Technology

https://leshicodes.github.io/blog/spotify-migration/

Bandwagon, Faircamp, Love a Brother Radio, The Indie Beat. Probably not what you're looking for, but direct creator support, Fedi powered, all wonder folks.

Old fart checking in ... why not just buy the tracks instead of paying for monthly access that screws artists? I mean, each song is unlikely to be more than $1.49, and then you own it. I don't have a streaming music account and never will because the idea of paying repeatedly for the same thing -- with the option of it being pulled at any time -- is nauseating.

Why? They have more prog than the others. Believe me, I’d love to stick with Qobuz as the sound quality is magnificent. Unfortunately they just don’t have the music I listen to.

this is an awesome video on why other streaming services are just marginally better than spotify and not a long term solution: https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU

with that in mind i’m trying to transition away from streaming but am using tidal as what i hope is the least bad option for now.

It's the same old reason as always. Most users value their convenience more than anything.

I'm still on Pandora and honestly have no idea how they stack up. I just use it as a radio station on long drives.

Why?

1. Lack of Feature Parity

2. Stickiness of library transfer

3. Stickiness of social network effects

4. It's still better ethically than Apple Music or YouTube Music, which behave anti-competitively

1: I've tried out Quobuz, it's pretty good, but it does not have the Jam / Group Session feature which me and my friends use constantly while gaming remotely. It also does not have an Xbox app which I use while playing games. I find Spotify's recommendations somewhat underwhelming, but Quobuz has a noticeably worse recommendation engine, at least for my genres and tastes. Those are the features that lack parity that matter to me, but for some others, it's things like amplifiers having built-in Spotify, or there being a Roku or Playstation app or something.

2: Quobuz uses a third party service to automatically transfer your library, which worked pretty well, but did require jumping through a bunch of hoops and subscribing to a trial subscription that I then had to cancel. It also did not find matches for some songs. Could I make it work if I had enough reason to switch? Yeah, probably, but the lack of feature parity (/roadmap that includes them) is enough to dissuade me from really trying.

3: In addition to friends on Spotify all using Jams, there's also an inherent niceness to just being able to text people Spotify links, especially since there's no cross platform linking service that would otherwise make sharing music easy.

4: Supporting Spotify may not be great, but its still better than supporting trillion dollar anti-competitive corporations like Apple and Google.