RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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There are loads of options for getting new music into your ears if you're fed up with Spotify.
Fair pay is far from the only drama surrounding Spotify, though. Founder and former CEO Daniel Ek (now the company's executive chairman) made waves last year with a $694 million investment in defense technology start-up Helsing; he's also now the company's chairman. That move brought what was probably the loudest backlash against Spotify yet, with some artists pulling their catalogs from the service. That didn't stop the company from continuing to grow, though — in the last quarter, revenue, profit and monthly active users all continued to increase.
Finally, Spotify's recent embrace of AI is troubling, to say the least. The company's lack of interest in doing any real policing of AI-generated content has led to AI music showing up all over the platform. The company says it will soon label AI-generated musicians as " AI Personas ," but that relies on the humans controlling those accounts to self-report. It'll also use human checks and AI-powered reviews on popular accounts to see if they should be marked as a "Likely AI Persona."
Separate to the influx of AI-generated music, there's also been a recent embrace of AI features for users that have questionable value. The app has had an AI-powered DJ for a few years now which is relatively harmless, and you can use natural language prompts to generate playlists as well. Probably the most distasteful of them comes via a licensing agreement with Universal that will let users create remixes and covers through AI. It'll be an add-on to Premium plans when it launches, so at least it'll theoretically generate more revenue for artists — but that's about the only saving grace.
If any of this has been on your mind, the good news is that there are tons of different ways to get music. Unfortunately, almost all of them come with caveats of their own, whether it's cost, convenience or just the headache of migrating your music to another service.
If you're concerned with how Spotify compensates the musicians on its platform and whether other similar services are "better," it's not a simple answer. While there's a lot of talk about what artists make per stream on Spotify and competitors like Apple Music, it's important to know that there isn't a set "per stream" number.
At a high level, music streamers put all of the money they receive from subscriptions (ad revenue for services with ad-support tiers also gets included) and take an initial cut. Spotify says it's "roughly" a third of that total revenue; that money goes into Spotify's pocket, but also pays for all the costs associated with the service. I haven't seen any streaming service say exactly what cut they take, but the ones I've talked to have all indicated that the 30-ish percent range is typical.
After that, streamers figure out what Spotify calls a "streamshare" by dividing an artist's total streams by the total streams on the platform. That gets you the percentage of the total pot an artist earns in a month, but the money usually does not go directly to the musician — it goes to their record label or publisher who then gives them a pre-negotiated percentage as part of their deal.
A few things to note about this process: This means that the money you pay to a streaming service every month doesn't just go to artists you listen to. So even if you streamed one single musician all month long, they might get more money thanks to more streams but your $12 is still getting distributed to others — that's how we end up in the whole "fractions of a penny per stream" world.
There are a host of other music-streaming services to consider if you want something similar to Spotify. Naturally, many of them come from the other technology giants: Apple, Amazon and YouTube all have streaming services with similar catalogs to Spotify and the same basic feature set. I personally prefer YouTube Music and Apple Music over Spotify for a few reasons that don't involve ethics. I like that I can add my own music files to both of those services and have them in my library alongside everything I have access to via my subscription. I also really appreciate that Apple Music is almost entirely focused on music, unlike Spotify which pushes podcasts and audiobooks at its users whether they want them or not.
Apple Music also offers Dolby Atmos playback, which sounds pretty great with the right equipment. YouTube Music doesn't have that or even lossless playback yet, but it makes up for that with the integration of the vast library of uploaded music content across YouTube proper. And a YouTube Premium subscription gets you ad-free YouTube playback and a handful of other perks alongside the full YouTube Music service. While YouTube Premium has gotten a lot more expensive in recent years, it's still a good value at $16/month if you're a frequent YouTube user.
Aside from YouTube Premium, the other big three options are a little cheaper than Spotify. Apple Music is $11/month, while Amazon and YouTube Music are both $12/month (Amazon Prime subscribers can save a buck per month). Of course, if you're considering leaving Spotify on ethical grounds, funneling your money to Apple, Amazon or Google isn't exactly shopping at an independent store by comparison. No judgment from me: there's no ethical consumption under late-stage capitalism. If you just want a music app with less AI and don't want to support a company whose founder is involved in the military industrial complex, these options are reasonable alternatives.
And while Tidal used to offer "direct artist payouts" where up to 10 percent of a user's subscription fee went directly to the musicians they listened to the most, this offering was discontinued in 2023. I asked Tidal for information on how they currently pay artists but received no response; it's safe to assume they use something similar to the "streamshare" revenue calculations detailed above.
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