I am looking to move on from spotify, what music streaming service pays the artists the best while still having a large library.
None of them. Buy music, don’t rent access to it.
If you’re talking about artists under labels, the real way to support them is go to their shows. They get very few proceeds from music purchases.
Shut the fuck up Ticketmaster
Go to a small venue and sneak in. Give them a $20 in their tip jar. Buy their expensive official tee shirt.
If they’re big enough to run fans through ticketmaster, they’re not going to go hungry if you pirate and just introduce friends to their music.
that would be so expensive no? to buy thousands of songs? and I’d have to buy an album/ track to listen, what if I don’t end up liking it?
Most artists put their stuff up on YouTube anyways so you can give it a listen before you decide to buy. And I think buying each track makes you appreciate the music more but also makes you more critical because you want to get your money’s worth.
Regarding it being expensive, considering that with the money you spend on Spotify you can buy an album each month, I don’t think it’s too bad
Where do you buy albums for $10?!?
I also, and I can’t speak for everyone, like to listen to a wide variety of music. If I bought these magic $10 albums, once a month since 2006 (spotify’s founding) I would still only have 216 albums, which is nowhere near enough.
Yeah I have over a thousand songs in my Spotify playlist and I’m constantly searching for and adding new music.
Bandcamp, qobuz, bleep, Beatport, theres a number of options out there to pick up cheap digital music. And then you also have the aforementioned eBay and discogs etc. Which, true, is second hand. But even splitting the amount the artist makes from that physical release between you and the person who previously bought it, they are still making way more from you than they would from just your streams.
And sure, 216 albums doesn’t seem like much. But they’d be all yours. Nobody could take them from you (well, besides if you got physically robbed I guess). There’s a bunch of stuff that has disappeared off of there. Big Black, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Joanna Newsom, off the top of my head. You also have artists that have never been on there, Tatsuro Yamashita comes to mind. It also used to be a real problem with artists like Tool, The Beatles, AC/DC just not being there at all too. Then there’s other times where I’ve been playing albums, and tracks are just straight up missing (I presume due to licensing issues). I remember being royally annoyed with A Cross The Universe missing a bunch of tracks ages ago, and it used to happen frequently enough with other releases that it made an impression. Plus all the classic hip-hop that is missing cos of sample clearance issues. And heaven forbid if you wanna listen to classical music, or traditional music from around the world, it’s as if Spotify has never heard of the genre (both genres are represented, but it’s such a poor showing that they would’ve done better if there was just none at all). And I understand that this isn’t all on Spotify, but I’ve never had any of those issues with my personal collection.
Is it perfect? No. Does it reward the artist fairly? Undoubtedly. Would I take it over Spotify? Every day of the year for the rest of my life.
eBay….have two coming for sub $5
I didn’t even know ebay was still a thing!
Though, if the point of paying for music is to compensate the artist, ebay kind of avoids that unless they do direct sales now?
Q: where do you buy albums sub $10 A: eBay
However I’m buying old shit so this is my current vector acquiring music.
I listen to way more than an album a month. and I only pay ~$3 a month for spotify, I don’t think that buys an album. I’m all for buying music, that’s why I’ll occasionally buy a vinyl of an album I absolutely love
guess what, over time your library gets bigger :)
I was assuming USD 10 like most people pay.
not even the cost, but with the rate at which I discover music I’d go bankrupt. hell, I’ve got 14 new albums/ singles released by artists I follow in the past month.
so I think I’ll pass, I prefer to support artists thru merch and concerts anyways :)
Please be realistic, who does that in this day and age?
I only know two sides (in the bigger scheme) people who rent it and people who pirate it.
In all kinds of tech media that exists the disc music are the ones that amazes me the most because they still have their spot in certain stores.
I do have a few friends who love collecting vinyl. They’re reasonably established in their careers, really seem to love rooting around record shops whenever we travel and have amazing collections that take up a chunk of their living space…
But basically, I agree with you. Those collector friends are definitely the very rare exceptions.
Heaps of people still buy music, sales still account for around half of music revenue.
I pirate music, but I also purchase most things I end up enjoying as long as it’s reasonably available
Had half a dozen CDs arrive from eBay in the last month. CDs are the shit.
I buy all my mysic on iTunes, and have done so for a long time, it makes my music library more focused and I have no worry if loosing access if I can’t pay rent.
buy …. iTunes
You are in for a surprise, you don’t own any of that music just so you know. You “rent it from Apple”
In what way? There’s no DRM. It’s not tied to an apple account. Music I’ve downloaded from iTunes now resides on non-apple kit same as that from Bandcamp, 7digital, etc. Hell some of its even on CDs for when I still had a player in the car, now the car has a USB stick.
To be pedantic, there was DRM on music purchased on iTunes prior to 2009. Was a bit of a ballache converting that back in the day. Could’ve been worse though, I do like to buy most of my music physically so I didn’t have to convert too much of my collection (still a ballache though cos it was still way more files than I wanted to convert).
TIL
Considering I can get the files without DRM from iTunes, I don’t understand what you are talking about.
However, thank you for reminding me that I need to do so.
TIL
Not going to downvote you since I use iTunes for streaming, but when they changed their policy a few years ago about DRM, they fucking deleted about 20 songs I wrote and recorded solo or with my bands. My friends had backups, but man that sucked. So beware, I suppose.
Wait, what? That seems odd. They’ve deleted music videos from my account (which I had the files for, and the videos in question were also pulled from YouTube etc by the band, so I don’t think it’s apple’s fault they were pulled), but I still have all the music I’ve made myself. I do back it up every 2 or 3 months (I would cry for the rest of my life if I lost it, I have nearly 2yrs of continuous music), but I’ve never had to restore it (and this has reinforced why I do back up).
Edit: looked it up, I see the issue now. I don’t use Apple music, and every instance I can find of this happening is associated with ceasing that subscription. But I just use iTunes and the iTunes store. Dunno how this would work for you since it’s your own music (and I dunno if it’d work for music not in the iTunes catalogue, ie stuff from Bandcamp, qobuz, cough cough less than legal methods, etc), but it would appear all you have to do is log in to your account again and re-download the deleted files.
Second edit: just realised I have lost some actual music from my account. The series of live albums that iTunes directly released from the iTunes festivals they ran like 15yrs ago just came to mind. They’re gone from my account. And probably a bunch of others. They were never deleted from my hard drive though.
Unless the artist self published it, even buying physical media doesn’t give the actual artist much. If you want to support the actual artist, you go to live shows (with tickets bought at the door and not through Ticketmaster) as well as buying the merch they sell at those events. More of those sales go to the bands. Sometimes even 100% of it.
Do both. Spotify to gain access, buying it to maintain access in perpetuity. I have about 60 or so vinyl albums that I would like my kids to hear in 10 years or so, and I’m hopeful they’ll say hey vinyl, cool (it won’t happen). But at the end of the day, I’ve picked out a number of albums that I want to carry into the future with me, and some of those I discovered through my Spotify subscription.
Keeping a local library on your phone and computer.
No need to worry about if a streaming service changes anything, not pepetual bulls just to listen to music
I generally do this for all my media, but I will never do this for music, there’s just such a huge lack of discoverability. Are you just never seeking out new music on the fly?
Oh, you like Cattle Decapitation? Then you might like Skinless, Guttural Secrete, Devourment, Pig Destroyer, Rivers of Nihil…
It’s not good with really new artists (e.g., The Anchoret, Temic), and artists that have had significant shifts over their careers might give you overly broad results. But it gives you some starting points.
Personally I use a combination of a large library of mp3s plus I listen to SiriusXM in the car to discover new artists. I also like to go through the backlogs of artists I find I like, and also dig into their earlier/later works
This brings me to an interesting phenomenom with me, I tend to dislike contemporary music, but about 10 years later or so I wtart to really enjoy it.
Then I start listening to music on YT, start playing the same song over and over, and start checking out other songs by the artist, and create a playlist on yt where I can listen to those songs over and over, then I start getting ready to buy the songs on iTunes.
Right now, the latest songs I bought on iTunes was from the Red Alert soundtrack from Frank Klepacki, Blue by Eiffel 65, Walk On Water by Milk Inc, two songs from SkyMarshall Arts, a few songs from the Shock Treatment soundtrack, some Scooter songs, and a song from Gina G.
I go through phases where I listen to a particular genere/artist constantly and will then buy a few songs here and there that interest me, in 2022 I was dealing with double flat feet, double heel spurs, a bad knee and more crap, I would drag myself home from the busstop crying from the pain that each step caused, and I just blasted Sabaton constantly, I got energy and was able to keep working both in the office and on getting better.
And when I got better, I started listening to more Eurodance and fun music, so I bought plenty of Dr. Bombay and Dr. Macdoo, and as I bought my first car this summer I got into classical music set to a disco beat and bought Hooked on classics 1, 2 and 3 as well as Hooked on Themes.
So while I don’t constantly look for new music, I am not shy of buying it when I find it.
I tend to dislike contemporary music, but about 10 years later or so I start to really enjoy it.
We used to call these hipsters.
Aren’t hipsters are the ones that like bands before they are popular.
I do love PlexAmp, I need a much bigger storage capacity on my phone these days because of all the bangers.
That’s fair, I have about 720 songs bought on my iPhone, and plenty more downloaded from remix64.com in VLC
I think Apple Music and Tidal pay the most per stream, but Tidal has a smaller library than Spotify. It might be different now so not sure.
Anecdotal, I’ve not actually had a lot of instances (if any) of Spotify having something but Tidal not, usually find albums that I’m interested in from band camp no problem and if it’s missing its missing on both. Sound quality is noticeably higher which is the reason I tend to prefer, the app has gotten better in my experience
I have all my digital copies on my NAS with jellyfin to stream them as well, sometimes it’s just easier to stream off tidal or Spotify though
Plexamp
With Tidal hell yeah!
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
I like Qobuz. I find it really good quality through my home hifi and I can purchase from their site too. There is a bundle where you get discounts on the purchase with the sub. Music is really important to me so this is the only thing I sub too.
One of the big benefits for me is that it offers gapless playback. Also I find it the “best” quality and for context I am streaming through a Cambridge CXN V2 into a Musical Fidelity M6si and into a pair of Kef ls50’s with a couple of REL subs.
Napster pays the most to the owners of the recording as far as I recall
I’ve been trying it because I wanted to support the artists more than Spotify, but the app is… not very good in my experience. :(
Same here. The app is so ass and the recommendations are straight garbage too.
lol, ‘recommendations’. They give notifications for whatever random new pop thing has dropped. Like why? Almost nothing to do with what I listen to. Ah well. I was going to give YouTube music a try but I’ll read up on this thread and do some research and see what really happens.
Revanced YouTube music
Innertune is nice too.
does bandcamp suit you?
I strongly recommend Apple Music. It has one of the largest libraries and pays better than YouTube, Amazon, or Spotify.
Apple Music is also platform agnostic; there’s even a browser version now. Also, you can download music and choose the quality. It’s far less “algorithm-y,” which I prefer.
Tidal and Qobuz do pay out more, but have much smaller libraries. I don’t personally like them much. The apps feel subpar.
YouTube and Amazon are straight up bad experiences for me. If this was back in 2013, I’d actually have recommended Google Play Music. RIP.
Apple music on android is so bad that I didn’t even wait for my premium trial to end to cancel.
What device? I’ve only used it on the Samsung S22 Ultra and the Pixel 7. IMO was a fantastic experience.
Device doesn’t matter, the app sucks. It doesn’t even have volume normalization. You just get hit with a sound blast out of nowhere because you had to turn it up to hear the previous song.
I love Tidal + Plex. I already had a Plex server set up, but the integration with tidal is great. Good music quality, pays the artists well, and no gaps in the library that aren’t also there in the other services. When you add Plex you can then fill in those gaps with your own music files.
I’ve recently started hosting my music on Jellyfin and using the symfonium app for android. Symfonium is pretty nice and handles offline files well, plus it has a ton of hosting options including Plex, even some experimental options like dropbox
Deezer
Youtube music after you uploaded your personal library there, it was how I used play music before.
Navidrome
Airsonic or plexamp
