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jqpabc123

Thanks for reminding me why I don't have a Spotify account.

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What do you use?

I personally use jellyfin and supply the media myself, though there are much better ways to do it.

Alternative: https://nuclearplayer.com/

There is also navidrome https://navidrome.org

I just started using Finamp for Android

https://github.com/jmshrv/finamp

I recommend the beta edition as the UI is quite evolved from the previous version.

That testimonials section is pretty incredible, to the point I'm not sure if the whole thing is satire or not.

I want to support the artists, though.

Then buy the record at bandcamp. My band made 10 times more in a month at bandcamp than in 4 years of spotify.

"Whoa, whoa, slow your roll... when I said I wanted to support the artists, I was talking about ensuring they receive a fraction of a penny! Ain't nobody got $15 to throw around for an album!"

The way I see it, we all should pirate music and buy as directly as possible from the bands/artists we want to support.

I shelled out quite some money for musicians whose music pirated when I was a teenager. Ethically it may not be 100% sound, but if I apply the golden rule ("Treat others the way you want to be treated") it is totally the way to go for me.

If you're actually looking for a streaming service that is more respectful of artists, Tidal (though I have a feeling it may not last). They pay up to 10x per stream in royalties, and also have a more equitable algorithm (Spotify pushes an unfair weight to more popular artists across their service, regardless of your personal streaming).

What's unfair about it?

Spotify keeps approximately 30% of subscription and ad revenues.

The remaining approximately 70% goes into one big pool.

That pool is distributed based on share of total streams.

So if there are 1 trillion streams total and an artist gets 1 billion of them, they get 0.1% of the entire payout pool.

You are not paid by your listeners — you are paid in proportion to everyone else’s listening.

So if you pay $10/month and listens only to niche artists:

- your money still goes into the global pool

- it is mostly paid out to Drake, Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, etc.

- even if you never listen to them

But your streams are counted (just like everyone else's) in determining the total percentage of streams for which each artist was responsible. Those niche artists you like get a boost when you listen. What you described sounds absolutely fair and democratic.

The pirate bay + musicbrainz + foobar2000

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