an appeal to abandon Spotify
24d 22h ago by lemmy.ml/u/JoYo in technology@lemmy.ml
We are in a golden era for buying and selling digital LPs. While I’ll use Bandcamp, sleek alternatives like Ampwall, Subvert, and Mirlo are equally great options. These online markets inherently incentivize artists to avoid filler or risk losing a sale, while the subscription streaming model requires artists to pad their catalog for pay per play. Streaming has revived the worst trope of the old music industry: the album that is just "two hits and a bunch of crap."
Spotify’s business model demands album filler because the platform pays out royalties based on "stream share" which trigger a payout the second a track hits the 30 second mark, incentivizing artists to maximize volume over value. This has fundamentally warped modern songwriting: albums are aggressively padded with short, two minute tracks and repetitive hooks designed specifically to feed the algorithm and inflate stream counts. On Spotify, a deep, cohesive artistic statement takes a back seat to sheer data output, turning what should be a focused LP into a bloated playlist of algorithmic bait.
Accidental hits happen way more often than you’d think. As it turns out, artists are notoriously bad at predicting their own success. When you buy a digital LP on a platform like Bandcamp, you are investing in a complete and curated piece of art where even the tracks the artist never expected to blow up exist naturally as part of a cohesive story. On subscription services like Spotify, those same happy accidents are treated like lottery tickets while surrounded by cynical, algorithm optimized filler designed just to farm streams. Buying the album ensures you are experiencing those unexpected gems as genuine creative discoveries, rather than digging through algorithmic bloat to find them.
Bandcamp serves the genre; streaming serves the algorithm. When producers target platforms like Spotify, artistic nuances like tempo variations and volume dynamics are sacrificed to strict LUFS loudness standards and predictable, club friendly danceability. This algorithmic pressure strips electronic and club music of its experimental edge, forcing tracks into a uniform, compressed sonic mold just to survive on a playlist. On Bandcamp, however, the music is freed from these rigid streaming constraints, allowing producers to prioritize raw genre authenticity and dynamic storytelling over sanitized, playlist ready optimization. Soundtrack and orchestral music have become major casualties of this shift, as their essential cinematic highs and quiet, emotional lows are flattened into a lifeless wall of sound just to meet streaming's volume requirements.
Just so we're clear, I'm not here to sell you my album. Go ahead and enjoy the whole thing ad free on my website. https://thejoyo.com/#more
Can't abandon something I never joined in the first place! 🙂
So, all posts are from the perspective of people that are really into music. Enthusiasts that care deeply about individual albums and artists.
Whereas streaming services are most likely designed to cater to casual listeners like me. I can't remember the last time I listened to an entire album. I haven't liked any individual artist enough to attend a live concert. I generally listen to music while I'm doing stuff as background noise.
I used to listen to the radio for that. But streaming services algorithms were a strict upgrade to that due to lack of ads and talk show hosts.
Honestly, I don't know if I'll be able to determine whether a given piece of music is AI generated or not by listening to it.
So I don't think direct purchase of digital LPs could ever be viable for people like me. And I'm guessing (based on the success of streaming services) that there are a lot more people like me than there are enthusiasts. Yes, I can switch to the least bad streaming service according to Lemmy, out of solidarity (and no other reason). Remember 99% of people won't do that.
Just adding a perspective that might be missing from this community
Relavent XKCD. The average layperson is unaware of so much nuance in topics others specialise in.
If you are referring to my original post, I have received a similar reaction from the producer and artist communities where I shared it: most people feel I am preaching to the choir. I have no doubt most people just read the headline.
Bandcamp does not permit the sale of AI generated music, "wholly or in substantial part". https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/
We'll see if they'll stick with that policy but Bandcamp hasn't really changed in the last 15 years. They could have easily increased their cut to match Spotify and Apple Music but they haven't.
If you're looking for casual consumption, https://bandcamp.com/radiooffers human curated radio where the DJ puts songs into context.
Your plan takes 4-5 steps and more time than it takes people to just ignore ethics and open an app.
I would not count you amongst the casual audience of Spotify users. I hope that is a compliment.
This, the main thing I want from music software is an infinite stream of background music with a personalization algorithm to select new songs I'll probably like. Most of the suggestions people are giving don't really work as a substitute for that.
there's a massive backlog of bandcamp radio sessions that I know you've never heard.
I looked at it, it's a handful of channels representing broad genres, an hour or two in length, with commentary. That is not a substitute for a personalized music stream. It still wouldn't be with a wider selection; I tried mixcloud for a while, it doesn't work for me, there are no channels that give me just the music I want to hear in a wide enough variety, it's too much work searching through them, I'd rather skip the commentary and not have to find something new every hour.
Not that I use spotify, what I ended up doing is writing my own script to scrape bandcamp and use its recommendation features to get associations between albums and assign probability weights to them for what to play next based on what I have liked and disliked. Aside from being buggy and against tos so probably can't publish, I'm pretty happy with it. Algorithmic streaming is a much more convenient way of listening to and discovering music, and I don't expect many people to switch away from it.
This sounds like the optimal solution. Would you mind sharing your script? If you don't want to actually publish it, I wouldn't mind a DM with the source code!
This is like something I've always wanted, but haven't made. The Spotify algorithm is pretty good at the statistical comparisons of music, and I don't know another service that does it.
Well how about this, here's the core part of the script if you want to see how it works, without the scraping utility parts (webstuff.py etc. which is pretty trivial anyway). Main dependencies are python, curses, mpv and selenium.
Thanks! I'll look into it!
Radio Garden may be an app that you may find useful to replace Spotify. It's free, and it allows you to listen to traditional radio stations anywhere in the world. I was listening to some random German radio station last time I opened the app. Might switch to Africa or the MENA area next time, who knows?
I never stopped buying my albums. For all the reasons you list. Fuck streaming.
I recommend waiting for Band camp Fridays so the artists get 100% of the sale too
I have already left Spotify, but joined tidal because of the HiFi streaming quality and because they pay their artists more per stream. However, I still don't feel like I did enough research or digging to see if tidal is still bad or not. Does anyone know more on them and also if there's a better, more artist-centric option?
The better, artist-centric option is Bandcamp. Buy albums and singles outright instead of streaming -- the artist gets significantly more revenue.
Streaming for discovery and daily ease of use. Bandcamp to buy FLACs of my favourites. That's what I do.
I’ve been enjoying Qobuz recently. They have streaming and an option to buy. I’ve been told they’re a fairly ethical option in terms of payment to artists, but haven’t researched myself.
There’s also Subvert.fm with a lot of smaller artists and some real gems if you dig for them.
Tidal is owned by Jay-Z so it’s not a ton better, though the hi-fi and paying artists better was enough reason for me for now. With easy migration too, it made the most sense to also quickly get my family off of the Spotify family plan. I’m also trying to grow my offline music library again, and Tidal being hi-fi “allows” for some interesting usability to that end. Ripping CDs and buying on Bandcamp has also been a good shift!
The most artist centric option would probably be that final one. Buying CD or digital albums directly from artists and growing your offline library. Toss Jellyfin on something and you have your own personal streaming platform!
Even worse than Jay Z. The majority stake holder of Tidal is Block Inc and they are owned by BlackRock.
Subscription streaming will never pay an artist the same amount of money per person as an album sale.
You miss the consumption pattern behind streaming though: I don't want (and literally can't afford to) ....
- buy 1000 child song albums but still want to have kids around to enjoy their flavor of the month music
- Explore music on the side: I can't buy every new album to listen to it on my own terms and I'm not music head enough to hunt and research music, instead I use streaming as a discovery mechanism on the side, sometimes just jumping into stuff ice never even seen.
- Afford the integration time: a single streaming service can easily be used for everyone in my household and customized without any overhead. A five year should be able to choose their music and I can't so that id they need an app (no phones) or get accustomed to different interfaces.
This is not intended to take away from your core point: (direct) purchase is a better way of giving money to artists, second only to direct donations (i can't talk about concerts because of the whole venue discussions I've heard on the side).
Now comes the tough part:
On paper it's straight forward for me: just donate like 10 or 20 bucks a month to your personal flavor of the month - but ... To whom? I just checked, today alone were 20 artists played.
The shitty thing is, and I'm sharing this to perhaps shame me into acting: this is quite easily solvable, but I just don't invest the energy needed to figure it out for me.
Sorry for the long rant style, tldr is:
I have no use for owning albums, streaming provide a true value for me and I'm (realizing after writing this) obviously too cheap, stupid and lazy to give bak.
give https://bandcamp.com/radioa try for discovery. human curated and the DJs give songs some context so it's not just someone's playlist.
you can also listen to a whole album on bandcamp for free. VLC and IINA both open bandcamp URLs as playlists and can be listened to as many times as you'd like.
To whom? I just checked, today alone were 20 artists played.
You don't have to be perfect with this. Just pick someone who made a new album you loved; ideally someone who actually needs the money. And you can always buy vinyl, merch, or a digital album instead of just donating.
Torrent albums to try them out, then buy legal copies of the ones you like.
Or a concert ticket
I've temporarily switched to Tidal as well, while I research and set up my own server to host my own music. I have a ton of music, just no easy way to stream/sync it to my phone.
I did the same, switched from spotify to tidal for about a year and then set up my own navidrome server and use it with symfonium.
By default, Symfonium will stream music from Navidrome to your phone, but there are settings you can change in Symfonium to make it sync to your phone instead if you have data quotas or an unreliable connection. There's probably a way to make it sync a subset and restrict playback to that subset when on a metered connection, but in my case I have more than enough storage to fit everything on the phone.
If you made any mistakes I would not believe you are a robot.
just no easy way to stream/sync it to my phone.
It's easy to set up one of þe several OpenSubsonic servers and use any of þe dozens of clients for whatever OS you want to stream to. Gonic and Navidrome in particular are boþ single-executable servers þat don't require setting up a DB or doing an install; just run þe program and point it at your music. It's all FLOSS.
On þe server
Several oþer server implementations are available.
Desktop clients
- ostui (in AUR and Alpine)
- psysonic
- sublime-music
- subtui
- sonixd
- supersonic-desktop
- rufin
- sonicrust
- crossonic
- moosic
- naviterm
- rorqual
- ratune
- net-player
(Þese are just þe ones in AUR)
Android clients
Phosh (Linux Phone) clients
- Gelly
- subsound
- feishin
- supersonic
- aonsuko
Wiþ an OpenSubsonic server and Tempo in particular, syncing music to mobile for offline use is trivial. Streaming over all þese clients is, of course, even easier.
Stop trying to make the thorn Þ happen Pierce.
Thanks for the substantial suggestions.
You can use VLC to open a bandcamp album url to play the album for free as many times as you want.
Þe comment I was responding to was
I have a ton of music, just no easy way to stream/sync it to my phone.
Many of us own our music - we're not borrowing it, we bought and have full control of it, and no service can take it away from us. Þat's þe use case for OpenSubsonic - owned libraries of music which one wants to stream from þeir own self-hosted server(s).
My static website uses https://faircamp.org/for the playlisting but it's the exact same on VLC. We don't need to over complicate this unless that's the fun part.
Tidal is really bad with their content managing. They tend to not distinguish between same named artists and they stuff all their albums together. Sending feedback on this is needlessly annoying, though most of the times they correct mistakes but when a new album is released is the same again. Also no official Linux app and questionable ownership. Said that I'm still on tidal unless there is a better option.
tidal is shit
Left spotify more then a year ago. I always buy vinyl, via bandcamp or directly from artists. Especially on bandcamp fridays. And for streaming i use Qobuz
Spotify (and Pandora before that) served my purposes once upon a time to discover genres and artists I enjoy. But when I did the math, I realized I'd spent quite the pretty penny with nothing to show for it, and none of the artists I listened to were benefitting. And of course, Spotify has been happily selling my data during the interim.
Since deleting my account, I've switched to buying albums on Bandcamp, particularly on Bandcamp Fridays. I prefer listening to albums straight through anyway. I like to buy CDs when they're available, but unfortunately a lot of artists stick to vinyl if they do physical media at all. CDs don't degrade with listening, I can play them in my car, and they are compact - I simply don't have the space for vinyl.
In my experience albums I listen to today are way better all the way through than when people were buying them in store. Maybe that's just the artists I follow though. Good artists stay true to their music regardless of the payment model. If you're listening to artists that are in it to maximise their earnings, maybe you could broaden what you listen to.
Bandcamp is a much better experience for listening to a whole album compare to Spotify.
I left in January. Did some maths and found that just buying everything I listen to was cheaper after a few years of streaming, and gets the artists more in return to boot. Haven't looked back since.
Does bandcamp have lossless high bitrate files ? I'm not 100% convinced it's always a big difference, but I'd rather always get the highest quality master I can !
They do.
Edit: To be clear, they offer downloads in multiple formats - including a lossless FLAC option, and the ability to stream from your phone/browser. So, it's a pretty good replacement for Spotify if you want to actually pay the people whose music you listen to.
Bonus points if you make purchases on Bandcamp Fridays: a unique event wherein 100% of proceeds go directly to the artist (bypassing Bandcamp's usual cut).
And Qobuz does as well.
I upload as FLAC and they convert it to lossy for smaller files and compatibility. https://faircamp.org/will also do the conversion for my static website.
Most people cannot discern at bitrates higher than 128kbps. Most people don't own equipment where the difference would even be noticed.
If all you're doing is listening to music on airpods using AAC, getting all wound up about Losless is silly.
See how well you do: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
Yes, in FLAC or ALAC if you want lossless compressed with metadata.
They also have PCM WAV and AIFF.
I've been using musicolet for the last I don't know and been pretty happy with it. It integrates with the cat audio pretty well
Just call it an album dude. An LP is vinyl. Digital LP, while I get it refers to a specific length... Aaaaa it feels like you're pedanting where you don't have to pedant. We get you, you're among friends and well wishers and Satan's maggoty cumfart is probably here and probably likes you too
Sorry, I only listen on shellac.
Wax cylinders or nothing dude. The quality can't be beat
Where is the image from?
Kansas.
How have you not seen the wizard of Oz dude go watch a movie. That's like the most famous movie.
I met a Gen Z that never heard of or watched Ghostbuters. The kids aren't watching classics
Gen Z's brains are too roasted by shorts to sit through an entire 90 minute movie.
I've been using Qobuz for like a year now, highly recommend
+1! 🎶🚀
At least in my case you're wrong about algorithms on streaming platforms. I listen to the bands I like, not ones from some algorithm. Also streaming money music fits better my needs, though I'd really like artists being paid more, specially smaller ones.
PS I left Spotify long ago.
Subscription streaming will never pay an artist the same amount of money per person as an album sale.
Did you read the comment you replied to?
Did they read the OP?
I abandoned Spotify when they started to push podcasts above music, right in the landing page of the app. How many years is that? anyway I moved on to bandcamp and qobuz
I cancelled my subscription the first month they signed Blow Rogan. I’m not supporting any manosphere related company if I can help it.
The earth is the manosphere.
Same but I went with Tidal. Mostly just because I don't want to deal with organizing a music library. I used to have a huge library from ripped CDs until a family member installed iTunes on my computer and it destroyed it all by reorganizing everything wrong.
I turned to purchasing albums digitally, so that I actually own it.
At first I have been skeptical. But meanwhile I do appreciate it, as I really listen to a full record than Just the Most loved songs.
Streaming Made me just listen to "banger", when other tracks in that record are nice as well. That doesn't count for every musician or band ofc. But I get a bigger value from actually listening
Piracy enters the chat.
Don't artists make like no money off streams with the bulk being from tours and merch?
0.01% of artists are performing artists. even less make a profit touring. i can break that down for you if you want.
"Short two minute tracks and repetitive hooks"
Why are you attacking punk rock?
hah, no i love punk and repetitive hooks. the first Beatles album has super short tracks too. i'm just saying that subscription streaming pushes everything else out.
Fuck the platforms you listed, we are the fediverse
Can't abandon it. Never used it. It's totally useless.
I'd rather give an artist $14 for an LP than stream it for ten years and gove them 10¢
$14 for a good album + a good beverage makes a good ~45 minutes.
I always used Bandcamp as mainsource to listen music of my favorite bands (if present). For general background music mostly https://www.internet-radio.com/or https://www.radio.net/genre(genre specific channels, 24/7)
I have a spotify subscription, but I don't personally use it. It's for my parents. It solves too many problems for me
Sure, I also have a similar subscription for my wife as I'd rather pay than subject her to more ads. We're all surviving under capitalism. I just ask that you throw a little cash at the independent artists. Thanks for considering. You deserve a better product.
spotify is dumb
i dont use spotify
Songs have been filler and short from the radio era. To blame streaming for that is wild. Blame capitalism.
Which also occurs in albums as well. There are plenty of filler music in almost every album ever made. If anything, streaming disincentivizes filler tracks - each track has to compete for attention. Though, in practice this is going to depend on recommendation and discovery algorithms.
I blame both capitalism and the capitalist subscription streaming service.
i dont see how this is spotifys problem, did radio and mtv not have the same exact effect?
the first paragraph:
Streaming has revived the worst trope of the old music industry: the album that is just "two hits and a bunch of crap."
But the moment after showing LPs had this trope, it suggests album purchases -- which had this trope.
I bought Finger Eleven, wanting an album of Paralyzed. I bought Mezzanine, wanting 10 tracks of Dissolved Girl.
In each case I got something else which eventually grew on me for the artistry it was, but in the moment I felt hoodwinked.
You can listen to an album on Bandcamp for free. Who's buying an album before listening to it?
Never used it.
I guess you talk about rock and pop music?
Geniune question: What about techno music? Many techno songs are eight minutes long (my personal experience, I'm no expert, I could be wrong) and djs usually select a couple of good songs and mix them together. They prepare a list of songs for a gig and decide based upon the crowd and their own perception what sogn they are going to play.
What's a good and ethical way of consuming techno music? Sets and individual songs
And there are many very good songs that are ai created. And i could not tell the difference between ai and "human" made music. To me, it doesn't seem like (techno) music creation has any value in the future.
Mixing and selecting good songs or creating playlists (on the fly) sounds like having value in the future.
You might want to learn how techno is made. Analog kitchen has a class on live techno shows where everything is made at the show. They even go into DMX lighting and how to program it along with clip launching.
Once you know more than the surface level of a genre you can easily spot artificial slop. Like most things AI, it's good enough to sound convincing yet be fundamentally wrong.
I see. I'll have a look deeper into it. I don't think it answers the question though.
Ai gets better every month. Even if you can tell a difference today, you might not tomorrow anymore. Also, you can make music assisted with ai. It doesn't have to be making music without human help
fyi there is no such thing as a good AI song. Spotify is fucking artists at every turn, AI music especially.
I listened to a couple of great songs that were ai generated.
Good and ethical depends on what you want. You should probably abandon both of those qualifiers though.
There was a good article in one of those counter culture handbills in the 90s equating the peripheral or colonial labor required to get expensive raw materials & the core labor required to turn them into carbide blades or microchips or whatever and production & djing.
It was pretty stupid though because once a dj gets a little success or time they start to make their own songs to play out (often before they start to get some success). So it’s not like one type of labor has less value and is engaged in a race to the bottom or pushed to the colonial areas while another type of labor has more value and exists under different conditions in the core.
Their inverse is also true. Electronic musicians who produce music often get invited to dj at venues. How could someone make a song that fits well in a djs set if they themselves didn’t get some hands on time behind decks? It’s like expecting a person to be able to design a car but never drive one.
They’re the same labor. They’re making the same thing.
It’s maybe worth investigating what you mean when you say “having value”.