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asklemmy·Ask LemmybyTheGoldenV

The offer to pay more for the same finally pushed me to cancel Apple Music. What is a good alternative that's not loaded with ads?

I’ve had an Apple Music subscription for years and use it A LOT. I tried some alternatives (Tidal, Sirius, and maybe one other?) and wasn’t super happy with the options.

Is there a service that people recommend that is good, like $10/month or less, maybe gives better pay to artists? I’d like to spend on a better company if possible too. If Apple has enough money to buy gold trinkets for elected officials they probably don’t need more from me.

Edit: Thanks for all the responses. Some good ideas for sure. Gonna start with qobuz and band camp. Cheers!

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132 replies

aussie.zone

A couple of years back I gave up streaming for ownership. The main driver was the utterly unfair deal artists get, and the lack of ownership for my hard earned dollars.

At first, it felt like I was missing out, and I missed the algorithms that helped me find new music. Determined, I stuck at. Discovering BandCamp, and rediscovering CDs was instrumental. For algorithms, I actually found forums to be better, and connected to more amazing artists than before.

Where possible, I buy CDs. If not, I buy FLACs. From BandCamp, you can often get both. The CDs get ripped and stored unless I got FLACs too. I use MusicAssistant for streaming my own collection, and automatic file sync to keep a copy on my phone while on the go.

At the end of the day, I've a sizable collection, spend less than streaming (overall, obviously not up front), I have ownership, and artists get a much better deal 😃.

Fuck streaming from apple/Spotify or similar.

90

CD sales from the big labels also screw the artist. Buying merch and going to shows benefits them far more.

16

CDs and Bandcamp are also my way to go.

In my case, the main driver was disappearing songs. I hate it when I have a great playlist or collection of albums and some of them mysteriously disappear without notice. Or worse, they get replaced with a different version.

sigh so back to CDs we go… luckily second hand discs are dirt cheap, and even new albums are quite cheap (inflation-wise) compared to their prices in the 90s

7
lemmy.hogru.ch

What about 24/96 or other HiFi? CD quality isn’t really that great, even losslessly copied when higher quality is available.

4

Usually with BandCamp, you'll get higher quality FLACs, although CDs are considered lossless despite the smaller sampling rate. Also, I like having a physical item 😃.

13
feddit.nl

I really like Qobuz. They are a lot more ethical and paying the artists. I believe they are French based. App got a lot of updates too lately.

50

Why post a misleading graphic?

As the article says: No platform pays a flat rate per play. Each service splits a revenue pool by every artist's share of total streams.

It's not a flat get X plays earn Y amount, because as the amount of streams you get increases your share of the pool goes up which increases the amount you earn

In addition free loaders (people who have ad supported spotify for example) have a significantly lower pay per play than premium subscribers, and even then a premium subscriber in India for example has a lower pay per play rate than someone in Australia or Canada

1

Long time Qobuz fan here as well. Has quite a bit of obscure stuff on it in addition to mainstream music. Also quite audiophile friendly - looking at their settings, some albums are 24-bit, up to 192 kHz.

They also do a fair bit of curation to surface interesting tracks, thematic playlists and so on.

25
lemmy.blahaj.zone

My account was suspended due to the new app changes working the QBZ client, and now they are making me promise to never use the QBZ Linux client, when they don't even offer a Linux client. No, the web version isn't valid because the reason I'm paying them is to listen to high quality music! Bunch of assholes.

1 month after I paid the year subscription. Assholes.

They are asking me to reboot the router, I guess because they want me to have a different IP, and what if I have other stuff in there and I don't want to reboot the fucking thing? Bully assholes.

2
Sludgereply
sh.itjust.works

If they need a Linux app, Tidal is another good option and there is a Linux installer.

3
gopherreply
programming.dev

Oh that's shit. QBZ is great. What was the specific reason for the suspension?

My account seems to still be OK

1
lemmy.blahaj.zone

That the app was spamming too many requests to their server apparently. It might be related to the new update they did. It might also be a fucking lie and them suspending the account because it did requests on the weekend where the service was down and it was retrying all the time. I don't know. In any case, shame on them for making me promise not to use the only way on Linux to listen to their music on actually on HiFi.

I'll have to install waydroid and do something hella over engineered to use their official tools.

Btw, QBZ was just a wrapper of the web player on a custom browser with HiFi enabled, they tried upgrading the tool recently to use API calls, but if this happened at that time I would have been able to defend it saying that it's just a wrapper of the webpage. In any case, I'll have to do something similar myself (electron browser with hifi enabled).

1
gopherreply
programming.dev

That sucks, a good company would instead work with QBZ to ensure it's resolved properly.

I didn't see any other reports of people being banned. I'll just keep using QBZ but better keep the subscription monthly in case...

1

Yeah, that was my exact reaction honestly. If they aren't offering the thing in Linux, maybe don't demonize someone doing it for free? Whatever, apparently Linux Firefox doesn't downsample audio so I can use the web player with bit perfect sound with some tinkering, so that's nice. There's even a tool to set the bitrate, I'm trying to build an appimage of the thing so anyone can run it to set their bitrates dynamically correctly.

1
lemmy.zip

I gave Qobuz a really good try but in the end gave up because of too many issues with their (iOS) app. Went to Apple Music instead. At least they're not as bad as Spotify, who I had been using before.

1
orenishiireply
feddit.nl

App is getting a lot of updates last weeks/months

2

Good to hear! I wonder if they publish a change log somewhere that would help me determine if they've resolved some of the bugs I found.

2
lemmy.world

No. Buy their CDs and rip them into something like Jellyfin.

30
yesmanreply
lemmy.world

That's not realistic. I have a CD collection, but that took decades and thousands of dollars. Plus I had access to Columbia House (if you know, you know) and a robust used market. That doesn't exist anymore.

I don't think a person who's sensitive to $11 a month is going to be interested in a collection of $25 CDs.

33

A $10 a month streaming service without ads that is fair to artists isn’t realistic either to be fair

16
sbvreply
sh.itjust.works

Exactly this. A music collection is expensive. Even more so if your tastes change over time.

12
yesmanreply
lemmy.world

Even more so if your tastes change over time.

This is a challenge. I've grown on hip-hop and rap, and finding the media is a struggle. For example, the first 'Run the Jewels" album is basically unavailable on CD.

7

I'm thinking of the other end of the equation: I don't listen to a lot of the artists I liked twenty or thirty years ago. I'd be annoyed if I spent a bunch of cash on their albums only to have them be coasters now.

2
blitzenreply
lemmy.ca

Buy used. OP can probably pick up five used CDs a month and stay under budget.

Of course the artist isn’t paid here, so you might as well pirate at this point.

7

The robust used market does still exist. eBay, and Discogs should be all you need. Bonus points if you have a local record store.

4

While I don’t disagree with your comment, this part:

and a robust used market. That doesn’t exist anymore

isn’t as bad as you might think, at least where I live. Used CD sales are the highest they’ve been in over 20 years. Sure, it’s not like it was at its peak, but it’s coming back in style again. The rest of your comment is definitely true though.

4

I think Qobuz and Bandcamp have the ability to stream what you've purchased, as well as downloading to own. So in the interim you can still stream, and the option to self-host or just have it on your local devices is a bonus that could be explored later.

1

HiFi services are more like 16€ a month, ish, which is like 180 euros a year. 5 years and you already spent over 800 euros on nothing. My last skirmish with these services taught me to buy when I can and pirate the rest. Not like artists were earning anything relevant from my subscription anyway.

1
TheGoldenVreply
lemmy.world

I feel like that’s a couple levels of effort more than I’d like. As good as it would be to support the artists by buying CDs I don’t want to buy more plastic and clutter the house. I could also do the same from the library, but that’s not supporting artists either.

11
TheGoldenVreply
lemmy.world

And I just had to go and remove the CD player from my old car. Sigh…

3

You can load the song onto your phone and play via Bluetooth or aux cable.

1
lemmy.world

A good alternative would be:

  • Ripping your own CD's and playing them on an offline player.
  • Use Soulseek (would recommend Nicotine+ app) to pirate music and playing it on an offline player.

For players; on my PC (Linux) I use Strawberry. Windows has AIMP which is really good. On my Android I use Shuttle.

26
mursejoyreply
lemmy.zip

Shout out to PlexAmp for IOS. Apple Music is terrible for playing your own files. Needlessly convoluted.

5

You havd to upload to itunes on a pc but then it stays forever, I have songs by post malone I grabbed off sc in like 2017 still

1
Alleroreply
lemmy.today

If you're on Linux, Rufin is an awesome player for those coming from streaming services. Offers familiar interface and functionality. Can be used with local files or Navidrome/Jellyfin/Subsonic instance.

Also, seconding Soulseek through Nicotine+, and there are programs allowing you to download music from streaming services, too.

4
Tattorackreply
lemmy.world

Was curios about Rufin, but I can't get it to work. I have music in a local folder, but when I try to add my music folder I get this error:

"Library persistence failed: integer value outside SQLite's signed range"

1

Same as the other person said. Rufin is distributed as Flatpak, and thereby it has limited permissions.

Give Rufin access to your music folder. The easiest way to do this is using Flatseal.

1

I had the same problem. I had to manually give permission to Rufin to access my music folder. I used the 84 point answer here to help figure it out.

Incidentally, after some messing around, I think I'll stick with Strawberry cuz I'm a weirdo who likes rating my music out of 5 stars.

1

Bandcamp was really good. It's still going but it's kind of a corpse animated by capitalism now. You get drm free music and sometimes musicians will like do listening parties or chat or other fun stuff.

If you buy one album a month for $10, after a few years you have a sizable library that's yours to keep forever. Don't rent music.

23

Throw out streaming entirely. Maybe buy an album here or there and pirate the rest. Legitimately, if you buy one album and nothing else, you are absolutely supporting the artist far more than listening to their songs "legitimately" through streaming.

22

Someone who buys a $10 album every other month gives more money to musicians than someone who pays for (and uses) a $10 a month steaming service.

11
lemmy.ml

IMO the best combo is pirated Youtube Music (e.g. via OpenTune) for music discovery, then Bandcamp to buy albums you enjoyed.

That way you're not paying subscription to the giant corpo sucking life out of musicians, you get to actually own the music you buy forever, and in great quality (as long as you archive it properly), and a significant proportion of your purchase goes to the artists who created the things you enjoy!

14

I suggest Metrolist which will soon have a desktop version too (Linux, Windows and MacOS)

1

Now if I could figure out where opentune stores its downloads in the damn android filesystem maze...

1

I'm still using Tidal, and have been for many years. It's got high fidelity (FLAC, Dolby Whatever), large catalogue and is not expensive.

14
lemmy.world

The price for Apple Music, just like the price for everything else in the economy, has inflated.

When Apple Music launched it was $9.99 for an individual. That's $13.98 in 2026 dollars. In October 2022 they raised the price to $10.99. That's $12.32 in 2026 dollars. Now it's $11.99 in 2026 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that's the cheapest they've ever priced it.

Family plan price went up a bit, adjusted. $19.99 over 2022's $19.04.

https://keepingupwithinflation.com/tracker/apple-music/

Effective dateIndividual2026 dollarsFamily2026 dollars
June 2015 launch$9.99$13.98$14.99$20.98
October 2022$10.99$12.32$16.99$19.04
July 17, 2026$11.99$11.99$19.99$19.99
13

Yeah Apple Music definitely provides the best service overall, it’s too bad it’s impossible to get lossless playback on Linux.

3
lemmy.world

+1 for Qobuz.

I have my own media server where i host everything that I buy digitally in the qobuz store to support artists and I use the streaming part to discover new things , or at parties etc. Its not the cheapest, but that's kinda contradictory to supporting artists anyway. Its a good combination since a subscription gives you a bit of a discount on digital purchases as well.

12
lemmy.zip

I recommend TPB. It is a wonderful value, great selection, mediocre UI.

10
tmyakalreply
infosec.pub

As much as I hate nearly everything about my job, the one thing I can get behind is that they have a rule: the first time an acronym is used in a meeting, an email chain, or a chat, it needs to be defined parenthetically so that everyone with access to the conversation knows what the fuck we're talking about.

Because if we're just going by what I know, OP asked where to stream music and you told them to get some comicbook TPBs (Trade Paperbacks).

5

Symfonium is the Android music player I use to stream and save music from my Jellyfin server (which is just my MacBook with my iTunes library on it)

1
lemmy.ca

Visit the library once a month and leave with 10 CDs. Rip 'em all to mp3's. Month by month you'll build up a valuable collection that is yours alone. If you are an audiophile then you might not like the mp3's but I can't hear any discernable difference that would make me say "what poor sound quality". If I can tap my foot or sing along then it's more than good enough.

9

I mean, can always rip them to flak as well if you are worried about quality. Even still, a good high bitrate mp3 sounds perfect to me so I still use it too.

Working on reorganizing my old music collection to try to de-apple. It’s a bigger pain in the ass than I expected, and I’m missing so much that I’ve added via subscription. Gotta do it though, I’m sick of paying subscriptions for everything.

2
infosec.pub

Bloomee https://bloomeex.org/bloomeetunes/

Cross-platform music player built with Flutter and Rust. Mix your local library with online streams, sing along with lyrics, and own every bit of it. No ads. No account. No tricks.

Bloomee pulls from YouTube but works like a music streaming app. It has a robust feature set, it can work as an offline music player using local files, it has Last.fm integration, and it can import playlists and albums from Apple Music, Spotify and ytmusic.

Bloomee is free and open source, and has builds for Android, Linux and Windows. It is available in F-Droid via the IzzyonDroid repository: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/ls.bloomee.musicplayer

Bloomee is free so no money is being paid to the artists through it. If you want to support the artists, the best way to do that is to purchase from them through platforms like bandcamp.

9

Thanks for the quality info! I’ll check these guys out.

Good point on the artist support. I haven’t looked into bandcamp, but I will now.

5
lemmy.zip

I get that finances aren't the best for many people, but it always makes me very sad to see that music has been undervalued to a degree where it's not in anyway unusual to expect to get access to all music ever created for 10 dollars a month. Obviously, that means that the vast majority of artists get very little money. This has lead to a large share of the music available to stream being AI generated garbage. Because it doesn't make sense to put in the time to create a work of art when people are just not prepared to compensate you properly.

I pirate music to see if I like it, and buy what I like, mostly on vinyl, often through Bandcamp. Despite the pirating, I pay far more than 120 dollars a year for music. That's the price of like 3-4 albums, and I haven't gone a year buying less than 10 albums. And that's excluding all the gigs that I go to. Music is valuable to me, and I still have the first album I bought in 1992, and everything thereafter. It's an awesome experience rediscovering stuff I listened to in the nineties, that I had completely forgotten about.

7
Axolotlreply
feddit.it

The problem is that they increase the price, today is 12, tomorrow 13 and so on, all this without paying properly the artist (and also financing a shit ass company)

If they increase prices without a proper explanation, i'd stop using the service too

4
rezifonreply
lemmy.world

The problem is that they increase the price

Apple's price increases on Apple Music have not even kept up with inflation. Adjusted for inflation, Apple Music costs less today than it did when they launched it in 2015.

2
Axolotlreply
feddit.it

Have they increased the pay to artists too? I don't know where i can find such data

1

Bandcamp, then tidal. A friend works in the music industry, he said tidal can't always pay out but they have way better rates than the other streaming services. Bandcamp is like 999x better for artists though. You get the files (for free even if you buy vinyl or cd). It's so much better.

7

Option A: Pool your subscription in a family plan with others already using it anyway. The resulting share is far lower than the single subscription

Option B: Rip CDs and/or put on the pirate hat

7

If you're interested in a FOSS alternative, try metrolist. You can download songs and it's a frontend to YouTube music, so you have access to their full catalogue

If you want a way that more directly supports creators, nothing is is better than buying their songs place a place like bandcamp

7

This site has a nice overview of different options.

Personally I use Soundcloud because I mostly listen to sets and like the convenience of browsing new stuff while on the go, I buy the occasional vinyl if I want to support a small artist.

The page also lists options to transfer your likes and playlists

7
lemmy.world

Many have said buy music. I agree. You own your music fully. (effectively) and don't buy from apple. Bandcamp ftw. I'm a strange one and use Pandora for gennral vibe streaming. Then if I come across a song that resonates with me I go out and buy it. And before peeps talk bad about Pandora, I discover artists with less than 1000 views on YouTube on it that actually sound good. My only problem with Pandora is that it has a station bleed issue where songs from other stations you made will "bleed" songs into other stations. like I have a dnb station that sometimes plays hip hop instrumentals because of the jazzy vibes that dnb sometimes has. But after a few forceful thumbs down, it behaves. But don't do Pandora if you are wanting to listen to a SPESIFIC song. Just go buy it.

7

I use Pandora because they have a cheap no ads plan. You can't choose individual songs but I think it's only 5 US bucks per month.

1

all of them are the same. they dont give artists jackshit, that is the business model.

6

Youtube ReVanced lets you use the YT Music app without ads, it also lets you watch youtube without ads

6
lemmy.world

Apple Music has the second highest payouts to artists, only behind Tidal which is much more expensive.

You really can’t have it both ways. You either want artists to get paid, in which case you’re paying more, or you want it for cheap and artists get paid less.

5
Appoxoreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Oh great, 0.25 instead of a 0.1 cent per listen what a great payout.
Yeah, I'll continue buying the CDs/individual songs (assuming they make it not too annoying)

6
lemmy.world

And how much do you think the artist gets from the CD sale? Listen to it more than a handful of times, and it's a lower payout than streaming.

4
Appoxoreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Bandcamp? Pretty much 100% (excluding deals with a label)
Any other CD label? I don't care what the artist negotiated with their label. That is their own problem who they chose to do business with. But Spotify/Apple can't skim of 30% of the sale price.

And I don't buy on iTunes.
I buy on OTOTOY and other sites I can get FLAC files from.

2
lemmy.world

Bandcamp is great for extremely underground artists, but that's about all that is on there.

0

You call labels like Monstercat underground?
Damn, okay buddy.

Like yeah, mainstream artists are less likely to publish there but established artists have published songs on it.

2

Qobuz has a streaming plan, and you can buy and download drm-free music. It's a good option if you want to just stream (the app has added some nice improvements lately). Even better if you're also looking to build your collection and looking to go the whole non-streaming route.

Purchases tend to be pricey, and there's a slightly more expensive plan with a discount on drm-free that might make sense, depending on how often you plan to make purchases.

Edit: this currently doesn't fall into the < $10 category but is comparable to the old Apple Music price.

5

Another fairly happy Qobuz user here. Prior to that I used Tidal, which has a better Android Auto experience, IMO. Prior to that I used YouTube Music, and technically I still have a subscription to that because I got used to YouTube Red (now Premium) when it came free with Google Music (now YouTube Music). I prefer a streaming service; I find it much easier to discover music that way.

For digital purchases, while that is possible through Qobuz, every artist I know would prefer you buy from their Bandcamp. ISTR Bandcamp might have been doing some shady anti-union stuff, but I could be misremembering and I wouldn't know of any great alternatives.

5

They used to provide like a 3-day trial, but I couldn't find any sort of offer like that currently active.

If you are just curious about what they have on their streaming service, you can get a rough estimate by browsing their download store. It's not a perfect match, but it's very close. It is quite rare for an artist / studio / publisher to let Qobuz stream it but not sell a download or vice-versa.

2
feddit.org

I carry around my music as mp3 files on my phone. It's also stored on a NAS at home and I could stream it via my own jellyfin instance, but its just more convenient to have it on my phone.

I use foldersync to download any music I add to my NAS onto my phone every night automatically.

5

Finamp is worth it if you’re looking for a music player behind Jellyfin, offline downloads and capable of transcoding the files down to AAC to save on storage usage.

4

Hope you kept your CDs if you want a service that isn’t shit that doesn’t get more expensive for a worse product over time.

4

i just use Soulseek and download all the music i could want onto my phone (have 1tb microsd).

best way to support artists is buy their merch

3
lemmy.today

Idk but I recently stumbled on https://freefy.app/. i used it to play a song I was showing to a friend vs YouTube. Looks promising from there very short time I used it.

3
lemmy.ca

I mean, if you were happy with the service at 10.99, is one dollar that much of a deal breaker?

If you didn’t already know, the subscription comes with Apple Music Classical for free. Maybe look at that as a mandatory $1 add-on.

2
discuss.tchncs.de

Well, a few years ago it was $9.99, and in a few years it’ll be $12.99. That extra dollar indeed is a problem.

13

That's just inflation though, at a normal 3% a year you should expect a dollar increase every 3 years. And inflation has been running higher than that.

2
TheGoldenVreply
lemmy.world

I mean, if you were happy with the service at 10.99, is one dollar that much of a deal breaker?

It kinda is. Lame of me maybe, but it’s not like Apple is paying out more to the artists or making the experience better. Just shaking us down for more money. Idk how many people use AM, but it’s gotta add up.

I do like the positivity of your silver lining though!

7

For what it's worth Apple Music has much higher payouts than other platforms like Spotify, Pandora or YouTube Music. Like 4x higher. I dont know if 0.8 cents is a fair price for compensation, but it doesn't seem terrible... if you listen to an hour of music per day that's maybe 15 cents to artists per day? That doesn't sound like a ton but that's about $4.50 per month to artists. Meanwhile according to the BBC artists get like 13% of CD sales so at $20 that would be a $2.60 cut. Meaning unless you were buying 2+ albums a month streaming on apple music gives as much money to artists as buying physical media.

I think thats my takeaway from the streaming era - its a lot less money per listen, but people are listening a lot more.

11

Maybe not specific to this price increase, but the service does in fact improve over time. They were the first to add lossless music (no cost increase at the time IIRC), the first to add atmos, and then they added Classical for free.

You should take a look at Apple Music Classical, it’s really good and actually the only reason I subscribe to Apple Music in the first place. Classical is what I pay for, the pop music is bonus.

5

I use music.youtube.com. I do not download the app to my phone or PC. I use it with firefox and add blocker on PC and use it with brave browser on my phone. You can also upload your own music library to it. So all my CDs were converted to digital files and I uploaded it.

1
lemmy.ca

The best answer is self-hosted/private music libraries but a less cumbersome option is Youtube Music. Premium gets you ad-free Youtube and YouTube music. I think is the best bang for your buck at the current moment outside self-hosted, private music libraries.

I know a lot of people are going to dislike this answer, but 🤷. I do still have my 2010 iPod Classic with my OG iTunes library on it.

1
sh.itjust.works

I have YouTube premium because of the music and videos, but they keep raising the price. unfortunately I have had playlists on there for years that have hundreds of songs - some fairly obscure - and it's the thought of trying to recreate them all from scratch that's kept me there.

Does anyone know if there's a tool that can export my playlists into a streaming service that's more artist friendly?

2
lemmy.world

Genuine question, not trolling you.

Is there a reason owning one's own music is so unthinkable these days? I BUY my music, I own my music. I stream it anywhere I like from my own Plex server. If I had it to do over again I'd use Jellyfin instead. A tiny mini PC with some storage, some easy setup, and you never pay monthly for access to music again?

My main source for buying music is BandCamp.

1

Yeah, given the chance like I said I'd go with it. I'm comfy with what I have and admit it's not superior, but it's functional and I was fortunate enough to buy the lifetime license years before they turned the situation into a laughing stock. Maybe one day I'll make the change.

1

Apple Music is actually such shit. Echoes of iTunes in a way.

I have been on the free trial for three months and, although I can find everything I want, and I can’t notice the difference in sound quality, even as a former live sound guy, I have gripes:

The web app is buggy. I’ll hit play and it doesn’t seem to immediately register. Sometimes it flashes play/pause a couple of times.

Search is garbage in that it sometimes shows things I’ve listened to before, sometimes not.

I have been listening to a podcast. I cannot specify a date range and need to keep. Scrolling. Back in time. Twenty times. Before I can find the episode bell that I’m up to. Because each page of results is like 20 podcasts.

There are penalty of reasons to dislike Apple Music. These are just a few. I’m would never normally drag a company but this is shockingly bad for a company based on the idea that the customer is right.

There was even an you outage a couple of days ago.

I’m cancelling before my free trial ends because it really is bad. I recommend you never sign up.

1

I use Spotify or torrent albums. I'll buy an album every now and then to support the people I listen to but I mainly just download discographies. Donald Fagen is still singing IGY with or without my money.

1

Im getting more into backing up my stuff, songshift lets you transfer playlists, it mostly works, apple music does have some exclusive stuff that I would miss so I stay. Like live sets mixed for apple music. (Edm artists mostly)

1
lemmy.world

Gonna be honest ...you want a cheaper service that pays artists better, those two things don't connect.

On a side note I just use morphine to get free YouTube and YouTube music premium. I don't pay for them because I refuse to pay $15 or whatever when someone in india is paying $1.25. Either their fucking you by charging way to much, or I'm paying for someone else who can't afford it to have it. Either way I'm not paying.

-1

They pay less in converted money.
But their salary is also 10x less vs yours.
Do they not deserve the distraction?

2

I do not download the app to my phone or PC. I use it with firefox and add blocker on PC and use it with brave browser on my phone. You can also upload your own music library to it. So all my CDs were converted to digital files and I uploaded it. So you can make it add free without paying.

1

Fair enough. But as far as streaming music options go, I'm not sure how much worse it is. But I respect your stance and in another world, I would share it.

1
The offer to pay more for the same finally pushed me to cancel Apple Music. What is a good alternative that's not loaded with ads? | Spyke