Introducing Messages, A New Way To Share What You Love on Spotify with Friends and Family — Spotify
newsroom.spotify.com
Recommendations have always been at the heart of the Spotify experience. Friends and family share their favorite music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more from Spotify millions of times each month. That’s because word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways for people to discover their next favorite track.  Spotify users have told us they...

I’ve done it. I’ve finally reached my “old man yells at cloud” moment. Why, why, WHY is Spotify adding features straight out of the social media playbook?

Anybody have recommendations for alternatives?

In my head there’s:

YouTube music (google, gross)

Apple music (no way they’re not on a similar trajectory)

Bandcamp (limited, but at least bands see some money from it)

SoundCloud (weird reputation, though haven’t come back around to it in a good 10 years)

Tidal maybe? Would love to hear some recommendations.

Edit: I neglected to mention why I don’t like the messaging feature. I’ve never used it, yet with a few of my friends there are already dozens of song exchanges in the thread. It’s clear that spotify has been using user-specific links for a while now to track who sends what to who. That’s a pretty clear anti-feature for me, and is enough to make me jump ship.

  • waddle_dee@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    So, I’m a bit of an enigma, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt. I use Tidal. It does the best, out of all my criteria.

      1. Friendly privacy policy. It’s very straight forward, and from what my lawyer friend said, it’s pretty solid.
      1. Hi def streaming. It’s a must for me, as I have some nice cans and speakers I wanna listen through.
      1. Payout to artists. Although they don’t pay as much as Qobuz, they pay a substantial amount relatively, and the aforementioned points make up for the rest.
      1. Ease of use. The app is really great and it’s easy to use and I find that after curating my music for awhile, I get solid recommendations and the radio stations always hit well. Although, I do wish there was more variety in the stations. Sometimes, it plays the same tracks across stations.

    All in all, I’m very happy with Tidal and I don’t think I’m switching anytime soon.

        • ikt@aussie.zoneEnglish
          22·
          4 days ago

          Payout to artists

          They pay out more to artists than literally anyone else?

          For another year, Spotify was the highest-paying retailer globally — paying the music industry over $10 billion in 2024. This brings total lifetime payouts to nearly $60 billion.

          Ease of use

          I don’t find Spotify difficult to use at all

          No idea about privacy policy

          • waddle_dee@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            3 days ago

            1. Payout per stream is a more effective delineation than the total payout. I listen to some niche artists and if I’m streaming, I want to maximize their profit off my streaming.

            2. Regarding ease of use, my issues with Spotify came in the form of all the AI slop they have pushed. They may have toned it down, but I won’t subscribe out of principle.

            3. They have not respected user privacy, therefore their policy is useless.

            May I ask why me having a positive opinion of Spotify is important?

            • ikt@aussie.zoneEnglish
              21·
              3 days ago

              They have not respected user privacy

              What do you mean by this? How haven’t they?

              I listen to some niche artists and if I’m streaming, I want to maximize their profit off my streaming.

              That’s funny so do I, I listen to a lot of music and the majority are not popular, this helps increase the share of the pie so the artists I listen to get paid more

              May I ask why me having a positive opinion of Spotify is important?

              It’s not

              • waddle_dee@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                3 days ago

                1. Sun Times literally just released this article regarding the most recent privacy concerns.

                2. The graphic from Statista below shows that Tidal is one of the higher payouts for streaming. Spotify does not pay as well as Tidal. This is factually accurate.

                3. Yeah, that was weak on my part. I shouldn’t have said that. I let my emotions get the better of me, and for that, I am sorry.

                • ikt@aussie.zoneEnglish
                  22·
                  3 days ago

                  did you have the actual concern? i read the article and didn’t see any actual privacy issues besides:

                  the company’s algorithm-driven model that relies heavily on user data collection

                  do they really think i care that spotify knows what i listen to and when i listen to it in order to give me recommendations?

                  it’s one of the rare cases on the internetweb where im more than happy to give them as much data as they want in exchange for giving me better recommendations for artists and songs that i might like and listen to

                  The graphic from Statista below shows that Tidal is one of the higher payouts for streaming

                  that chart isn’t accurate at all because that’s not how pay per stream works

                  it might be true that tidal has a high payout rate per stream, but if you notice on the right is how many listeners there are, tidal has n/a vs spotify’s 265 million, i believe its up to 276 million now

                  there’s straight up just more people streaming which dilutes the pay per stream because there’s more people streaming than ever, billions of streams every hour

                  spotify’s streaming rate is variable for each artist because it’s your number of monthly streams x your total share of all streams

                  the more streams you get, the bigger the share, the higher the payout, there are millions of artists getting plenty of streams and are very happy with what they’re getting

                  spotify also has different rates depending on where you are and what your plan is, so im on premium and live in australia so my payout per stream is near the top, someone on an ad supported plan in india is paying out a fraction of what i do, but maybe that ad supported indian user will get a good job soon and enjoys spotify but hates the ads so he gets premium, adding to the pool that gets paid out to artists and spotify is #1 by a long way

                  also funny that the company with unlimited money (apple) has such a low payout rate on that inaccurate chart, vs spotify which pays out 70% of its companies revenues to rights holders

                  Spotify pays out about 70% of its gross revenue to rightsholders. That’s a significant portion of their income. In accounting terms, their cost of goods sold is 70%. Tidal also pays out around 70% of its revenues to rightsholders

                  https://blog.discmakers.com/2025/06/why-does-spotify-pay-the-lowest-royaltie/#h-TOC_01

                  whatever works though

                  • waddle_dee@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    2·
                    3 days ago

                    Alright, I’m good with arguing now. I don’t want to anymore. It’s clear we have different opinions, mine hasn’t changed and I believe yours has not, as well. Have a great day!