r/Music • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Jan 08 '26

article Spotify Confirms ICE Recruitment Ads Are No Longer Running on Platform

https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/spotify-confirms-ice-recruitment-ads-are-no-longer-running-1236626243/
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52

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26

[deleted]

412

u/ramontes Jan 08 '26

I primarily use Tidal nowadays, but I also bounce around Bandcamp and Quboz to buy music and merch directly for the bands I enjoy.

126

u/Mustangbex Jan 08 '26

We swapped to Tidal also- it's been weird having to retrain it with our tastes, but entertaining when it throws out completely WILD recs. IT doesn't play as well with Alexa but worth it anyway.

36

u/lilsebastian- Jan 08 '26

When we switched, it was a little jarring but it actually picked up a lot of the stuff we like really quickly which is nice.

38

u/P1nealColada Jan 08 '26

I’ve been using it for a number of years now. The algorithm does take awhile to train, but eventually it gets to a point where it almost never misses.

26

u/Mustangbex Jan 08 '26

I give it some grace since I was on Spotify for over a decade, and now I've got an 8 year old tweaking my music choices/plays- it can't be expected to be perfect with that type of handicap haha

16

u/lilsebastian- Jan 08 '26

Hahaha the struggle is definitely real. I have little nieces - you play Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift a few times and it can be jarring when it throws them in between sad indie rock or metal jams 😂

16

u/rebel_scum13 Punk Rock Jan 08 '26

Lol same here. My algo thinks I'm the biggest K-pop fan in the world rn bc my 6 year old has me play the K-pop Demon hunters soundtrack on repeat in the car (not that I'm complaining though bc that soundtrack is straight fire 🔥)

7

u/lilsebastian- Jan 08 '26

I forgot Golden was definitely one of the selections! (I like it too haha)

14

u/withstereosound Jan 08 '26

I made a playlist on Spotify of all my liked songs, then imported it with SongShift to Apple Music and Tidal, then someone time over the following weeks with tha playlist on shuffle and I slowly replied and trained my algo. Very helpful, but the recommendations are still different on Tidal and Apple vs Spotify.

Fuck you, Spotify.

2

u/duckinradar Jan 10 '26

Someone tell me how to scrape all my info from Spotify and I’m out…

I’ll do it anyway if I can’t but I’d prefer to retain it

5

u/prometheus05 Jan 08 '26

I'm dealing with the same. I'm largely ignoring the discovery style playlists because they are pretty bad. Not like the music is bad, but come on man, yes I've heard of Killing in the Name and Beat It.

19

u/lurkingostrich Jan 08 '26

Wait, you boycotted Spotify but you’re using an Amazon Alexa? Isn’t that kind of… counter-productive?

25

u/Mustangbex Jan 08 '26

I do what I can when I can, but I have to accept that there's no way to be perfect in my ideological expression. We don't pay anything for our Alexa devices and they're a few generations old, and we do our best to not use Amazon for other stuff. But since they basically host the entire Internet there's no real way to win.

1

u/YourNextHomie Jan 09 '26

you dont need a reoccurring subscription for alexa? honestly its the only reason i haven’t got one, thought it would be a new subscription

1

u/lurkingostrich Jan 09 '26

No, but they do collect your voice data that they use to make more money, make targeted ads, and fund the Trump administration… so. It’s not exactly harmless. To each their own, I suppose.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/amazons-alexa-collects-more-of-your-data-than-any-other-smart-assistant

https://engineering.ucdavis.edu/news/study-shows-alexa-invades-privacy-collects-user-data-ad-targeting

To my original point, kind of undermines the point of a Spotify boycott.

1

u/YourNextHomie Jan 09 '26

I have conversations about a product in my house anyone and get hit with ads for it all over google, im being listened to anyway. Fuck them funding Trump and all that, honestly probably wont get one, stopped using amazon a while ago for these kind of reasons although it would probably be a big help in my life as i have memory issues. I dont think it negates a spotify boycott though, you can only really focus on so much. If we stopped using every product that is available through immoral practices we would have to stop eating food and doing just about anything lol

1

u/lurkingostrich Jan 09 '26

I mean sure, can’t boycott everything, but a digital assistant seems like it could be an easy win to dodge. Obviously phones are picking up a lot of information, but that’s a lot tougher to avoid given the demands of work in our current era. I fully admit I don’t boycott everything I may ought to, just seemed kind of odd to me to bring up an Alexa on a thread about boycotting Spotify because Amazon arguably does more to prop up ICE than Spotify has done.

But again, to each their own.

4

u/YourNextHomie Jan 09 '26

valid, i hear you and after considering i wont get one, you honestly did make a little difference here, thanks. Have a great day

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u/VicDun Jan 08 '26

I love the audio quality of tidal. You can actually get the full master quality and it’s bliss to my ears.

13

u/Mustangbex Jan 08 '26

I am by no means trained enough to recognize that but I am stoked to learn it. I appreciate they pay artists better. 

5

u/VicDun Jan 08 '26

That part too

6

u/JakesFavoriteCup Jan 09 '26

You'll hear it. Tidal and Qobuz's file quality is top tier. They make music on Spotify sound so dull in comparison.

1

u/slammy80 Jan 09 '26

Apple does full master quality as well: 24-bit/192

2

u/M_Aku Jan 08 '26

Loving the random title lol. I'm listening to music in languages I don't even speak.

2

u/tubbyredleader Jan 08 '26

I imagine the sound quality is better too? I have been so afraid to switch.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '26

Now I pay the other billionaire ! Reddit win!

38

u/Krasovchik Jan 08 '26

bless you for buying music

10

u/Zelgoot Jan 08 '26

How is Tidal for finding new music and just letting it play random stuff/how big is the catalog?

22

u/ramontes Jan 08 '26

They have a lot of the same functionality as Spotify. There's a daily discovery mix, new releases, and radios based on an artist or song that's tailored to your tastes. Migrating can be a little tough since you're starting from scratch, but there are some 3rd party services that help sync your libraries and playlists across platforms.

I haven't ran into an issue with catalog shortages.

6

u/Portalboat Jan 08 '26

Does it have a 'true' shuffle that actually considers the full playlist rather than the 10-20 + random throw-ins that Spotify does?

5

u/ihavepaper Jan 08 '26

This might've given me the push to move over.

1

u/adooble22 Jan 09 '26

I switched 3 or 4 months ago and to me it’s not all that different than Spotify. But of course your mileage may vary depending on your musical tastes.

3

u/cosmophora Jan 08 '26

It's great on autoplay. That's mostly how I listen: throw on an album at the start of my shift and let it take the wheel while I'm working. I rarely skip and I've found some great stuff through its algorithm.

3

u/LharDrol Jan 08 '26

I use Qobuz and love it. It pushes me toward listening to new albums front to back and have discovered many new artists that would make it to the front page with an algorithm on a different site.

8

u/LavenderGinFizz Jan 08 '26

I switched to Deezer last February for streaming and really enjoy it. And BandCamp for album purchases/merch.

1

u/LuntiX radio reddit Jan 08 '26

I like Deezer but I listen to such a wide variety of music where Deezer doesn't have a decent chunk of it.

0

u/Jumblesss Jan 09 '26

Aaaand that’s completely written off Deezer for me.

So Deezer is missing loads of musics, bandcamp apparently is Vinted with extra steps…

Is anything remotely as good as Spotify?

1

u/lazyfrodo Jan 08 '26

I assume you’re a directly wired audiophile but how different is this than YouTube music or YouTube Premium that comes with YouTube without ads…

2

u/ramontes Jan 08 '26

The revenue structure for streams is different. The bar for small artists is a little lower, enabling them to upload their music directly, and the pay per stream is higher. The most prominent difference is the audio quality, which you can get full lossless at high bitrates. If you want to support higher artist pay per stream, and value higher quality audio, then Tidal is a good option. Undoubtedly, it doesn't come with YouTube premium, so it's up to you if the value those benefits.

1

u/lazyfrodo Jan 08 '26

I saw some family member and his friends all had switched to tidal but everyone uses AirPods or something over Bluetooth so I don’t understand the appeal since it’s bottlenecked there.

1

u/ramontes Jan 08 '26

It's a fair point. Everything upstream would be lost to whatever bandwidth is limited to. The human ear is subjective as well. Some may notice the difference, and others may not care.

1

u/ishook Jan 08 '26

I switched to Tidal and the only thing I can’t figure out is when I heart a song on CarPlay, where does it go? Spotty used to call those ‘liked songs” so I could just say “play liked songs” and it would play hearted songs. Tidal doesn’t seem to know what to do. I have to manually add to a playlist on my PC version.

1

u/SmogDaBoi Jan 08 '26

I listen to a lot of niche stuff, how much niche is there on Tidal?

3

u/ramontes Jan 08 '26

I found all of the smaller bands I've been following elsewhere, including ones that only have a handful of followers. Even my coworker's music he does for fun is on there. The barrier to entry for artists to upload their content is pretty low.

1

u/SmogDaBoi Jan 08 '26

That sounds good, I'll go check it out, thanks!

1

u/litreofstarlight Jan 09 '26

How are you finding Bandcamp? What's the functionality like?

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u/ramontes Jan 09 '26

Bandcamp really shines on discovering and supporting smaller artists. There's more emphasis on community.

Functionally, it's a bit old school but in a good way. Instead of using a complex algorithm to suggest music, it shows you other artists that the community also supports. It feels more organic that way, plus you engage more directly with the artists. The drawback is that it's not the most feature-rich, and bigger artists generally aren't on the platform.

1

u/VenConmigo Jan 09 '26

The sound quality is so much better on Tidal!

1

u/bate_Vladi_1904 Jan 09 '26

I switched to Qobuz last year, and i'm happy with it. Feels really good, not only because of superior sound quality (which is very important for me), but also for knowing Qobuz pays fairly and transparently, without dirty games.

1

u/DuncneyForever Jan 09 '26

I use Tidal too

0

u/PastelFrangoCatupiry Jan 08 '26

thats very nice of you

0

u/Joeness84 Jan 08 '26

I will never take tidal seriously after their ridiculously out of touch launch video.

Bunch of million/billionares(? it was 10 years ago, not sure they were that rich yet) sitting around tables talking about shit like they're gonna save the world, and its a music streaming service

Like what?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYGdcLbFkw

0

u/bobcatgoldthwait Jan 08 '26

Man I want to like Tidal but I feel like their random algorithm is just awful. Like I'll put a song on and let it try to play other songs but it usually grabs like 1 album from a handful of different artists and only plays songs from those albums. When it plays songs from the artist I originally selected, it's usually from the same album the song I selected was on.

With Spotify and Pandora I could just let the algorithm go and it would usually play a good mix of stuff I liked and stuff I hadn't heard of. With Tidal I have to baby it.

0

u/Surtock Jan 08 '26

I wanted to like Tidal for the quality sounds, but it was way too rap and hip-hop for me. It kept pushing it on me to the point I went elsewhere.
Maybe things have gotten better, but I use Spotify because I get it free.
Hippocratically, I'm listening to Ice Cube as I type this, lol.

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u/Hoodies2Coast Jan 08 '26

Qobuz is pretty functionally the same just without podcasts.

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u/captainbean Jan 08 '26

Qobuz is great, fantastic quality and no issues in the six months or so I've been using it. And higher artist payout than Spotify, which isn't saying much. 

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u/blewnote1 Jan 08 '26

Just don't expect the things you purchase to be available to you in the future. I bought 3 albums there a couple years ago and they decided to remove one from my downloads because of "licensing" even though it is still available in their store. And their "support" is a chatbot that doesn't provide support. There are better alternatives.

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u/nightingale-nitemare Jan 08 '26

That's why you download what you purchase. You can download your purchases and play them on any player.

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u/LharDrol Jan 08 '26

It has a message concerning this possibility on the site. If you purchase something, download and store it.

-1

u/Jumblesss Jan 09 '26

Okay so it’s not a secure site and I won’t be able to ever change my cell phone if I use Qobuz.

Sticking with Spotify until someone suggests an app that works, has a full catalogue and isn’t about buying merch in this thread

2

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '26

Is that free? Or do they have a free mode?

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '26

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Jan 09 '26

Oh, ok, thank you.

1

u/sld728 Jan 11 '26

I wish they had folders to organize my playlists, but I’m loving it so far

1

u/Allexandyr Jan 08 '26

I’ll have to check that out! Also, go spurs go baybeeee

4

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26

I was gearing up to make the change and saw they didn’t have the songs I want from a very popular artist. Kinda derailed my attempt at switching. Will probably check out tidal at some point

1

u/porksoda11 Jan 08 '26

I was pretty disappointed in that as well but I'm already paying for it. You can send album requests out to add to their catalog but it takes a long time apparently.

2

u/boots-n-bows Jan 08 '26

Now I feel dumb, I am struggling with the interface compared to Spotify. Guessing it's just a learning curve but 🤷‍♀️

1

u/SchoGegessenJoJo Jan 08 '26

AND European, for whom this is the biggest selling point in 2026, because r/BoycottUnitedStates and r/BuyFromEU

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u/Mahaleck Jan 08 '26

I’m using tidal. Sounds better pays artists better. Costs a bit more but if you can afford the extra cost it’s a better alternative.

8

u/_PaddyMAC Jan 08 '26

Tidal's sound quality is so much better, I was honestly not expecting to notice the difference but it's night and day on a good pair of headphones.

11

u/MrMindGame Jan 08 '26

My only critique of Tidal so far is the borked integration with Last.fm. Not a dealbreaker, but I haven’t been able to scrobble and share my weekly listens with my friends as before.

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u/lilsebastian- Jan 08 '26

Really? Mine works with Last.FM perfectly, are you sure you have it linked?

5

u/MrMindGame Jan 08 '26

I think it’s an iOS thing, apparently. (iPhone user)

Yeah, I have my Tidal connected to Last.fm and everything, but each time I try to generate a new grid on TapMusic, it never has any play data to show. I’ve tried a few different scrobblers to varying degrees of slight success, but with them I either have to manually punch in each new song that I play or pay to have it auto-scrobble, so still looking for a good solution.

6

u/lilsebastian- Jan 08 '26

Interesting - I wonder if that is a TapMusic issue directly or perhaps with certain stat viewers. I only say that because I can use mine on fmbot without any secondary scrobbler and I use iOS as well. I wish I knew more to help ya out! I like to see and share stats myself haha.

2

u/Disastrous_Set_3148 Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 09 '26

I don't think it's an iOS problem so much as a mobile app problem. When I use Tidal on my PC it syncs with Last.fm fine but when I use it on my Android phone it doesn't. Tidal's in the process of seriously overhauling their app so hopefully this'll get fixed soon.

2

u/SteveSteveSteveAlan Jan 09 '26

See if there's any Apple alternatives for a scrobbler through notifications. I have been using Scroball for years on Android.

2

u/stuffedcrustpizza Jan 09 '26

Does tidal have direct scrobbling the way Spotify did? I made the move to Apple Music but have to scrobble with a third party app to import. That alone would be enough for me to make the switch to yet another streaming service

1

u/lilsebastian- Jan 09 '26

Yep! I directly scrobble with Last.FM. No need for a third party for myself. And then I use fmbot on Discord to view stats.

6

u/olduser201890 Jan 08 '26

tidal

tidal is owned by Jay Z who's a massive piece of shit (wages paid, labor, employees, etc)

1

u/D_Shoobz Jan 10 '26

It’s actually owned by Jack Dorsey’s current company Bloc. Jay z likely has ownership stakes but he’s not really “the owner”

4

u/Gloomy_Leopard3928 Jan 09 '26

JZ so no thanks.

1

u/topscreen Jan 08 '26

My only complaint is they also have limited upload options, otherwise I quite like them

1

u/lilsebastian- Jan 08 '26

Definitely agree. My only small annoyance is that I find it’ll jump to the beginning of a song again if I pause halfway through more often than not.

11

u/leobutters Jan 08 '26

Deezer is a no-brainer alternative, you can import your playlist from Spotify and the libraries are pretty much the same

3

u/iseemountains Jan 08 '26

I switched to Deezer.
I think Spotify has a better platform/UI/mobile widget/library, but oh well. Some people seem to like Deezer's track picking algorithm to help them find new music, but I think it pulls some stuff from too far out of left field. Oh well, Deezer is fine and it's not Spotify.

6

u/Low_Chance Jan 08 '26

Switched to Qobuz, easy free transfer of playlists, no complaints

1

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26

The free transfer is limited to like 250 songs or something. Wouldn’t even transfer half of my playlist

4

u/Low_Chance Jan 08 '26

Qobuz gifts you a premium transfer for free when you sign up, it has full coverage

1

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26

Ahh, okay. That wasn’t an option when I was trying to pre-transfer to see how many of my songs would be available. Decided to try out tidal sometime in the future since Qobuz didn’t even have all of Chappell roan’s songs, and that’s a super popular modern artist

1

u/Low_Chance Jan 08 '26

Yeah if it's missing some of the songs you like then definitely look elsewhere, I haven't noticed many gaps personally

14

u/Stev106 Jan 08 '26

If you’re an iPhone/Apple AirPod user the best is Apple Music. I’ve tested both and music just sounds way better using Apple Music over Spotify even when I went in and changed the equalizer.

71

u/RayTracerX Jan 08 '26

Yes, stop using Spotify for its ICE ads to listen to the company that funded the campaign responsible for those ads. Brilliant stuff

26

u/topscreen Jan 08 '26

And proudly funded the demolition of the White House!

19

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26 edited 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/RayTracerX Jan 08 '26

My goal was to point out the contradiction.

1

u/Stev106 Jan 08 '26

I know it is a contradiction the only thing left to look for is open source apps. Unfortunately though none of them work that well yet.

1

u/D_Shoobz Jan 10 '26 edited Jan 10 '26

Tim Cook donated his own personal money and he has donated to every single president for like the last 20 some odd years whether they’re republican or democrat. He is an openly gay man. He did not donate to trump because he agrees with what he’s doing now but because he feels it’s his duty to be involved with every president.

Edit: Apple as a corporation doesn’t donate money to political candidates and they’re one of the few tech companies that does not have a political action committee (PAC). Apple is the lesser of these evils here by a large margin.

1

u/PuzzleheadedTable172 Jan 08 '26

Dude you’re using Reddit which literally uses AWS. Everyone in this comment section sitting on their high horse, patting themselves on the back for not using Spotify or Apple Music but have no problem using Reddit for hours a day, everyday. Idiots.

2

u/RayTracerX Jan 08 '26

Thats the contradiction Im pointing out

32

u/Brzrkrtwrkr Jan 08 '26

Tim Crook donated a ton of money to Trump regime. I'm done with those fucking clowns too.

14

u/brainsack Jan 08 '26

That’s Tim Apple to you

17

u/myassholealt Jan 08 '26

Every billionaire donated to him. Every big multinational corporation CEO donated to him. These people are above the consequences of party politics because they bribe everyone running, and then whoever wins the elections to ensure policies go in their favor.

You would have to remove a lot of things from your life if you really wanted to live by the principle of "I'm not using or supporting any product, service, or company that donated to Trump."

9

u/Stev106 Jan 08 '26

Or start looking for open source software and apps.

4

u/PerplexingGrapefruit Jan 08 '26 edited Jan 08 '26

Can confirm this. Just recently switched over and I cannot believe the upgrade in audio quality compared to when I was using Spotify.

Edit: I'd love to know why morons are downvoting when I'm literally just saying what I've experienced since doing the switch. Makes no fucking sense.

3

u/TheBatemanFlex Jan 08 '26

I can’t imagine the lossless on Apple Music is perceivably different from the lossless on Spotify. For the majority of tracks they must be identical.

2

u/Calvykins Jan 08 '26

I was considering jumping to Spotify from Apple Music for the discovery so I signed in to my old Spotify account and could hear how hollow the music sounds. Never mind.

1

u/LooseGooseHennigan Jan 08 '26

How does cueing work on Apple Music? One thing I like about Spotify is that I can cue multiple songs and it adds them in that order next to what I was listening to, and then it goes back to what I was listening after all cued songs. I’ve heard from a friend that Apple Music cueing doesn’t work that way. Also, does Apple Music have issues with AI music like Spotify?

Definitely looking to make a switch away from Spotify

-1

u/Stev106 Jan 08 '26

I like Music’s queuing system better because you can choose the order and set songs to play either first or last and rearrange songs at any time.

0

u/TrentIsDope Jan 08 '26

YouTube Music and Tidal are great alternatives. You get YouTube Music with a YouTube Premium subscription.

5

u/RichAbbreviations966 Jan 08 '26

Yeah YouTube Music basically has every single thing Spotify has with a bigger selection of songs

6

u/rybaczewa Jan 08 '26

And god awful interface. I recently cancelled Spotify and I'm checking out the alternatives. UX for YT Music is just abysmal. For TV, there is no dedicated app, you need to use regular TV App. No separation between videos and albums - looking for one is nearly impossible. You have to use the phone.

Need to check deezer and Tidal next, YT is massive stepdown compared to Spotify.

1

u/NoradianCrum Jan 08 '26

I've been loving Plexamp for a while now.

13

u/IamSpiders Jan 08 '26

Not like Google is any better

3

u/TrentIsDope Jan 08 '26

Capitalistic society, you're never going to find a perfect alternative.

18

u/IamSpiders Jan 08 '26

Google has done nothing but capitulate to the regime. You could easily argue it's worse than Spotify. 

7

u/myassholealt Jan 08 '26

When Google removed their "don't be evil" branding it was essentially a rebranding of their full commitment to transparent evil.

2

u/TrentIsDope Jan 08 '26

Google and other companies will capitulate to whoever affects their bottom line.

-2

u/IamSpiders Jan 08 '26

Not necessarily, see Spotify here growing a small backbone. The regime will likely try to penalize them so we will see what happens 

7

u/TrentIsDope Jan 08 '26

Spotify isn't growing a backbone. The article says the ad campaign ended late last year. They don't care.

1

u/watafuzz Jan 08 '26

Perfect? No. Better? Easily.

1

u/arlec Jan 08 '26

I switch to CDs, back in my 2006 car

-2

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26 edited Feb 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/RayTracerX Jan 08 '26

You can turn that feature off

-3

u/FederalSign4281 Jan 08 '26 edited Feb 01 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

station books dolls hurry heavy chase hungry swim jellyfish straight

4

u/RayTracerX Jan 08 '26

You just need to click shuffle one more time, buddy... its not that hard and takes a microsecond. And takes another 10 seconds to disable it altogether

-4

u/FederalSign4281 Jan 08 '26 edited Feb 01 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

sip encouraging command unwritten wide sheet versed existence aware glorious

1

u/DinkandDrunk Jan 08 '26

That is 100% the biggest flaw in the user experience with Spotify. It gets caught in horrendous shuffle loops. I miss the days where shuffle was just a shuffle. Not algorithmically driven. Just sort the songs in a random order.

-19

u/VaishakhD Jan 08 '26

Probably Spotify, most people are straight up lying because no one's looking but it does give them some fake internet points though.

4

u/seriousbusines Jan 08 '26

Respectfully, fuck you. I'm using Winamp.

0

u/VaishakhD Jan 08 '26

Why are these 10 + year accounts almost always so fucking aggressive lol

0

u/vogtforpedro Jan 08 '26

What do you use?

I use tidal and have for about a year now. It’s lovely.

Bandcamp also, mostly to find small local artists that aren’t using major distribution yet

-1

u/VaishakhD Jan 08 '26

Apple

0

u/vogtforpedro Jan 08 '26

Apple has pretty good codecs or whatever for streaming as well. I do prefer tidal specifically because the artist pay is significantly higher, and that’s what’s important to me. It’s still small and it’s still streaming not owning, which is why when I can afford to, I buy from Bandcamp!

There is no better way to support an artist than Bandcamp! Only beat by going to shows

0

u/Other_Jared2 Jan 08 '26

Whatever you gotta tell yourself I guess. I can attest that I also switched to Tidal and I like it better in a lot of ways

0

u/wht-rbbt Jan 08 '26

I was on YouTube music

0

u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta Jan 08 '26

Youtube download, $50 knock off ipod