I want to do a write-up of my music streaming journey, why Spotify sucks and where I have ended up. We have to go back fifteen years. I was interviewed in my local newspaper and the topic was illegal file sharing. I argued that piracy is mostly a service problem, and I saw the emergence of music streaming as a possible solution. At the time, it was both very expensive and a hassle to buy music. Spotify had just released their beta. I remember that I was surfing a bunch of forums to get an invite, before the service opened for the public. I got an invite, and that was the start of my music streaming journey (relevant fun fact: Spotify started with pirated music).

My journey

After pitching Spotify and the likes as the future, I was laughed at. The industry was saying that streaming was killing the music industry, only slower, because of the small pay cut artists get. People I knew were saying that it was too expensive/too many ads, the quality was too poor and the selection was lacking. And a bunch of artists did not want to release their music on Spotify because of the small cut. I however, loved it. I still bought music in physical format, but Spotify was just so convenient that it started to take over as the main way I consumed music.

Then along came my beloved WiMP. They were developed in Norway by the music chain store I used to frequent, they paid the artists better, they had focus on editorial content, higher music quality and I got a discounted subscription through my phone provider. The switch was a no-brainer. There were not that many people using Spotify at the time either, so the network effect had not kicked in yet. I fucking loved WiMP! Even though it got harder for each year, because Spotify grew in popularity and claimed more market share. Spotify got some neat features which WiMP was lacking, there were some music missing and it was a hassle sharing music when my friends used Spotify. But I stuck by WiMP. Until they were aquired by Jay-Z. Then they changed their name to something people might be more familiar with: Tidal. And it kinda sucked. I stayed with Tidal for a little while. But eventually, the network effect, hassle of sharing music with friends and most of all Spotify Wrapped (I am a sucker for nice looking stats) made me jump back to Spotify. Where I stayed for a while. Until I in good concience couldn’t stay anymore.

Why Spotify sucks

Oh boy, where to start. Well, let’s start with the money. As a musician myself, I have always been aware of how little Spotify actually pays. And Spotify is not alone in this. All the major streaming platforms offer lousy pay. This was an important reason why I went with WiMP/Tidal, who pays more per play. In 2023, Spotify payed about $0.003 per play. The last straw for me was when they announced that tracks needs 1000 plays before earning money. The reason? To combat AI/bots/farming. And indie artists with less than 1000 plays would not see that money anyways, because their distributor would take the cut. What a shit argument. This was nothing other than stealing money from the smaller artists and redistributing it to bigger artists. And Spotify themselves. There are other ways to prevent farming that doesn’t screw over smaller artists. I run a record label, and I would estimate that 2/3 of our catalogue has under 1000 plays. But we are a collective where we pool our income. So even though we are talking about small sums, it adds up. And this change is just fucking us over. But according to Spotify, that is fine because smaller artists won’t need those pennies anyway.

Then there was the whole podcast debacle. Spotify wanted to focus on podcast, so they bought Gimlet Media, a popular podcast network, to help them out. Spotify then negotiated a bunch of exclusive deals to ensure that podcasts could only be found on their platform. Things didn’t work out, so they just absorbed Gimlet, fired most of them and canceled a bunch of great podcasts (I am so happy that Heavyweight found a new home and started up again. Fuck you Spotify for screwing over my favorite podcast). I fucking hate that podcasts are walled in to these gardens. And of course they put a bunch of money on platforming controversial voices like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate. I don’t think I need to say anything more.

The whole pulling out of Uruguay because of a fair pay for artists law was also a bit tasteless. Thankfully they were able to bribe their way out and did in fact not leave after all.

Cramming AI everywhere they can, is what actually make the platform itself suck. There is a bunch of AI generated music slop, an AI “DJ”, AI playlists, and more. Everything is fucking AI, and it is soulless. As long as I can remember, there was a problem with artists adding huge artists as featured in their music, even though they were not. This made their release pop up on the huge artists discography. I remember a random small death metal band added Foo Fighters as featured artist, which made the release show up in my release radar. Now, with great inovation in tech, we have the same problem, only with AI-generated music slop. This time with dead artists, and seemingly endorsed by Spotify themselves. The future is now! Spotify has been releasing their own music for a while now. Before the AI-generated music, it was muzak created by real musicians, crammed into every playlist they could. That way, Spotify could keep the streaming money for themselves. Neat.

It also doesn’t help that their AI and video focus is fucking over the environment either. With the fantastic solution of just not publishing environmental costs anymore.

And the latest: Big boss Daniel Ek investing $700m in war technology. He also invested €100m in the same company in 2021. Don’t you just love music being converted to AI-powered killer drones? I sure do!

The search for a new home

Spotify was simply out of the question. I went back to Tidal, but my frustration over their apps grew every day. Their Android app sucks. Their Android TV app is one of the worst apps I have encountered on my TV. No Linux support, so I used their web player which was ok I guess. I often play music via Android TV (unfortunately, my stereo setup, record player and cassette player had to go) so having a shitty TV app was a huge anoyance. The app crashed all the time. I was about to write to support when I read the news: Tidal is laying off over 100 employees. Sacking hundred employees is not a recipe for improving your apps. So I decided to jump ship.

Then started the search for another music streaming platform. I haven’t mentioned that I use Bandcamp quite a bit, because I want to support smaller artists/band. Bandcamp is great for that, however, I also want a music platform with a good collection of music, not only niche stuff.

I researched, read a lot and tried different platforms. Apple Music seems good, and they pay better than most, but my impression was that if you are not in the Apple eco system, it sucks. So basically the good old days of iTunes all over again. I tried YouTube Music. Their pay is shit, but they are actually my biggest revenue source for my music, just by share volume. However, I hate Google and YouTube music is an abomination. I thought that Tidal was bad, but this was next level. Amazon I hate more than Google, so I didn’t even bother trying their music platform. Tried Deezer, and it was perfectly ok. I didn’t like how they pay even less than Spotify though. Since payouts are important to me, I checked out who has the best payout of them all. On top was Qobuz, which I had never heard of before and Napster. Yes, that Napster. They are doing a comeback as a music streaming platform. I first checked out Napster, because of their legacy. I wasn’t able to sign up for some reason, so I said fuck it and went on to Qobuz.

By the looks of it, Qobuz seemed nice. It’s a bit pricier than the others, but it has the best payout as well as hifi music. So they were already off to a good start. It also helped that I was able to both sign up and get a free trial. And I immediatly fell in love. It felt like I was right back to the good old days of WiMP. If WiMP had survived and kept with the times. Qobuz felt like a labour of love, made by nerds who truly love music. After the one month free trial was over, I was a paying subscriber and still am.

My impression of Qobuz

The initial allure of Qobuz was that they have the highest payout of the bunch, as well as hifi music. You are also able to buy albums in the app if you want to “own” them (you never really actually own digital products as you are at the mercy of the companies selling them to you) and pay the artist more. After trying it out, I would say that the greatest allure of Qobuz is the amazing editorial content and lack of invasive and shitty algorithms. I started to notice that on Spotify, I became a lazy listener, almost exclusivly listening to my daily mixes, etc. Those playlist gave me a small pool of artists I really love. It was easy to just put it on, and I knew it would be great. It did however make me lazy, not bothering discovering new music and I ended up listening to the same stuff over and over.

Importing your music from other services was a breeze. Qobuz has teamed up with soundiiz which takes care of importing your music from all the major streaming platforms. There is a button for it in Qobuz, that redirects you to Soundiiz with a voucher. It wasn’t perfect, but good enough for me.

I have to underline just how amazing the editorial content is! They have new releases handpicked by Qobuz staff, curated playlists, albums of the week and even a magazine with a bunch of great articles and recommendations. They have something called “Qobuz Essential Discography” which is an award given to the best records made and they have “Qobuzissime” (just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), an award for great emerging artists. This is what makes me feel like Qobuz is a labour of love, by a bunch of music nerds. They even have their own forum called Qobuz Club which is a great place for discussing music.

The most important aspect of Qobuz for me, is the fact that they gave me back the joy of discovering music again. I used to check out tons of new music, but the last couple of years I mostly just put on something comfortable. Something I knew. Or a generated playlist with the same songs I loved. But rarely did I put on something new, something to challenge me, something out of my tight little comfort zone. Qobuz brought all that back. It was just fun reading about music in the magazine. Each week there is an editor’s pick for album of the week, and the runner ups, grouped by genres and a short review. I got the feeling of reading Pitchfork and browsing /mu/, hungry for new great music.

The biggest drawback for Qobuz is sharing music with friends. I know exactly zero people in my life using Qobuz. When friends sends me stuff to check out, I mostly get a Spotify link. So I have to find what they are sending manually. And worse, if I am sending something, I have to convert the link to Spotify or YouTube. With Tidal it wasn’t such a big hassle, because I could use SongLink to fetch links to all platforms. But SongLink does not support Qobuz, and they don’t intend to either (I contacted them and asked). I wish there were something similar that supported Qobuz.

Qobuz: Pros and cons

Here’s a list of some of my pros and cons for Qobuz:

Pros

  • High sound quality (FLAC 24-Bit up to 192 kHz)
  • The highest payout of all music streaming platforms (it’s hard to know exactly, since the platforms does not actually share that information, but at least according to this article and others)
  • Amazing editorial content, curated playlists and showcasing artists/releases
  • No stupid and invasive algorithm shoveling you the same shit all the time
  • No AI slop
  • It really feels like a labour of love made from music nerds. Great music is actively highlighted
  • Qobuz Club, a cool and fun music forum for subscribers
  • They seem to be really responsive to input and it seems like stuff is constantly being improved. They have a dedicated button for feedback.
  • Qobuz Essential Discography and Qobuzissime awards for great albums
  • Qobuz Magazine with a dedicated magazine page in-app
  • A decent app which I don’t hate

Cons

  • I am missing some music in their catalog (However, I feel that all platforms do this to some degree. Kudos to Qobuz for having a dedicated button for reporting missing content)
  • Pictures, biographies and the like is missing for smaller artists. And I haven’t found an easy way to add my own as an artist. Tidal and Spotify have their own site you can sign up for to manage your artist page. I don’t think Qobuz have that.
  • I feel like the setup of an artists discography can be a bit messy. Especially on their Android TV app. To their defense, the TV app is still in beta and is under active development.
  • It’s sometimes a bit hard to find back to stuff I’ve listened to. I haven’t found a listening history function. I do have a search history at least. I just found the history tab by going to “Listening to” and the next tab to the left. Not very easy to find, but a really nice feature to have!
  • No lyrics for songs
  • The Qobuz Sonos app truly sucks, but I feel like that is more of a Sonos thing than a Qobuz thing.
  • No native Linux support. I have found some community made Flatpaks which supports hifi, so not a deal breaker
  • Daily and weekly playlist was really bad the first couple of months. They have become better now after using Qobuz for about half a year
  • Everyone else has Spotify so it is a real hassle to share music. SongLink do not support Qobuz and don’t plan to either.
  • No ability to add custom thumbnail to your playlist. This is a feature I think only Spotify supports though. It is a really small thing, but it is something I loved being able to do. I do get that it is a can of worms in regards to moderation and copyright infringement and the like, so I understand why most platforms disallow it.

Not sure

I’m not sure where to put these. I can’t make up my mind if they are good things or bad. Probably somewhere in-between.

First, lack of “artist essentials” playlists. On the one hand, I liked to be able to just play an essentials playlist to get the feel of an artist. Because the top songs are not necessarily the best representation of an artist. On the other hand, I felt like those playlists were contributing to my lazyness for discovering music. And curating what is considered essential songs are highly subjective and a huge job. Spotify has outsourced that job to AI, which I am not that keen on.

This might be a me-problem or some sort of Spotify Stockholm syndrome, but it sometimes feels like more work finding “just something to put on”. My partner still have Spotify, and when I’m not in the mood for anything particular, her generated Spotify playlist is great for just having something going in the background. At the same time, this is exactly what I wanted to get away from in the first place. My solution has been to listen more to radio lately. I think another solution would be to make myself some better playlists, I just haven’t bothered lately.

Wrapping up

I think it is important to support artists. And I think choosing a platform is a reflection of that support. Spotify are not a company that supports artists. It may say it does, but it doesn’t. Its mission is to generate as much money as possible, and music is its tool. I am not saying that Qobuz are not trying to earn money on music, but it is at least a platform that loves music, and it shows. I think that platforms like Bandcamp and direct support for artists are most important. Buy merch and go to concerts, that is the most important of all if you want to support artists you love. But for streaming platform goes, I think Qobuz is the best. I just wish they would create an easy way to share links across platforms. That would be a truly game changer, and it would break the network effect others have. And hopefully more people would be willing to leave the atrocity that is Spotify. And for the love of God Qobuz, don’t fuck up.