2w ago

Is Spotify losing the streaming wars as it faces boycotts, lawsuits and assorted controversies?

www.cbc.ca /news/entertainment/spotify-streaming-platform-controversy-2025-9.6996115

The end of November used to mean something.

It wasn't just that the festive season was mere weeks away, or that Black Friday shopping madness was imminent, but that something fun and exciting was about to drop at any moment: Spotify Wrapped.

But this year, the internet is uncharacteristically quiet during the period when Spotify Wrapped typically appears. The lack of anticipation comes during a challenging time for the streaming platform, as it faces backlash on such issues as artist compensation, AI-generated music and ICE recruitment ads.

First, there's artist compensation. Spotify has long been criticized for its dismal payouts to artists. Earlier this year, some Grammy-nominated songwriters even boycotted a Spotify awards event in response to the company’s decision to reduce royalty rates for songwriters and publishers by merging its premium music service with audiobooks last year.

Then there was the outcry around Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek’s investment in Helsing, a German defence company. When the news broke that the CEO had been funding the AI military tech company through his investment firm Prima Materia, indie artists like Massive Attack, Deerhoof and Godspeed You! Black Emperor pulled their music from the platform in protest during the summer.

36 comments

For me, it's really two things. The first, the app is a bloated mess. Between videos, podcasts, and just tons of promotions, it's become a chore to just open up the app and start playing music. Secondly, it's just been getting expensive honestly. Annual price increases are crazy to me when the service is getting worse. Their lossless roleout was also a let down between delays and lower quality than competing services.
- which app? if you don't like patching stuff their web player used to be really good, haven't tried it in a long time tho
  edit: obv with ubo (at least)

It’s basically unethical to use Spotify and we’re seriously doomed if shit like Spotify wrapped is more important to people than the consequences of reality

Also, they were pushing ads for ICE recruitment.
- Keep track of every company that airs ICE/Military ads in 2025. Amazon does it through Twitch. I wouldn't be surprised if Meta has some. They all need to collapse.
  
  ICE ads have been running on Amazon properties (Twitch, Amazon Prime Video), Google properties (YouTube), Meta properties (Facebook, Instagram), LinkedIn, Twitter, Spotify, etc. Basically any big tech platform with an ads business.
  
  Good luck with that

After trying out the alternatives to spotify I simply didn't like any of them. Either other services didn't have artists I liked or their players were horrible.
Instead I simply set up navidrome on my server, used a soulseek script to convert my youtube and spotify playlists to download all my music to my server, and then opened up said server to myself and my friends/family. So now they can all stream for free AND if they want they can easily add music to the server. Which is fantastic because now I'm discovering new bands and artists without any effort. Just shuffle all my tracks and "oh that's new" because my buddy added it and it's really good. Plus the various apps for both PC and mobile are way better than what I was using before.
- Oh thats interesting, I tried doing music in the past but it was just not as easy as movies and shows.
  I saw a few people on my discord recently taking about how bad Spotify DJ has been getting so maybe its time to try it out again
  
  it's painfully easy to set up now. I run navidrome in a docker on my server. I also use Nicotine+ to make downloading and sharing music easier instead of going through a terminal. But my Dad for example will just rip CDs he has and drag and drop the mp3s into the music folder and it's good to go, navidrome will automatically get the album cover and all the meta data and instantly add it. I use SuperSonic as my client on my PC and laptop and Synfonium on my phone. Everyone has their own accounts for navidrome so they can login where ever and be good to go.

Probably not. Most of my friends and acquaintances think music is Spotify. They cannot comprehend the existence of competing streaming platforms and become aggressive when the subject is brought up. It's a bit like how every screen is an iPad to certain people.
- After 8 years my wife finally told me that she will leave her friend's "family" account because she doesn't want to support Spotify. I've been using YouTube music since it launched (as Google Play music) but I'm not sure that is any better (ethically)

I hope so. I'm on the boycott train.

Who exactly are they supposed to be losing to?
- Navidrome.
- Qobuz? Tidal?
- They are still the biggest. The headline is premature. Apple is close behind. YouTube and Amazon have large numbers. Tencent and Netease are growing in China.
- I switched to Tidal myself, but I am not a big music consumer so my opinion isn't worth a ton.

There is no reason to keep Spotify alive. Artists would make more putting their content on YouTube. This is a great opportunity for a streaming service with actually decent rates to spring up!

Betteridge's law of headlines applies.

I've been buying music (mostly from Bandcamp) for years. Now I have a hefty library and the people making music got paid
- Whatever money I would spend on music streaming, I spend on Bandcamp Friday.
  There's one this week people!

Yeah, losing to my Jellyfin home server. 😎

Good. Shit platform. Crap owner. Marginalizes artists.

We cancelled Spotify early this year. We likely won't go back. Don't really miss it. We have YouTube Premium and that includes their music service which is enough for us.
- Google lords are not any better. Qobuz pays their artists the most.
  
  Did the switch to Qobuz this year. Negative regrets.
  P.s. love the handle
  
  This isn't true, royalty payments are fairly similar across streaming services, on account of how much money gets in via the subscription prices. Trying to divide the royalty payments by stream count is largely irrelevant on account of them having no correlation with the royalty payments, these are instead based on the fraction of total streams on the platform.
  It's even less true on account of artists not getting directly paid through streaming services, it's all getting funneled to the people who own the rights to the music itself, which is the labels.

My funkwhale server is thriving.

I will enjoy the folks coming out of the woodwork to say "~~I only liked Elon before he went crazy~~" "I only liked Spotify before they started exploiting artists".
You literally have to clockwork orange some people to get them to see what is happening around them.

I dropped them back when they started throwing money at Joe Rogan. That told me everything I needed to know about them.

Have they released the hi-fi tier they promised years ago?
Between Tidal's high quality streaming and my Jellyfin server with FLAC of my CDs, I'm happy.

36 comments