Spotify boycott: Artists leave ‘garbage hole’ platform after CEO invests in AI weapons
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/aSaAL
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-07-31/spotifys-ceo-owns-an-ai-weapons-company-some-musicians-say-its-time-to-leaveOpen linkView original on lemmy.world927
Comments250
From the shitty artist compensation, to the AI content, to their exclusive deals with Joe Rogan you need another reason to stop using Spotify???
Don't forget their donation to Trump's campaign!
I used Spotify premium apk for near a decade. They shut down the modded apks so I stopped using them. Not a terrible service honestly, given I didn't pay them a dime.
Modded apks still going strong.. 🤫
spotify already has a propaganda arm of trump, aka JOE ROEGAN podcasts.
No shit ur still using today? A few months ago mine got shut down. Downloaded 2x other newer APK files and (I had been using mine for years) and both new ones were the same. Maybe I'll have to try again!
Yeah it only went down for a day or two for me, bit the patches from different Devs worked to fix it Now I think they all work and many different versions.
Navidrome
Navidrome rules. Made the switch from Spotify some time ago, using the FOSS Tempo app on Android and Feishin on desktop, it's been a lovely experience so far.
Symfonium is paid on android but it's also the best. Works with navidrome, jellyfine, NFS, samba, etc...
and they are trying to move to videos to, which i assume would be giving podcast/video to the viewers to draw in more subscribers for ROEGAN.
Yes because people are driven by money a lot sadly.
Is Spotify cheaper than the alternatives?
Im thinking about the artists here because thats what the article is about. Spotify is still the biggest music platform so leaving it, even if the conditions are shit, means leaving money on the table.
It's hard to compare, because Spotify has a lot of features that aren't available on alternatives.
If you're just looking for music availability and audio quality, then the cost of Spotify is pretty middle-of-the-road as long as you're a westerner with mostly western musical tastes. But when you start getting into other qualities like social features, recommendation algos, API and third-party app integrations, multi-device controls/playback, etc... a lot of those things just aren't offered by competitors. Those features may not matter to you, but they should probably be considered when comparing platforms.
Spotify also has a lot of promotional pricing that they offer. I think students get a pretty substantial discount. They also offer family plans, so the cost can be split significantly that way, as well.
Either buy the albums from the musicians or pirate that shit and just pay to see them in concert. Fuck all these companies.
Pirate it, and send $10 to the band.
Most members of The Band are dead now though.
In that case, send nothing, since they only ones still profiting are the greedy Labels keeping the music from becoming public IP anyway
Then pirate, or send 10$ to their heirs.
RIP Rick Danko
And my personal hero, Levon Helm. Rest in peace.
RIP Garth Hudson
Don't forget Richard Manuel. What a tragedy, such a talent. RIP.
What method would you recommend for one to do this in general?
Beats me, email them, and ask how to send the money. Venmo probably.
I pirate things to see if I like them, and if I like them, I buy the CD and a t-shirt or something from the musician's website.
Where do you buy CDs? The vending machine in the old folk's home lobby?
There's this magical thing called going outside, and in this outside place there are things called shops that sell things. Maybe you could try going there if you ever try to touch grass?
My tech store has a few, and there's also jpc.de
https://amoeba.com/ https://tradepostentertainment.com/ https://vintagestock.com/
Just to name a few. There are also probably physical stores in your town.
To add to the below suggestions, Bandcamp sells them new for a variety of artists, McKays's and other second-hand stores sell them used (the one near me has an entire upper floor for just CDs), and many musicians sell them on their own websites. If you buy directly from the musician, you'll sometimes get a signed or limited edition version at no extra cost.
Buy on Bandcamp.
https://www.songtradr.com/blog/posts/songtradr-bandcamp-acquisition
Til thry decide to tevoke ownership.
Paying for music - in a world where the artist gets almost nothing and it's all wasted on middle-men- is unethical. Music is art and even without the industry there would still be making music for free. Pirate your favorite and donate the money to a local good cause
There's not much middleman if you buy an album from small bands like Pokolgép directly.
Yeah... Give some love to Ticketmaster...
Sneak in and slip the roadie a 10 spot?
Don't get me started......just....don't.
Yes, Spotify is not an ethical company. However, I would argue that Europe achieving defense independence from the US military industrial complex is a good thing. Germany is just two doors down from Russia.
I would argue that spotify ceo doesn't give a shit about europe achieving defense independence (the company donated money to trump). I would also argue that europe pretty much already spend in war as much russia does and that wasting public money in war is not a good thing.
Poland is next door and technically is also in Europe.
I'm just teasing. Poles will know what I mean.
No true Poleman.
He knows, he's just pretending not to know because he doesn't like the joke. Poland was always on the outskirts of Europe and in many aspects it's closer to Russia than EU. Many people in Western Europe simply forget that Poland is part of EU and think about it more like about Ukraine. This used to be even more obvious and Poles had inferiority complex but now that they finally had caught up a little bit while the West deteriorated they suddenly feel real good about themselves and pretend not to remember what it was like 10 years ago.
Theres no joke here?
Kind reminder that no streaming platform is very good on the ethical front. There are no ethical alternatives because the root of the problem is the legal strangle hold labels and record companies keep on artists and commercial music distribution.
The ethical alternative is listening to mp3s straight from your own hard-drive, just like we did in the '50s.
Fuck yeah, down with streaming I wanna own my shit again
then do that. If you don't have enough space, get an external hard drive. If you want convenience, you can attach the hard drive to a raspberry pi and access the music from anywhere. You'll probably never get as convenient as spotify, but hey, you gotta decide what your values are and if that means being a streaming-vegan then that's the sacrifice you gotta make.
I feel like there is a step missing here. Do you mean physically take the raspberry pi and HD with you (I mean, you could but it's not terribly elegant) or are you talking about just setting it up to stream the music.
If your referring to streaming, is there a program you can recommend to easily stream it outside of you home network? I.e. access anywhere.
Leave it at your home network.
The simplest solution IMO is to access it via an SSH or SFTP connection. I have these connections bookmarked in my file browser, so I can open them up just like any folder on my hard drive.
Some people use jellyfin as a client which has a kind of netflix-like interface. I haven't researched to find out if there's anything with a more spotify-like interface.
I've used jellyfin for years but never tried to remotely access it. From what I've read you pretty much have to use something like Tailscale. It's something I will probably give a shot at some point.
I have never used SSH or SFTP. I will have to look into that. I automatically assumed that to access my files remotely I would need to pay for a static IP address. I'm assuming this is not the case? I'll have to read up on it.
Thanks for the info. Time for me to dust off the raspberry pi 4 and play around with it a bit.
Instead of paying for a static IP address, you can pay for a domain name and have a script on your home network update the domain name to point to your current IP address once a day. It's a pretty common practice.
Dude, I remember my grandpa telling me about ripping CDs back then. The computers they used were the size of entire rooms and could only rip at .5x
I can stream from Jellyfin
I have found a bunch of my new favorite songs this year on Jellyfin. Some of them are pretty old too, lol.
It worked pretty well doing it the old human-based way, where I got a bunch of albums because I liked the band or even just a particular song. Listening through those or just playing the whole pile on shuffle led me to find plenty of gems that I stuck in my playlist.
Yes!
+1 here
Whatever happened to magnatune? Are they still around?
Not actively, they stopped trying to make money long ago. Since 2018 you can't buy anything from them and artists are leaving. No new releases since then, of course.
I suppose that is to be expected. They were really not noticed, and spotify more or less put every other option out of business.
Tidal puts artists first, and pretty awesome.
Can't promise that's how they are forever, but that's how they are today.
Zionist supporters :/
They didn't leave already when they gave millions to bag of human shit Joe Rogan?
That's sure as fuck when I left!
Same
This is libelous. He's a bag of cockroach shit.
At this point he's a bag of HGH.
Tomorrow is Bandcamp friday people.
In case anyone isn't aware, this means that Bandcamp won't take their usual cut, so the artist gets more money from each sale. It's this Friday only.
Stealing this link from another comment, but there are actually more than one Bandcamp Fridays coming up
https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays
Isn't bandcamp on a road to enshit? I thought I heard they were. I love it though. Feels like a record store online.
All roads lead to enshitment
Except FOSS. Because if you can fork it, it cannot be enshittified… every time they attempt to, another fork can be made.
Sounds like an enshittification hydra.
It kinda is. One head enshittifies (coughOpenOffice), two more grow to take its place.
Doctorow is never wrong.
Well yes, probably. But, if you buy on Bandcamp or sites like it you can download the songs and host and store them yourself so it's not like you have to start over when they eventually get shit.
yay for corpo generosity?
Anyone want to poke fun at me for thrifting physical media now?
Well sure, since you ask... Spotify might be crap, and the CEO is... Well, the usual shit person CEOs tend to be. That doesn't make physical media any better, digital media is by far much much better in many ways. Specially if you go sailing with your wooden leg and hook hand and parrot on the shoulder. You don't want to carry all the extra weight of physical media while sailing... And if artists sell directly their music even better, I always support artists selling on their own without intermediaries.
That’s still not good for the artists though since they don’t see a cent from that.
They saw cents when the songs were sold originally; it's not like I'm running a music charity.
Hip hop was created when a generation of poor kids inherited their parents music collection. Some artists benefitted.
https://infosec.pub/comment/17208208
It feels weird defending Spotify as I have always disliked them and preferred YTM
i just YTM as well. mostly because it's the less shitty option out there. sucks that there are no good options.
hope this comment summons people with actually good suggestions for my to check.
I will never use YouTube music. Specifically because back when it was Google play music, they allowed you to upload your own library... Then arbitrarily decided to delete everything after a couple years.
For real! After shutting down GPM, YTM felt like an absolute insult. Everything about it was just worse.
Tidal is great. A little more expensive, but it's owned by artists, and puts the most back in the pockets of artists. The audio quality is also fan-fucking-tastic.
Deezer and Qobuz
CEO of Deezer is a Russian agent
Oh yikes 😬
Except deezer is run by Russian Oligarchs. So qobuz.
Thanks for the context
Ukrainians are actually reporting the drones to be vastly overpriced compared to similar Ukrainian drones.
Otherwise there is quite a few indications of corruption and it wouldn't be surprising if Helsing will become the next Wirecard, as Germany once again follows the fever dream of some billions-worth start-up without following up on what it actually can and cannot do.
https://archive.ph/20250409074743/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-08/helsing-europe-s-most-valuable-defense-tech-company-is-facing-allegations-from
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they expensive simply because of startup model and having to pay off R&D? Meaning they should normalize over time.
Why should Ukranians pay for that though?
Although i strongly doubt, that they would have R&D justifying 4x the price of Ukrainian competitors, when people in the field say that the capabilities are similar.
Fair point. At the same time, western stuff has always been more expensive, but at this point it borderline feels like a cope.
In any case, what Spotify did does not exactly equal killing kids, that's straight up russian propaganda.
Bandcamp waives their share on Bandcamp Fridays
August 1th
September 5th
October 3rd
December 5th
https://isitbandcampfriday.com/
Bandcamp is owned by union busters. Fuck bandcamp.
I agree, fuck Bandcamp, so I only buy on Bandcamp Fridays.
So... What's a good alternative?
Direct purchase, like the old days and fuck corporate greed so torrents.
I wish this was simpler. I never see direct purchases on band websites unless I'm buying physical goods.
Gotta start asking for it. If the bands you enjoy know that people would buy physical or digital copies from the artist again they would begin making them. It only benefits the entertainers.
How many artists still offer direct purchases?
Every single one I have ever contacted and asked. If they're on a label and it's controlled by a company it's high seas time.
Like Bandcamp or not, i can't ever find the bands i'm looking for.
Forgive me if it's obvious, but what does "waves their share" mean?
They won't take their percentage on the sales, and leave them to the artist
"Waives" instead of "waves"
Is there another music streaming service around, so I can leave? I use it damn near everyday and the accessibility is what I crave.
I switched to Tidal a couple years ago and I'm happy enough with it. It's cheaper than the comparable membership tier I was paying for with Spotify. The higher fidelity streaming is nice and supposedly it pays artists the most over any other steaming service. Their recommendation algorithm doesn't index so heavily on your favorite tracks like Spotify's does, so I'm discovering new music a lot more.
The UX isn't quite as smooth as Spotify's. I can't cast from the browser app and it doesn't remember what I'm listening to between devices. When I first switched there were a lot more bugs but I haven't noticed as many over the last year.
After Tidal inevitably succumbs to corporate rot, I'll be switching to owning my own collection and self-hosting. But until then, I'm happy with Tidal.
Tidal is owned by Square (the mobile payment app/company), and I think Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder) owns that. So, probably safe to say it's already pretty corporate.
That guy sucks.
Why?
This is just the first article I found
https://fortune.com/2024/10/30/jack-dorsey-layoffs-streaming-music-app-tidal-block-leaked-email/
Honestly I respect the way he called musk on his bluff and forced him to pay 40+ Billion for Twitter, but this article cements him as an asshole in my book. Whenever you see a CEO saying "we need to function like a startup" what they really mean is "I have no fucking clue how to run this business, so I'm going to go back to the one thing that worked for me", not realizing that it was mostly luck not startup culture that cemented their early success.
Talking in CEO speak seems pretty mild compared to being on the board of an AI military company. I know there is no perfect billionaire so I'm not going to advocate for Dorsey. But if that is the worse thing about Tidal, I think I'll still support it.
Sure! I was just trying to answer the question. I'd point out that his current attitude is exactly how enshitification starts, so the writing may be on the wall for Tidal. After all, it was started as a passion project by a group of actual musicians and then sold, so the soul of it is likely gone too.
Spotify used to be the good guys, too.
As someone who was briefly interested in his podcast/video blogs, it becomes highly apparent that his approach to everything - even something as personal as music - is completely backwards and wholly centered on poor metrics around perceived efficiency as opposed to anything remotely logical. His ideas are fully derivative of the latest trends in the worst way while missing the point on how to implement them in any kind of reasonable way. He’s just another member of the modern-category Silicon Valley CEO: hoodwink everyone, hop on bandwagons, get yours first for the least amount of cost, market yourself as an enigma, who cares about the actual product, when in doubt do lay-offs.
Yes, but it's a million times better than Spotify, Google, and Apple.
Isnt Tidal responsible for the problems of high quality music formats like .ogg? Making it hard to find and download from them.
Have you tried Qobuz? It's french.
I use Qobuz and I like it.
I jumped on Qobuz from a lemmy thread. Really happy with it. The artist selection is pretty broad and the Playlist are decent. But honestly, I haven't disliked anyone from the recommended home page which says a lot. I was on yt music before and it would always loop the same five artists no matter what radio station I started. It was really weird.
Thank you for the rec. I will check it out, looks like theres even a mobile app.
Honestly thata the issue I ran into. Napster and tidal were both in the running for a minute, both were more expensive, tidal is ran by Jay z and Napster is owned by a tech bro. Honestly, I'm more inclined to go back to cd.
Its such a massive PitA to self-host things. Dont get me wrong I love the idea of it, it works in theory, and then you get an update for one of the multiple services you have to run to make it work ex-prem, or your isp does some funky stuff and drops out. There is such a massive time sink into self hosting that its not a reliable answer for 90% of people.
That's kinda the opposite of what I have found, once I get something to work it usually just works. Although I'm in IT so I'm pretty used to keeping 'in production' servers going. It absolutely is more work, because you aren't paying somebody else to do it, so you really need to decide if that's worth it to you. For many people the trade off in control and privacy aren't worth the extra work and paying somebody else to use their computers instead is far more convenient.
Ive worked in IT before. If things ran as smoothly as you claim, I dont think you would have much of a job. I have had a pi-hole brick itself during an update, routers crash, home PCs just stop working.
You and I have the necessary skills to accomplish what needs to be done, just the basics of reverse proxy or ssh tunnels are damn near magic to most people. Hell, could you imagine walking your tech-illiterate neighbor through the process of it all and then expect them to keep it up without contacting you all time. I can not, which, is one of the reasons why I dont work IT anymore.
For real though, I believe that self-hosting is the only future for most of what are talking about here. I thought it was the most logical next step after everyone had libraries of music and movies at home in the 90s. I had assumed most people would want to keep those and would digitize.
The process to make that happen, and the hardware, are just not accessible to others outside our field. I would like to see a closer to all-in-one-solution become available. A system one could purchase with software ready to go all where you have to do is load it with content. Hell, call it a Spoopify Box or something equally ridiculous and you could VC angel funding in a week in SF.
Be the change you wish to see in the world, I guess. But I don't see a commercial product like that taking off, simply because the MPAA and RIAA will fight it. They will use the media to convince the public that it is a piracy tool. I also don't think it's fair to demand FOSS volunteers to cater to tech illiterates. These projects are a labor of love, not a product. Self hosting means you are taking the responsibility of hosting something, and that comes with pros and cons. I think expecting a black box solution to remain stable and secure in the long run is a hard sell for me, it doesn't line up with my personal and professional experience.
I feel like this opinion is more damaging to the cause than most people realize. Accessibility and usability are just so important, I would never demand that the opensource community do this task as it should be a cost to consumers just not like the SASS model we are currently dealing with.
I think I would like the world to be different, I just dont know how to get there yet.
No doubt that the black box solution is out of reach as of yet, but as technology moves forward the changes become less and less of a delta and it could be possible in the future. I would like to look at this solution like we look at video game consoles, or Roku even.
I use a combination of Bandcamp, Qobuz and Jellyfin atm. It gives me the combination of using their apps or my own self hosted. The chances of everything going down at the same time is pretty slim I figured.
I also have all my purchased music stored in a Nextcloud instance so in a pinch I can play the local flac/mp3 files from my computer.
In your estimate how many hours a month do you need to upkeep all of those services? What about your power bill? Im nitpicking because I am interested in doing something similar. Ive played with these services before but as a hobby PoC thing and not serious usage. Nextcloud I had some issues with dockerized containers, Jellyfin was nice but had its own cons. Plex has been great but I dont want to pay to access my own content on mobile.
I pay flat power bill so I don't really know about the electricity costs. I also live a cold place so for most of the year I need to heat my apartment anyway so I don't really know.
Apart from patching the Ubuntu VMs that run Nextcloud, Jellyfin and my Nginx proxy I haven't had any upkeep on the services themselves after I got them setup, and even then I have automatic security updates on so I only really need to log in and run a feature update and reboot every few months.
Whenever I buy a new album I download it and put the files in their own folder in Nextcloud and everything syncs in a few minutes. I have set up an external folder in Nextcloud for my music that is readable by Jellyfin so everything just works for now, but I've only had this setup for a few months to be fair.
Bandcamp and Qobuz are just apps for me and I download all the music I buy in the apps on my phone and it's virtually no upkeep for those. The only annoying thing is that I can't buy music in the Qobuz app, only on the web site. I assume this is because they refuse to pay the Google tax.
You might have to look into a Wireguard/VPN setup as well if you need that for remoting into home hosting, but I can't really help with that. I got a kinda special deal in regards of hosting.
Your setup sounds like a dream, kinda jealous of your hosting solution, gotta admit. Thanks for all the great info, youre a great person!
Yep, I’ve started buying all my media again, even music. Don’t want my copy of a movie to get censored, don’t want my music to get delisted.
The only exception is games. Damn you, steam, for being so awesome in every way except ownership.
Gonna cry when gaben kicks it, they go public, and become ea 2.0. Its gonna be hell for gamers.
All we can do is fight when the time comes. Hopefully his successor has the same values as him.
I'm absolutely there on movies, even running my own jellyfin, but I listen to such a wide variety that I don't even know where to start getting some of them in physical.
You don’t necessarily need to buy physical to own. Most of my music comes from Bandcamp in the form of FLAC and mp3, but I have CDs and vinyl as well.
Oh heck, I didn't even know about bandcamp
Bandcamp is where it’s at! If you are ever dissatisfied with the music industry’s proliferation of stupid and samey music, Bandcamp will surely have something for you.
I use a Revanced YouTube Music app that doesn't play any ads, and it functions almost exactly like Spotify.
I feel like this might not work as a mobile solution but will look into it
There's a Revanced community on Lemmy, and they have a discord with all kinds of resources and tutorials to help get it all set up.
Revanced is a project that works exclusively with YT content as far as I can tell, right? This is an interesting project, i will try to follow along.
I use this too on android. Works great for streaming, but you can't download tracks to listen offline afaik.
currently i'm doing bandcamp and tidal for my two most least evil options
Do you have money? If so, buy music you like from the artists. Bandcamp is pretty good (though they sold out, and might enshittify).
I've been buying music for years and have a big library now
Is there anywhere that guarantees access to purchases forever? Ive purchased music in the past from other providers that went under and lost access to it all.
Bandcamp gives you drm free copies of the music. I think you can do flac, mp3, or ogg. They do recommend downloading your copy after buying it because in rare cases something can be removed
I've bought some CDs directly and then ripped the music myself, too.
Bandcamp is also cool because you can find some really weird niche artists giving their music away for free.
I have sooo much great weird music I got for free or 50 cents per album.
Aside from actually downloading the audio files and stripping any DRM off them? No one will offer truly perpetual access, because that means maintaining infrastructure forever, which simply isn't going to happen.
Understand the argument of perpetuity but thats certainly not what I would ask for. CDs and physical media have a life expectancy too but at least I can make copies of those.
You can always rip cds and records you buy to a nas with a raid setup and an external drive you put in cold storage...media forever then
Yea, Ive got a Jbod sitting around somewhere. Just being pedantic but thats not forever either, there is no physical media that so far will last into infinity. I really thought that was where we would be by now considering how popular VHS, DVD and Vinyl and CDs were.
Forever as in, multiple lifetimes..
Yes, sadly physical media advancements are dead. I always thought it would be fun to see what comes after cd, if the internet hadn't come.
If only we could go back to reel to reels, such a great sounding format that really lasted (have some from 1950 that sound good as new) but the machines take care, and people dont listen to music at home anymore. And making tapes uses a lot of plastic that im not crazy about. But I love them anyway.
Tidal pays the highest per play amount to artists, and Apple Music also pays high (second highest for mainstream artists after tidal last I checked), and they have a massive library -but obviously they’re an evil megacorp so use your best judgement.
I personally use Apple Music but then I’m fully ensconced in the Apple ecosystem, so it works for me.
How is Tidal evil? I've never heard anyone complain about anything but the old mqa standard they have since dropped.
Apple is the one I was calling evil.
I think this info may be outdated. I've been seeing a lot of people recommending Qobuz. It looks like they may be paying the most per stream now, and they also allow you to buy tracks and supposedly have the best sound quality streams(?).
I use YouTube music because I all ready pay for premium, but YouTube and Google are getting worse everyday though.
Back almost a decade ago I was using Google Fi and it had access to YT Music when that existed. It was easy to use, but the content was limited and I found it very hard to find new music.
Apple music surprisingly. Good price, good bitrate, and aptx support on android.
I have become frustrated with Apple musics library management as the only Apple products I use are iPhones anyway
Have you tried Deezer?
https://lemmy.ml/post/33837544
Isn't Deezer owned by some Russian oligarch? If so, I worry about jumping from the proverbial fry pan into the fire.
Yep, in the link posted
I was just complaining about selfhosting but this, this makes me choose violence
Convinced the wife to drop Spotify for Tidal with this shit.
Fucking hell, find out here it's owned by Dorsey. Just doing the trial for now, so may give quboz or however it's spelled too.
Qobuz is great, been using it a few months now. Probably isn't quite as advanced in terms of recommendations etc. as Spotify so have to do a bit more of the leg work deciding what new stuff I want to check out but that's been a positive for me and how I engage with new music.
Yeah, in doing some research on Qobuz, their recommendation engine is way behind Tidal/Spotify. I'm really enjoying Tidal so far, which is a shame. I've heard of some people using Qobuz alongside Roon to use their recommendation engine, but I'm not sure the wife would like to add another layer to just pressing play.
Are there any alternatives that aren’t associated with a tech giant?
Yes...self host on a nas ;)
Are there self hostable alternatives to their discovery algorithm?
Their discovery algorithm will soon degenerate into mostly showing you cheap AI music. I think we better go back to looking for new music ourselves, talk to people, search online, look up people talking about the music you already know and like to find clues about other related music they mention beside it.
And listen to the radio. Find shows that play music that you like, created by people who love and know music.
And if you want to do all this with a UX somewhat reminiscent of Spotify, try Hype Machine (hypem.com)
Cool site, didnt know about it
Agreed, looks like I have my solution!
Have to sail the high seas, and send money directly to people like Butch Vig.
I've been using tidal for a couple years and enjoy it
Tidal is owned by Block Inc which is owned by Jack Dorsey
damnit!
Serious question. Is Dorsey more ethical than the Spotify CEO? Is he still paying artists more for their music?
Ethical billionaire is an oxymoron
Try Deezer. It's owned by a publication traded French company. I've been enjoying them for the past year.
Theres a link posted in this thread about deezer and how its own by a russian oligarch and donates to the Right in the US at least
Founder of that company is a Russian oligarch under sanctions by Ukraine. Man also was part of a big business group chat focused on "changing the narritive" about the atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza.
It’s owned by a Russian oligarch bastard
Spotdl is a command line program that is easy to use, you just need to feed it the playlist link and it will download all the songs off YouTube.
You can then self host with azuracast or airsonic. Azuracast is what I use but it makes it into a radio station more or less, sonic I think is more of a spotify clone. There are a few other options.
The subscription fee can then be used to support your favorite small time artists through other means, without the middle man.
https://github.com/basings/selfhosted-music-overview
Seriously, just torrent your music, downloading songs off YouTube sounds like an awful idea, automated or not.
From my understanding, it's a bit of a bother downloading less popular music through torrents. You need a private tracker I think. For big names though, definitely the way to go.
Give soulseek a try, finding less known artists is a bit of a pain but i have had good luck finding everything i had looked for with a bit of digging.
Soulseek is still a thing? Rad. I'll have to keep that in mind.
P2P will never die!!!!! (Hopefully)
That's fair!
Yt downloads are just copy and paste a link, and the quality doesn't really matter for anything I own, no audiofile gear.
I'm not subscribed anymore, but as someone who uses the desktop client mainly it's hard to find a good alternative (good UI, snappy)
Deezer and Qobuz are meh. I won't use Apple or Amazon. edit: or Google.
Maybe Tidal? Are there other ones?
I just found a third party player for Qobuz though. Not enough features but cute:
I like Tidal
Napster is back, believe it or not, as a legitimate streaming platform
Tidal is good so far. I don't think it has podcasts though as far as I'm aware which is kindve a bummer
I left Spotify when they tried to force tiktok ui update out of nowhere and I wasn't even paying for it
Would love to see a bandcamp revisit. Not as popular as Spotify but at least sales go to artists now. edit: wasn't aware about the union busting. kinda sucks there are no good alternatives.
Back To the 70s mail order physical media
You and TotalCourage007 could always try the other option available... 🏴☠️
Man its been so long since I pirated I don't even know where to start these days
If you're looking for music, https://nicotine-plus.org/
Start here
Much appreciated 🙏
I could never get on board with spending money to stream music. There are a TON of radio stations, free streaming services, small independent artist collectives, and more hours of live free music than I could probably listen to in a lifetime.
I am the weirdo though, I get it. I VASTLY prefer live music over studio work.
Some people just use music as a tool. I think you are more likely to say you see it as human expression. Live music is far better when you want to feel something in my opinion.
I've never cared much for listening to live music, even if I play myself. Well, at least not for those big ass concerts you pay €200 for. I once heard a guy playing in a church near me and it was intimate and amazing; that's how music should be.. anyway, sidetracked, my point is that I love streaming so much and I listen to music when I cook, when I focus at work, when I need to get pumped, when I need to relate. The idea of streaming is amazing - although having everything in one place all at once does remove some of the magic. I don't really have a point other than that I hope for more ethical streaming services..
For work I am right there with you. I have been streaming SomaFM for as long as its been around. Several of the channels on there are perfect for working: beat moves forward, no lyrics, great flow.
I do have my own server and about 8 TB of music, 90 percent of which is free and non commercial anyways, lol.
Why is nobody mentioning funkwhale in this thread?
https://www.funkwhale.audio/
You should have left when Rogan was let onto the platform.
After that you should have left when fake music was discovered. Seriously, they have lots of fake music.
No monitization
Thanks for the reminder! They shan't get another cent from me!
I downloaded Spotify once and deleted it within a few days. F-them.
When I requested the data they have of me thanks to GDPR, I learnt they shared my information to other apps and websites. I deleted the app as soon as I got the info.
I've still got my old mp3 collection. but haven't added to it in years, been using YouTube premium for a decade now since it's the easiest option for my family. Individual sub is not worth it but family is. Tried Spotify but hated it.
I think it's time to get my jellyfin running
I use YouTube music premium because it also means no ads on YouTube.
Same, the features and ease of use make it worth it. I can't handle being at friends places watching YouTube with ads it's horrid.
What is an 'ai weapon'?
Stuff like auto targeting drones
I’ve had it with these streaming platforms. I now rely solely on RED for downloading and finding new music (their top 10 page is very solid). To stream I use navidrome.
What's red? Got a link?
Invite only torrent tracker. It’s not enforced but it’s proper etiquette to not share the direct link. If you search for redacted music tracker on Google I’m sure you’ll find the URL.
Some info can be found here: https://interviewfor.red/
Show me your democratic values, open societies and the ethics at the core of your murderous defense development .... then I'll show you mine.
Why does someone with $9 billion need to invest more money into anything at this phase?
Investment generally is a good thing. You wouldn't want someone with that much money to simply hoard it. Otherwise nobody else benefits of it. Critical thing is, what you invest in...
Is this Russian propaganda
Hmm, I would say quit if the defense company will be US but its German. Do not be naive, we need european defense. See what is doing ruSSia. We cannot defense it with stars and rainbows.
https://archive.ph/20250409074743/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-08/helsing-europe-s-most-valuable-defense-tech-company-is-facing-allegations-from
I highly recommend that read. Seems like Helsing's shooting star success is tied to having good contacts with the German defense ministry and Ursula von der Leyen, which both are indicators of corruption.
Ukrainian soldiers report the drones to be vastly overpriced for what they are and drones costing less than a quarter of the Helsing drones to have similar capabilities.
This sounds like another Wirecard scandal in the making, where the desperation of Germany to create some billion Euro startup is exploited by corrupt politicans and company owners. Given the context it also wouldn't be surprising if intelligence is involved.
Ukrainians seem to be better of with domestically produced drones.
German the country who always side with genocides and apartheids