I've been on Qobuz for 2 years now and it's great, the annual plan is a great deal and I have hi'fi gear and the quality is fantastic.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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Qobuz. It's French and it pays more than Tidal. It's a privately owned company. You can also actually buy music from it in addition to streaming. Fuck Tidal.
Ive heard qobuz limits downloads so you end up not being able to actually own every song you paid for
If you buy music from there, does it include DRM that prevents you from playing it without their online service?
Oh super cool, I will definitely check it out! Thanks!
Deezer is also french
I just switched to Deezer! It is pretty good so far, and they seem to have even relatively obscure Canadian music. Good francophone content, if you're into that sort of thing.
I like using 7digital, you can just buy songs outright and keep the flac files. No more unreliable streaming services! Just me and my own files!
Want cloud streaming? Get some dirt cheap vps and put jellyfin or something on there
So Tidal pays royalties at about 4x the rate of Spotify, not 10. That is still only US$ 0.013 per stream, compared to spotifys US$ 0.003.
However that is not the whole picture - the big 3 music companies (All American) control the market and get the lions share of revenues from all platforms. They actually get more of the pot and all the other labels and independent get less.
So the choice between Tidal and Spotify for artists is not as significant as you think.
Meanwhile Tidal has been bought by an American conglomerate owned by Jack Dorsey (the founder of Twitter), a lot of staff have been laid off (Dorsey laid of a large number of staff in 2024 and said the company needs to be "more like a statrup"), and they removed the subscription direct-share with artists in 2022. It is very likely artists will be squeezed more and more to save money.
Tidal is just another tech-bro owned company. Even if we park all the Trump/Canada stuff for a moment there are plenty of reasons to dump it. At least Spotify is a publicly listed independent European company for all it's many flaws. The rest of the market is sewn up by American tech companies: Apple Music, Amazon Music, Google YouTube Music.
Maybe your money is better spent outside the big US tech companies.
It's not going to help for Neil Young but for smaller artists always check Bandcamp first.
Edit: they are, of course, American, but so are many artists.
Spotify gave Joe Rogan a platform, which likely contributed to the current situation in the US.
How many specific bands are you trying to support? It might be better for everyone if you just send them $5 directly and pirate their stuff.
You should buy Canadian where possible, but don’t upend your life over it.
Feeling guilt over the whims of politicians isn’t very useful. Just do what you can.
Oh, I don't think this is upending my life, apologies if I sounded dramatic. Just trying to balance my "help the artists" vs "help all of Not America right now."
I wouldn’t say dramatic. I understand how you feel though. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism regardless of how hard we try. It’s infuriating at times.