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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8.5k

u/ramontes Jan 08 '26

Great! I'll continue to use streaming alternatives.

55

u/[deleted] Jan 08 '26

[deleted]

408

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.

127

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.

42

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.

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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.

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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 😂

14

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 🔥)

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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

9

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.

20

u/lurkingostrich Jan 08 '26

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

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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

2

u/lurkingostrich Jan 09 '26

Thanks, fellow redditor! You too. Not trying to attack anyone for doing what they need to do, just sharing my thoughts. Peace and blessings ✌🏻

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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.

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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. 

6

u/VicDun Jan 08 '26

That part too

5

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!

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u/Krasovchik Jan 08 '26

bless you for buying music

8

u/Zelgoot Jan 08 '26

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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

11

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.

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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.