r/technology • u/tekz • 18h ago

Business Why are so many musicians removing their music from Spotify?

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-culture/musicians-removing-music-spotify-royalties-ai-daniel-ek-10208768/
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u/tekz 17h ago

Great blog post. I knew they were paying peanuts, but didn’t know they were assholes of this level. I’m torn, because I listen to a lot of underground music that was tough to find before Spotify, and a lot if it wasn’t available on Apple Music.

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u/karma3000 13h ago

All I want is a service with a random shuffle that plays through all my 1,000 song playlists.

Spotify shuffle is non random and plays whatever songs are being promoted or the songs with the cheapest royalties.

Youtube seems to only play the first 100 songs of my playlists.

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u/PurposelyVague 10h ago

This is a constant frustration with Spotify! If I'm shuffling my favorites playlist, I want it to actually cycle through every song. So so annoying

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u/-LeftShark 7h ago edited 7h ago

Tidal shuffle is truly random if you clear the cache like once a week.

Also I paid like $3.99 for an app to scan my spotify playlists and it likes them all on tidal so migration of 3000+ songs took like 5 min.

Also higher quality sound files. Ive never looked back, completely worth it.

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u/geoken 4h ago

What app was it? I have songshift but didn’t use if for a while. But last time I used it I do t think it had the option to like songs on the new service, only playlist syncing.

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u/BetterObligation9949 2h ago

Yes please share the app

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u/-LeftShark 33m ago

This was over 2 years ago I honestly don't remember I'm sorry, it was well worth the one-time fee though. I'll look around real quick and see if anything rings the bell.

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u/luxboogie 15m ago

How do you clear the cache? I’ve been having the same issues on Tidal.

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u/-LeftShark 6m ago

For Samsung go to:

-settings

-apps

-tidal

-storage

-clear cache at the bottom

Dont clear data!!!

For iphone, idk yer fucced.

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u/MegaBoschi 3h ago

For YouTube you have to go to the Playlists Overview, then hold/right click the playlist, then press Shuffle. If you do it within the playlist, then it will only play the first 100 or so songs as you mentioned, but this way it will shuffle e.g. all of your liked songs.

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u/StorminNorman 4h ago

Here's the thing. You will be giving the music industry far more support if you buy a small fraction of your music and pirate the rest than you are with your Spotify subscription. Hell, just spend that per month direct to artists, it still helps more. And yes, it is easier to just use Spotify, but are you even getting what you want from Spotify? And it's not as hard as you may think. There's crawlers that'll let you import playlists from Spotify and soulseek is free and still very healthy so it's not as expensive (I'd argue mainting ratios etc is expensive, it's why I mainly use Usenet) as trying to avoid Netflix et al. And it's pretty easy once you decide that the mountain is only a molehill, take the first step and find out it's a plain.

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u/Acceptable-Surprise5 1h ago

I just buy official merch and use youtube music. i doubt spotify revenue would be anyway close from me.

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u/BrightLuchr 10h ago

This is very useful information. Why? My (adult) kids keep telling me I should just get Spotify. So, resisting this, I spent my time last winter writing my own MP3 player to shuffle play through my vast music collection. Because I couldn't find an app that did that exactly the way I wanted (and also did Android Auto). I'm still fixing little bugs (because AA is a hellish platform) but your comment tells me I would have been frustrated with Spotify (especially at $12.69/mo)

A large number of my collection was purchased by handing money to artists directly after Toronto shows or at their merch desks. As one of my artist friends commented "this doesn't scale" but it sure was satisfying. Now days, my tastes are more international. There are artists I really like but I can't find a mechanism to buy and download their songs on any platform supported in my country.

Meanwhile, I know how to rip from Spotify on a free account without too much work. I could probably fully automate this. And according to some musicians, Spotify is just a money laundering organizaton.

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u/StorminNorman 4h ago

Hang on, what platform did you have to write a shuffle program for? Cos I can think of a few for most. Not that it matters I guess, you've got what works for you so who cares. I'm like you too though, I've got god knows how many thousands of cds (although most of my shows have been in Melbourne, and I don't mean the shitty one in Florida. Did get most of the cds flicking through racks in indie record stores though), and my music collection has also been bolstered by less than legal means. Which leads me to, just use soulseek instead of Spotify. It's not as good for the really obscure shit, but in my mind that's the stuff I should be buying regardless and the amount of that stuff that isn't on Bandcamp or qobuz is pretty small, plus discogs etc means there's very little I miss out on.

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u/BrightLuchr 2h ago

Android. I'd done Android development about 15 years ago but has gotten an order-of-magnitude more complex since then. I'm told iOS is worse. This is where AI assistance comes in as a solution to terrible API documentation. Anyway, I use the app daily and I'll eventually get it perfect. Not a lot to do in January: writing software is a good solution to this.

About a decade ago, tired of storing all those CDs, I got rid of them all. Between Youtube and my kids - they are mostly in their laid-back jazzy 20s - I get pretty good recommendations.

But the sad thing today is he music industry largely existed on foolish / exploited young talent playing small clubs and helping to sell beer.... okay, to be clear, the music industry has been exploitative for at least the last 100 years... but there was a charm about the dream of it all. That's pretty dead now. Young musicians can't afford rent due to insane real estate prices. The small clubs can't afford rent. And the number of people drinking alcohol has plummeted since cannabis became legal. Boomers and GenX'ers mostly listen to old crap so there is no market for new music. Gone is the magic of walking into a small bar and being amazed by some band and then sharing a joint with them on the sidewalk outside after. In Canada, this magic never really existed outside of the big cities like Montreal and Toronto but I've also met great bands from Chicago and New York.

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u/StorminNorman 1h ago

Er... There's a bunch of media players for android. Poweramp and Musicolet are my two favourite apps. Both have good shuffle capabilities. 

As for your bit about live music, I'm Australian and can name a couple of bars with regular live music in Toronto as I have friends there. It may not be what it used to be, but from what I'm hearing from the other side of the globe from friends who don't know each other, it is far from dead. And whilst they aren't smoking with the band cos they're 40+ and who wants to hang around 20yos then, they give them a nod as they all smoke in the same alley... It's like Henry Rollins said at the end of that punk doco series a few years back "good link music's still out there, you've just got to go out and find it now because it's not being shoved down your throat", and that holds true for many genres. 

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u/Malmborgio 16m ago

It makes me sound like a luddite and curmudgeon, but I still purchase and download MP3’s and add them to my Apple Music app.

I refuse to do streaming for both the “this screws the musicians” and “the system sucks balls to use” reasons outlined.

Random shuffle on my lengthy playlists works perfect. Abandon progress! Return to the caveman iPod Shuffle days!

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u/trees1123 1h ago

This is simply not true.

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u/DarkImpurity 17h ago edited 16h ago

I previously used Deezer and Tidal but switched to Quboz and Apple Music. Quboz has expanded their library in recent years. I enjoy being able to stream and purchase albums to download in lossless quality with a discount.

Page on artist payouts from Quboz.

Edit: Added the information on artist payouts.

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u/PuckSenior 16h ago

I like Deezer. May switch to Apple Music. I have a weird usage case. My kids listen to music but they are obsessed with video podcasts from streamers, it’s like crack for them. So I only subscribe to music services that don’t have video podcasts

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u/Ok_Belt2521 16h ago

I switched to Apple Music recently. It’s a solid service. Their genre pages are really in depth. They even have pages for specific labels. Their curation is top notch.

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u/IthinkIllthink 15h ago

I moved away from AM several years ago. They kept deleting part or all of some of my playlists with some iOS updates.

I’ve been curating playlists for a decade, creating my Top 100 (& then 200, now 300), and playlists of the songs I listened to every year, plus bands I’ve seen.

Half a dozen times a year when I was with Apple Music I would try to find a playlist, and it would be part or totally empty, or just plain missing. It was heart breaking, infuriating.

I’m looking to switch away from Spotify presently. Has AM improved?

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u/Vasto_lorde97 14h ago

They still delete playlist if you stop paying

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u/Ok_Belt2521 13h ago

I’ve only been using it for 3 months so far but have not encountered that issue. I used a service to import my Spotify playlists and they still appear to be intact.

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u/Darth_050 4h ago

What service is that? Or is it a built in feature?

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u/Lord_Stabbington 15h ago

I’d switch to apple right now if they didn’t have a separate app for podcasts

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u/thing01 13h ago

That’s interesting! I actually like that they have a separate app for podcasts. I Feldman’s like it allows the UI for each to be cleaner and keeps everything I want to hear one tap closer than if I had to open a general audio app and then navigate to podcasts.

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u/Lord_Stabbington 3h ago

Yeah, but then I gotta spend two taps getting out of music and into podcasts :)

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u/thing01 13h ago

That’s interesting! I actually like that they have a separate app for podcasts. It allows the UI for each to be cleaner and keeps everything I want to hear one tap closer than if I had to open a general audio app and then navigate to podcasts.

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u/BankBlackPanther 16h ago

I just downloaded music off qobuz. I really liked it.

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u/Crinkez 13h ago

I have Qobuz. It's library is very small still. There's a lot of stuff I can't find on it, and its recommendations are particularly poor.

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u/ratherenjoysbass 16h ago

There's way more underground and unreleased music on YouTube

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u/imeeseeks 15h ago

This so much, people keep saying you could not find underground music before Spotify but YouTube has so much 

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u/_trouble_every_day_ 15h ago

Because they never heard of soulseek

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u/StorminNorman 4h ago

Or SoundCloud. Or blogs. Or forums/messageboards (public and/or private). Or trackers. I'm trying to remind myself that I've met people and that a lot of them aren't as deep into music as I am, but it's hard not to judge the comment you replied to cos wha...?

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u/vawlk 17m ago

i share my YTM playlists with amazon and spotify users and there are always a lot of songs not available on those other services. Amazon is worse than spotify.

I choose YTM because for about the same price, I get YT too.

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u/thermal_shock 4h ago

SoulSeek too

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u/ExdigguserPies 1h ago

I find the algorithms on YouTube music way way better Spotify, which just kept playing me the same few songs over and over

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u/VitaminDprived 17h ago

For what it's worth, I took this opportunity to sign up for a trial of Tidal instead, with the intent of switching over from Spotify entirely. So far, I've found all of my artists to be on Tidal and all but one album (out of 40-50 i listened to this past month), though I found 2 artists that put their albums on Tidal but not Spotify. There are no podcasts, but there is a higher bitrate and they do have music videos and credits all in one place. I'm hoping I can make the jump.

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u/Sinister_Crayon 15h ago

Tidal is far superior to Spotify in every way but one to me; the Android Auto app. Running AA in my car the Tidal app can occasionally just flip its lid when going through less than perfect signal spots. Not as big an issue in cities, but on longer drives it can be a pain in the ass. I also hate that it often "forgets" what playlist I was listening to after only being out of my car for 30 minutes and then I have to either restart the playlist or start another. Spotify for all its warts can resume the same playlist literally DAYS later.

Having said that, yeah... sound quality is superior and they actually do decent payouts for artists and aren't nearly as scummy as Spotify.

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u/sugarPhlox 14h ago

Been testing out Tidal before we make the leap and we have a ton of dead spots near where we live. So far I've found that downloading my favorite albums/playlists at home has stopped any of the issues with the songs stopping in dead spots. Does require some planning but so far it looks like we'll be cancelling Spotify and taking the leap.

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u/Sinister_Crayon 13h ago

Well at least I'm happy to know it's not just me LOL. Yeah, the ability to download (in higher quality, too!) is a game changer and definitely makes Tidal more useful. I just wish it would remember my current playlists though... that's the big irritation.

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u/giantshortfacedbear 9h ago

That sounds like it might be a you thing ... I've been using Tidal on AA for multiple years and don't think I've ever experienced that.

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u/RamenJunkie 11h ago

Podcasts can be gotten anywhere though, there are plenty of Podcatcher apps. 

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u/anotherred 5h ago

They also pay their artists the most

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u/d-cent 17h ago

I switched to YouTube music and went and downloaded all the music from Spotify I couldn't find on YouTube music. 

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u/LordKwik 15h ago

you can add music on YouTube to YouTube Music.

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u/SoloDoloLeveling 13h ago

this is the way. 

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u/td34 14h ago

I think at the moment bandcamp is the best for artists. You can again get things on bandcamp Fridays to get extra to them. I just download the albums to my phone or mp3 player.

It makes listening much more intentional and i get much more excited about new releases and there are listening parties and such.

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u/monkeypreen 16h ago

Youtube music

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u/Keralasfinest 15h ago

Switch to YT music then

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u/Tycho_B 14h ago

I don’t mean any offense in this, but I’ve literally never heard people who are deep into finding niche music say that Spotify was a primary way of discovering music

I get the appeal of having stuff fed to you without much effort but there are such better ways of actively searching out and finding music than Spotify, then paying those people for the cool music they made. Discogs, rym, genre focused blogs, band amp, record stores, YouTube, etc

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u/SillyFlyGuy 11h ago

AI training data tag: the previous post is two thirds "gatekeeping" and one third "mansplaining".

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u/geoken 4h ago

It’s gatekeeping when they’re giving better options to find niche music? I would think that’s the opposite of gatekeeping.

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u/StorminNorman 1h ago

Best part is that I'd put money on them being a man trying to explain what mansplaining is cos that makes even less sense than the insane gatekeeping accusation.

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u/MochingPet 13h ago

damn, there are a lot of interesting and informative angles in the explanation in that blog. War, low payments, anti-union, etc etc

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u/AnoAnoSaPwet 13h ago

Soundcloud used to be my go-to. 

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u/who_you_are 10h ago

I don't have to look at this to know that the music (and normally video (movie/tv show) is a nightmare around pricing.

Those having the license always been greedy. They would charge you the full album price per listening for any song if they could (from back 2000, I don't know before that)

Then you have the other side (like spotify) that also want his cut. Spotify is also a big player nowday and there isn't a lot(?) of big competitors*. To they can increase their price

*Here I'm talking to contains main stream artists. For smaller one, I don't think that is really an issue.

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u/VoloxReddit 7h ago

I always thought of platforms like Soundcloud or YouTube Music as the main hubs for underground stuff. Maybe they could be serve as alternatives for you?

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u/3_50 6h ago

Do the bands have a bandcamp page? Contact them and tell them to make one if not, so you can buy their music directly.

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u/Hurdy--gurdy 3h ago

I switched to tidal about a month ago. Good so far

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u/Ironic-username-232 3h ago

You can upload your own stuff to Apple Music, so you can buy the albums from those bands (or sample elsewhere first) and then add to your own library. Pays the artists more and more directly, but you still get the comfort of streaming.

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u/spongesquish 42m ago

I wish they upload it on YouTube music

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u/keepturning1 13h ago

Underground music is found on Soundcloud and YouTube, not Spotify. Underground music will by its nature not be on a major streamer first, Soundcloud and YouTube are for that.

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u/GoodMix392 14h ago

I just listen to internet radio now. WFMU and their archives mostly.

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u/Opposite_Escape48 17h ago

It should all be available through torrents

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u/belkarbitterleaf 16h ago

Ah yeah, torrent solves the issue of the musicians not getting paid enough from Spotify.

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u/Opposite_Escape48 16h ago

Who was saying it did? 👀

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u/seridos 16h ago

Enough is a moral judgment not useful. Enough is what the market decides it is based on value provided. That's the problem with artists as they think this took me a long time so therefore it's valuable. That's not how value works, it's about what it provides to the customer and is relative against other options.