5 ms·

Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists. People are staying on Spotify just because of inertia and because "everyone" is there, not because i

Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists. People are staying on Spotify just because of inertia and because "everyone" is there, not because it's the best at anything any more.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago
>Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists. You mean labels and distributors, the money goes through a lot of people before the artists see any of it.
- givinguflac 2y ago
  Actually Tidal has a partly direct to artist model, while Apple pays all labels the top-line rate instead of forcing smaller ones to accept less.
subarctic 2y ago
I got spotify a year ago because I needed an easy way to just put on some decent music from a playlist a friend sent me when I had people over. Since then I've realized that basically any song that I want to listen to is on there. Am I missing out on a better experience on some other platform? If so, which one and why is it better?
- theshrike79 2y ago
  Sound quality is better and they pay artists more. That's about it. UI quality is a subjective thing.
  - a-french-anon 2y ago
    > Sound quality is better According to https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/audio-quality/ https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/audio-quality/, you can get 256~320 kbps AAC, which is completely transparent if using a good AAC encoder (FDK or Apple qaac).
- AceyMan 2y ago
  I fired Spotify when they signed Rogan to that ridiculous contract, and I switched to Apple Music. Great UX, great audio quality. Not prefect, but better than what I left behind.
herbst 2y ago
It never was. The idea of using a limited catalog as the sole source of my music content is like assuming Netflix is all you need on a TV.
- terminalbraid 2y ago
  How can you say that? Spotify held a moment early on where it was built upon pirated mp3s. At that time it was the easy way to listen to anything for free.
  - herbst 2y ago
    I remember the time where there was no party without constant Spotify ads running over the speaker, that's the only type of free account I know of. Other than that my point was how incomplete it is and always was. It could be nice as additional catalogue to my music, but for me it's missing to many of my favourite songs to use it as main driver. Edit:// in Switzerland downloading music for private use is no crime. So the initial situation was different I guess.
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Spotify is from Sweden, not Switzerland. And they didn't start with illegal MP3s. They did have an ad-supported free tier from the start though. But it was not illegal. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify I think it's napster you're thinking of. That was an illegal sharing platform and now a mediocre paid service.
      - jfim 2y ago
        It might be Grooveshark that they're thinking of, it was notorious for quickly reuploading content that was taken down by DMCA requests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark
      - crtasm 2y ago
        Were the claims made in 2017 shown to be false? I haven't yet read the book - how widely accessible was the beta? https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files-some-from-pirate-bay-170509/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4136/Spotify-TeardownInside-the-Black-Box-of-Streaming https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4136/Spotify-TeardownInsid...
wkat4242 2y ago
I stay on Spotify because it has an open source client spotify-qt. I use Firefox on BSD which doesn't have DRM support so the web versions of Apple Music and Deezer don't work properly. On Apple it only plays the first 30 seconds of each song and I forget what the problem was with Deezer. Also a real app is way nicer than a web interface of course. And with libspotify I can even change songs that play on my mobile and control it through home assistant. None of the others allow third party clients or open source. Sure it's a niche reason but this is the reason I'm on Spotify and not somewhere else. I've tried other platforms for a month but it was crap. I only listen to big artists anyway that are well compensated.
- lutoma 2y ago
  Using Apple Music on Linux is a real pain point too. The web player is pretty decent in theory and I would be happy with it, except almost every time I open it I'm logged out even though I checked the "Remember me" and "Trust this browser" options, and last used the app only a few hours ago/on the previous day. Having to go through the iPhone two factor dance every time I want to just play music is so annoying that it's made me consider going back to Spotify.
- AHTERIX5000 2y ago
  Spotify deprecated libspotify years ago and all current clients are using some unsupported reverse engineered client implementation or web APIs.
- PcChip 2y ago
  Use play.qobuz.com in Firefox. It will even send the correct samplerate to pipewire which can auto switch your dac to it if you’ve enabled it in pipewire config
explain 2y ago
Spotify pays 70% of their revenue to music rights holders.
- nojito 2y ago
  Which is much less than Apple and Tidal.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Tidal is in a downwards spiral because they are running out of money, Apple subsidisies Apple Music with profits from other parts of the company. The pot splitting model Spotify uses is definitely not good but the major labels are the ones with all the power, without pot splitting they wouldn't accept licencing to Spotify because they would make less money. At every filthy corner of the music industry you'll find a very sore spot: the big 4 labels control this industry. From fucking with artists where contracts requiring artists to pay back all "marketing and fees" before any royalties are distributed, royalties split usually 80:20 or 70:30 for label:artist, forcing artists to make their songs viral before they can be released (without much marketing support from the labels, the only reason they exist). It's a passion industry, and just like any other passion industry it's fraught with exploitation. Just look at game development, underpaid, overworked, because there's always someone else with passion to make a game.
    - nojito 2y ago
      How is any of that relevant when Apple Music pays artists much more than Spotify?
      - piva00 2y ago
        They subsidise that from other parts of the business though. Also they don't technically pay artists aside from the self-released ones, most artists with bigger payouts aren't self-released so Apple Music just like Spotify is filling major labels coffers more than the artists' pockets That's all relevant on the comparison of why Apple Music can pay more than Spotify, unsure what you didn't get but willing to clarify.
surgical_fire 2y ago
Never tried Tidal. What makes it better? I refuse to use anything Apple out of principle.
- bl4kers 2y ago
  Better artist payouts, clean layout, no podcast pushing, higher quality audio, emphasis on credits so there's more discoverability based on writers and producers. Slightly lower price for the same catalog size.
- nothercastle 2y ago
  Worse ui and integration slight better discovery
  - pjerem 2y ago
    Interesting, I find the UI to be better than Spotify. Not good, but better. For Spotify, which I’ve been a paid subscriber from basically day one, the UI went downhill from incredibly great (I do have fond memories of the first client in Qt) to a total mess without any consistency. Tidal is just a stagnant mess. Apple Music is not better. I guess we are just suffering from the fact that UI are not made anymore to be useful but to influence customers behaviors.
    - nothercastle 2y ago
      Yes all these ui appear to be designed to create the appearance of usefulness but to frustrate the customer when they try to use the service in any way that does not result in the lowest fees.
- timeon 2y ago
  > out of principle I would assume that people with 'principles' would not use any of these subscription companies.
  - bovermyer 2y ago
midtake 2y ago
Apple Music has more live radio streams featuring artists too, and the Apple Music 1 radio features real live commentators. Whoever is at the controls for Music over at Apple is someone who really cares about music.
- threeseed 2y ago
  It's Zane Lowe who was a highly respected music presenter in the UK. He's very knowledgable about music, great interviewer and seems to be in his element.
threeseed 2y ago
Also Apple Music and Tidal have high bit-rate, lossless audio. Once you've tried it there's no turning back.
- anothername12 2y ago
  And classical music gets proper special treatment! People have been begging for that for ages on Spotify’s forum…
barbazoo 2y ago
> Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists. Seems like Apple pays 3x what Spotify pays? It can't be as simple as that though.
- kalleboo 2y ago
  Spotify has a free tier, which pays way less since it's ad-supported. Apple Music is pay only (with only a 3 month free trial)
edm0nd 2y ago
Tidal operates at a loss of something like $xx-xxx million a year. Who cares if it pays artists more if its not even successful. All they are really doing is using VC money to pay artists a lil bit more to seem more enticing.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Well, as long as I’ve got my music, it’ll be a good deal to me. I mean, respectfully, I really don’t care about their profitability if : 1) I get to pay reasonable price 2) artists are paid a reasonable prices 3) VCs are ok to throw money at it for any reason. On the current state of affairs, everyone is happy (or at least happier than Spotify). Is it future proof ? Probably not, but it’s a little more present proof than Spotify. If someday this equation changes or the company collapses, well, I’ll just go elsewhere. And if the industry is not capable in itself to handle the use case of paying a monthly fee to be able to listen to music while remunerating artists, given that humanity in general never paid as much money just for music in the whole human history, it would just mean that they are incredibly stupid and that they deserve the piracy.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  So did Spotify. It's the usual VC funded startup scam. At least a new player means artists and users are slightly more screwed over than before, until this batch of VC money runs dry. Fortunately, unlike with e.g. Uber or Grubhub & similar, the music streaming startups aren't screwing society over by destroying more sustainable local competition, so I think in this case, the best course of action is to make full use of all the freebies and best deals in this space, because the more VC money we burn, the better off we (users) and artists are. It'll eventually collapse, too, but there won't be a fallout, since all those companies do right now is compete with each other over distribution rights. The songs won't go away.
laserbeam 2y ago
I stay on Spotify because Tidal's search is bad. Whenever I fire it up and search for music I literally have to type the full artist name sometimes. If I'm off by 1 letter it will often not find the song for me. This is especially true when not searching for particularly unpopular tracks. I would have switched to Tidal ages ago if I could actually find music when I wanted it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
unshavedyak 2y ago
I don't use Apple Music because Spotify has an app on everything i want. All OSs, even consoles. I'd switch to Apple in a heartbeat if it had a good client for Linux.

Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists. People are staying on Spotify just because of inertia and because "everyone" is there, not because it's the best at anything any more.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

>Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists. You mean labels and distributors, the money goes through a lot of people before the artists see any of it.

givinguflac 2y ago
Actually Tidal has a partly direct to artist model, while Apple pays all labels the top-line rate instead of forcing smaller ones to accept less.

subarctic 2y ago

I got spotify a year ago because I needed an easy way to just put on some decent music from a playlist a friend sent me when I had people over. Since then I've realized that basically any song that I want to listen to is on there. Am I missing out on a better experience on some other platform? If so, which one and why is it better?

theshrike79 2y ago
Sound quality is better and they pay artists more. That's about it. UI quality is a subjective thing.
- a-french-anon 2y ago
  > Sound quality is better According to https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/audio-quality/ https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/audio-quality/, you can get 256~320 kbps AAC, which is completely transparent if using a good AAC encoder (FDK or Apple qaac).
AceyMan 2y ago
I fired Spotify when they signed Rogan to that ridiculous contract, and I switched to Apple Music. Great UX, great audio quality. Not prefect, but better than what I left behind.

herbst 2y ago

It never was. The idea of using a limited catalog as the sole source of my music content is like assuming Netflix is all you need on a TV.

terminalbraid 2y ago
How can you say that? Spotify held a moment early on where it was built upon pirated mp3s. At that time it was the easy way to listen to anything for free.
- herbst 2y ago
  I remember the time where there was no party without constant Spotify ads running over the speaker, that's the only type of free account I know of. Other than that my point was how incomplete it is and always was. It could be nice as additional catalogue to my music, but for me it's missing to many of my favourite songs to use it as main driver. Edit:// in Switzerland downloading music for private use is no crime. So the initial situation was different I guess.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Spotify is from Sweden, not Switzerland. And they didn't start with illegal MP3s. They did have an ad-supported free tier from the start though. But it was not illegal. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify I think it's napster you're thinking of. That was an illegal sharing platform and now a mediocre paid service.
    - jfim 2y ago
      It might be Grooveshark that they're thinking of, it was notorious for quickly reuploading content that was taken down by DMCA requests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooveshark
    - crtasm 2y ago
      Were the claims made in 2017 shown to be false? I haven't yet read the book - how widely accessible was the beta? https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files-some-from-pirate-bay-170509/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4136/Spotify-TeardownInside-the-Black-Box-of-Streaming https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4136/Spotify-TeardownInsid...

wkat4242 2y ago

I stay on Spotify because it has an open source client spotify-qt. I use Firefox on BSD which doesn't have DRM support so the web versions of Apple Music and Deezer don't work properly. On Apple it only plays the first 30 seconds of each song and I forget what the problem was with Deezer. Also a real app is way nicer than a web interface of course. And with libspotify I can even change songs that play on my mobile and control it through home assistant. None of the others allow third party clients or open source. Sure it's a niche reason but this is the reason I'm on Spotify and not somewhere else. I've tried other platforms for a month but it was crap. I only listen to big artists anyway that are well compensated.

lutoma 2y ago
Using Apple Music on Linux is a real pain point too. The web player is pretty decent in theory and I would be happy with it, except almost every time I open it I'm logged out even though I checked the "Remember me" and "Trust this browser" options, and last used the app only a few hours ago/on the previous day. Having to go through the iPhone two factor dance every time I want to just play music is so annoying that it's made me consider going back to Spotify.
AHTERIX5000 2y ago
Spotify deprecated libspotify years ago and all current clients are using some unsupported reverse engineered client implementation or web APIs.
PcChip 2y ago
Use play.qobuz.com in Firefox. It will even send the correct samplerate to pipewire which can auto switch your dac to it if you’ve enabled it in pipewire config

explain 2y ago

Spotify pays 70% of their revenue to music rights holders.

nojito 2y ago
Which is much less than Apple and Tidal.
- piva00 2y ago
  Tidal is in a downwards spiral because they are running out of money, Apple subsidisies Apple Music with profits from other parts of the company. The pot splitting model Spotify uses is definitely not good but the major labels are the ones with all the power, without pot splitting they wouldn't accept licencing to Spotify because they would make less money. At every filthy corner of the music industry you'll find a very sore spot: the big 4 labels control this industry. From fucking with artists where contracts requiring artists to pay back all "marketing and fees" before any royalties are distributed, royalties split usually 80:20 or 70:30 for label:artist, forcing artists to make their songs viral before they can be released (without much marketing support from the labels, the only reason they exist). It's a passion industry, and just like any other passion industry it's fraught with exploitation. Just look at game development, underpaid, overworked, because there's always someone else with passion to make a game.
  - nojito 2y ago
    How is any of that relevant when Apple Music pays artists much more than Spotify?
    - piva00 2y ago
      They subsidise that from other parts of the business though. Also they don't technically pay artists aside from the self-released ones, most artists with bigger payouts aren't self-released so Apple Music just like Spotify is filling major labels coffers more than the artists' pockets That's all relevant on the comparison of why Apple Music can pay more than Spotify, unsure what you didn't get but willing to clarify.

surgical_fire 2y ago

Never tried Tidal. What makes it better? I refuse to use anything Apple out of principle.

bl4kers 2y ago
Better artist payouts, clean layout, no podcast pushing, higher quality audio, emphasis on credits so there's more discoverability based on writers and producers. Slightly lower price for the same catalog size.
nothercastle 2y ago
Worse ui and integration slight better discovery
- pjerem 2y ago
  Interesting, I find the UI to be better than Spotify. Not good, but better. For Spotify, which I’ve been a paid subscriber from basically day one, the UI went downhill from incredibly great (I do have fond memories of the first client in Qt) to a total mess without any consistency. Tidal is just a stagnant mess. Apple Music is not better. I guess we are just suffering from the fact that UI are not made anymore to be useful but to influence customers behaviors.
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    Yes all these ui appear to be designed to create the appearance of usefulness but to frustrate the customer when they try to use the service in any way that does not result in the lowest fees.
timeon 2y ago
> out of principle I would assume that people with 'principles' would not use any of these subscription companies.
- bovermyer 2y ago

midtake 2y ago

Apple Music has more live radio streams featuring artists too, and the Apple Music 1 radio features real live commentators. Whoever is at the controls for Music over at Apple is someone who really cares about music.

threeseed 2y ago
It's Zane Lowe who was a highly respected music presenter in the UK. He's very knowledgable about music, great interviewer and seems to be in his element.

threeseed 2y ago

Also Apple Music and Tidal have high bit-rate, lossless audio. Once you've tried it there's no turning back.

anothername12 2y ago
And classical music gets proper special treatment! People have been begging for that for ages on Spotify’s forum…

barbazoo 2y ago

> Apple Music and Tidal play multiple times more to artists. Seems like Apple pays 3x what Spotify pays? It can't be as simple as that though.

kalleboo 2y ago
Spotify has a free tier, which pays way less since it's ad-supported. Apple Music is pay only (with only a 3 month free trial)

edm0nd 2y ago

Tidal operates at a loss of something like $xx-xxx million a year. Who cares if it pays artists more if its not even successful. All they are really doing is using VC money to pay artists a lil bit more to seem more enticing.

pjerem 2y ago
Well, as long as I’ve got my music, it’ll be a good deal to me. I mean, respectfully, I really don’t care about their profitability if : 1) I get to pay reasonable price 2) artists are paid a reasonable prices 3) VCs are ok to throw money at it for any reason. On the current state of affairs, everyone is happy (or at least happier than Spotify). Is it future proof ? Probably not, but it’s a little more present proof than Spotify. If someday this equation changes or the company collapses, well, I’ll just go elsewhere. And if the industry is not capable in itself to handle the use case of paying a monthly fee to be able to listen to music while remunerating artists, given that humanity in general never paid as much money just for music in the whole human history, it would just mean that they are incredibly stupid and that they deserve the piracy.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
So did Spotify. It's the usual VC funded startup scam. At least a new player means artists and users are slightly more screwed over than before, until this batch of VC money runs dry. Fortunately, unlike with e.g. Uber or Grubhub & similar, the music streaming startups aren't screwing society over by destroying more sustainable local competition, so I think in this case, the best course of action is to make full use of all the freebies and best deals in this space, because the more VC money we burn, the better off we (users) and artists are. It'll eventually collapse, too, but there won't be a fallout, since all those companies do right now is compete with each other over distribution rights. The songs won't go away.

laserbeam 2y ago

I stay on Spotify because Tidal's search is bad. Whenever I fire it up and search for music I literally have to type the full artist name sometimes. If I'm off by 1 letter it will often not find the song for me. This is especially true when not searching for particularly unpopular tracks. I would have switched to Tidal ages ago if I could actually find music when I wanted it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

unshavedyak 2y ago

I don't use Apple Music because Spotify has an app on everything i want. All OSs, even consoles. I'd switch to Apple in a heartbeat if it had a good client for Linux.