 2016 acquisition decision says the percent of Deezer owned by Access is confidential but says Access would have exclusive control. Which also brings the question of where the 41.4% figure is from.
Do you really want to support something that expressly funds the policies and aspects of the US that you hate or something that's simply based in the US and helped fund just Trump's inauguration event instead of any policies?
True, which is why I don't think Deezer is a perfect choice for me either, but at the surface level 41.4% US-owned is better than closer to 100% which all the other services are that meets my requirements. Personally I found that number on the Deezer Wikipedia page, but it is marked with "citation needed", so it could be completely wrong. And that probably is the case if it's true that Access bought exclusive control.
"The US that you hate" doesn't exist. I disagree with a lot of decisions and policies and want better for the American people and the rest of the world that is both directly and indirectly affected, but there's no hate. But you do make an important point that I hadn't thought deeply enough about and I agree with you. I believe it's better to support something that’s simply based in the US rather than the specific policies I disagree with even if it's more money.
Qobuz would be my choice as it would avoid this dilemma, but their catalogue wasn't good enough for me the last time I tried it. I'll have to try again to see if it has gotten better since then. But I have changed my mind and will cancel my Deezer subscription regardless and try to find an alternative. Or maybe I'll just drop streaming services completely for now as most of my active listening is done with my own local collection anyways and I could always set up a Jellyfin instance if needed.
i'm facing the same dilemma. i just recently left spotify. tidal and qobuz don't have nearly enough of my favorite music, so i went with deezer. i really don't want to give apple any more money, but i'm wondering which would be better...
Those bastards always literally wanting the world at their feet.
While we're talking about it, does anyone have an MP3/DAP they would recommend?
Check out dankpods, he does (among other things) reviews of mp3 players. A lot of modern DAPs are catered toward audiophiles so expect to pay a premium if you want something new. He still uses and recommends old iPods. You can mod them to have expanded storage and better battery life if you feel like tinkering too
honestly i'd say lg android phones. quite a few of them had good DACs
I remember trying to download Deezer once years ago, but it was like Nope sir not in the United States in this lifetime
Fuck :(
The Same with Telegram, his fiunder - Nikolai Dutov still lives in Russia and CEO lives in UAE.
You lost?
What hte hell did spotify do that made you so mad?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/spotifys-ceo-invests-1-billion-into-an-ai-military-startup-and-musicians-are-fuming/news-story/78805666e2374281801622066dc87319
lol you linked to news.com.au, one of the big mega-evil newspapers in Australia owned by Rupert Murdoch, same guy who owns fox news
Also, cool, they're right next door to Russia, defence industry has been on the rise for a while now, some would say post around March 2022...
https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/9-surging-european-defence-stocks-as-transatlantic-tensions-intensify
The spotify CEO invests in a defence company it's proper grasping at moral straws
And most of americas donating to israel or whatever the fk idc if it works for me lol
Yeah seems to me that Spotify is the way to go. And for the artists you really like, buy the album or donate to them in addition to listening them via streaming.
I like him already