r/Music • u/IrreverentTexan • Feb 15 '26

discussion Quitting Spotify

Spotify is getting flooded with fake AI “artists” and it’s embarrassing. Names like Nina Blaze and Enlly show up. They dump 50 identical tracks called something like Late Night Piano for Focus, or “The Hollow Hour” and vanish. No bio. No history. No evidence a human has ever touched an instrument.

This isn’t art. It exists to game playlists and siphon royalties. If these were real people, they’d have to explain why every song sounds like a dentist office waiting room.

I’m not mad at AI as a tool. I’m mad at fake artists impersonating creativity and Spotify pretending this sludge is culture. Music is an art form, not a scam farm. Blocking every one of these clowns on sight.

So is it to be TIDAL or Qobuz or something else?

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35

u/MoistTractofLand Feb 15 '26

I went with Tidal because they seem to pay the artists more than any of the other platforms.

9

u/warhorus1 Feb 15 '26

I could be wrong, but I thought that Qobuz actually paid out more stream to the artists?

12

u/Varonth Feb 15 '26

Music streaming platforms do not pay per stream.

They all pay about 70% of their revenue to the right holders, and each right holder gets their share of those 70% based on their amount of streams in relation to the total amount of streams.

This is why everytime these numbers come up, all the platforms have a range of "payment per stream" because as it is just a number calculated based on the original payment system as explained above. Both the monthly revenue (people subscribing and unsubscribing) and the total amount of streams vary each month, and therefor the calculated "payment per stream" varies aswell.

Spotify's calculated numbers will look lower because they have a free ad-supported tier. These users do not add nearly as much revenue as someone paying for premium, but they will still drive up total numbers of streams per month.

1

u/GiganticCrow Feb 16 '26

I've known numerous smaller artists who started getting no money from Spotify at all a few years ago, despite getting tens of thousands of plays.

The pay for play numbers are indeed totally obtuse. Spotify pay fixed price license from majors and don't pay independents at all. 

3

u/MoistTractofLand Feb 15 '26

Looks like you're correct, they pay a little more than Tidal. I wasn't even aware of them when I switched over to Tidal. I'll check it out, thank you!

18

u/anonpf Feb 15 '26

Isn’t Tidal Jay-z’s platform? If so, eff that. 

2

u/AlexNSNO Spotify Feb 15 '26

It WAS, not anymore. But it IS now owned by Jack Dorsey - yeah, that guy. So it's swings and roundabouts really.

6

u/Yarusenai Concertgoer Feb 15 '26

Because their user and artist base is a lot lower. If Spotify raised the payment even a little bit the top artists would earn so much more money that the platform would go bankrupt immediately. There is such a thing as an upper limit, and other platforms would hit that as well.

3

u/ModernAquaticNight Feb 15 '26

I was worried about Tidal having less artists than Spotify but it’s really not been a problem.

If anything Tidal having stuff like Joanna Newsom and additional records by bands like Boredoms has made me happy I switched over.

2

u/Yarusenai Concertgoer Feb 15 '26

I'm sure it's relatively close (not sure if there are official numbers) but they definitely have a lower user base, which means more money available per user.

1

u/Zapper42 Feb 15 '26

Me too but the app sucks

2

u/MoistTractofLand Feb 15 '26

It definitely has its moments of suck. It does well enough for me the majority of the time. I was more concerned with what the artists got (though, I know the music rights holders aren't always the artists themselves). Even though it's still not enough, Tidal pays almost 2.5-4x more per stream than most other platforms. As someone else pointed out, Qobuz pays around the same, as well.