Yeah, the very idea that you would need a malicious corporate entity spying on you in order to guess your taste in music and give you recommendations is, to put it mildly, perverse.
Personally, I’d rather talk to friends and get introduced to new music that way…
Having friends to talk to about music, a crazy concept, I know… The Big Brother is the only friend one needs. 
We’re taught from birth a great big spy is a good thing.
One example for instance: Santa Claus - the old fat pedophile who has toys created at a freezing cold slave encampment, and then disperses them to children in the comfort of the night based upon his sole views of their behavior throughout the year. . .
And we LOVE Santa Claus. . .
Most of the artists I listen to on a regular basis these days were actually found by me as a result of Spotify’s Discover algorithm.
I listen to a lot of dark synthwave/vaporwave stuff these days, a lot of New Retro Wave artists like Carpenter Brut, Max Brhon, Perturbator, Varien, Bignic etc etc.
None of these I would’ve found without Discover. I find it to be an immensely valuable tool for… well, Discovering new music I’ll like. 
I tried to get away from Spotify a few years ago, as an experiment to see if other services’ discovery algorithms were up to snuff with that of Spotify.
No spoiler that I’m currently still a Spotify customer, and have not stayed with any other service 
Same, I’ve been on spotify since 2011.
WTF 
To be fair, all music in the world doesn’t mean anything, if you don’t listen to it. There is a finite amount of time people can listen to music. People often forget that, when talking about the pros and cons of Spotify. I bought 15 albums on Band Camp in the last year and six album downloads from the respective bands website. 21 albums a year are probably more than most people listen to, especially with all the old stuff already present.
I assume people usually use Spotify premium for offline support and better audio quality (and no ads). Spotify premium is 10€ per month, so 120€ per year. All the albums I bought amount to a total of ~150€. So 30€ more than Spotify, but I actually own those 21 albums. On top of that I usually download single tracks from YouTube with youtube-dl or newpipe.
If you have huge playlists with a lot of different artists, then Spotify may be interesting, because it’s simply easier to manage all of that. Otherwise Spotify is just throwing money out of the window for products, that you love, but loose access to as soon as you don’t pay Spotify. I would always advice people to just buy music, if they have money for Spotify. Everything else just makes you dependent for one of the most beautiful things in life.
You are so right I have over 700 albums all converted to flac i don’t entertain MP3 in no shape or form, my mobile, my car both also support flac.
At any time spotify or other srteaming services could go out of business or face legal action,
I paid for it I own it its mine, nobody can track it, or my ip address, like streaming services can, or rip of the artists
So you have never paid for Cable either I assume? It’s the same principle; noting you watch on TV is “yours”, but you still pay for it.
I don’t have the money to buy all the albums I want. Nor do I have the money for the storage space for said files, be it in bookshelves or on an HDD. Nor do I want to hassle with backups.
Also 21 albums in a year seems awfully little. As I said my 80s playlist alone is 44 hours of music.
Not to mention that your initial argument is only valid if you literally isn’t interested in listening to artists you have never heard of, ever.
So you have never paid for Cable either I assume? It’s the same principle; noting you watch on TV is “yours”, but you still pay for it.
Cable is somewhat special in germany, because you HAVE to pay for it. So I wouldn’t count this for my case, because I never watch normal TV, but still have to pay for it.
I don’t have the money to buy all the albums I want. Nor do I have the money for the storage space for said files, be it in bookshelves or on an HDD. Nor do I want to hassle with backups.
Also 21 albums in a year seems awfully little. As I said my 80s playlist alone is 44 hours of music.
Not to mention that your initial argument is only valid if you literally isn’t interested in listening to artists you have never heard of, ever.
21 albums plus around ~900+ albums from the past, going back 30+ years. That’s more than enough music to fill a year and steadily increase it with new purchases and YouTube downloads.
Storage is so incredibly cheap, that it really shouldn’t be counted as an argument, if you have decades worth of music on it. HDDs are just around 18€/TB, which is nothing. Also Spotify really isn’t the only way to find new artists. And keep in mind, Spotify is also a rather problematic trend for musicians, because of their business model. So it’s not just the technical but also a moral aspect.
And the moral aspect comes to show, because people stopped thinking of albums as a product, but view them as a service. People never have to think about “can I buy this album now or is it too much money”, because they can listen to it for free or no money at all, while Spotify makes profit off of the bands. And if the market shifts and Spotify maybe will be gone, get more expensive or has to remove music, this service will get problematic for the users.
Overall I would just advice people to think about what the music they listen and the bands are worth to them. It should at least be more than just 10 bucks for Spotify(!) a month.
As already said, Spotify is just a nice management tool. The rest is just the consumer not seeing any music as being worth a penny.
This is not my point when I say “all music”. My point is: Whenever I hear a song in the radio that I like I can have it on spotify on my playlist. I would never ever buy all the CDs from all the songs that I like.
Whenever there is a party I have basically all music with me. And if somebody has a wish for a song I will most probably be able to play the song.
Time is not going backwards. That means: Music streaming will not go away. If spotify dies there will be another streaming service to provide music to me. I have not the feeling that I am throwing money out of the window. I am paying money for a service that I really like. And I will probably be doing so for the rest of my life.
I see this very differently. Basically all musicians provide their songs via streaming nowadays. Those who are complaining about streaming are some of the big bands because they can make more money with CDs than with streaming. Ok, thats fair, but that is not my concern. They are rich anyways.
But the small bands really benefit from spotify. Bands which nobody knows. Bands from which I would never buy a CD. They are now getting money for every click on their music. That is an important value stream for small bands. And this is what I very much want to support.
Keep in mind, that Spotify is another step between bands and the money. Usually their label also takes a cut and what is left is probably not worth it for them.
Small bands are still making most money from playing live and selling records. I just did some research and if it’s true what I found, in 2020 Spotify paid artists $0.0032 per stream. Some small bands I listen to had like 15k people streaming their songs in total, which is nothing, if you roll it out to one year.
Spotify generates money, yes, but for most small bands it’s probably not even a thousand dollars per year. Spotify may be nice to explore smaller bands, but people shouldn’t get the idea they are actually supporting their favourite bands that much. If you buy an album for two dollar on Band Camp they will make A LOT more money than you listening to their songs hundreds of times on Spotify. So I would just advice people to actually put in an effort to support artists and not throw in 10€ a month and think that’s supporting anyone.
Yes, in fact that is accurate.
For small artists it’s only good if they wanna expand their audience (if lucky), but not for actual money.
Only Justin Bieber types can make some real money through streaming services, most of which are gonna be label money still.
That was an interesting read. Thanks for the link!
Did you read the whole novel already? 
It’s a young adult novel, but it might be interesting as a light read for people who like technology and privacy issues. I tend to recommend it for younger people*, paving the road for the big brother.
*edit: younger people than I am, that is. 14 - 20 it’s probably the perfect age for the book, if such a thing exists.
I’m glad someone mentioned this - the $0.0032 isn’t universal either, there are other factors that can lead to a different $$ amount that is paid to artists (e.g. country of origin). Here’s an interesting article I found in regards to Spotify streaming https://freeyourmusic.com/blog/how-much-does-spotify-pay-per-stream.
I don’t think anyone is saying that using a streaming service like Spotify makes you a bad person; if anything, if you stumble upon a small artist via Spotify, consider buying their work directly from them if you really really like them. That support goes a looooong way further than streaming revenue.
Oftentimes artists allow you to choose how much you want to pay for a digital copy of their music (on Bandcamp at least…I don’t know about other similar platforms)…you can choose to pay $1.00 or $40.00 if you really want to. I’ve come upon many in the vaporwave genre that do that.
I just read the copyright section. It was good - a new look towards licensing creative works.
Now that I’m in the same age group, I’ll surely give it read when I get time 
Just going with this number anyway as a base for calculations here and to continue my insistance that Spotify should be compared to FM radio, NOT a personal CD collection:
0.0032 per stream is not much if you compare it to traditional radio. If an artist is paid, as one example above gave, about $20 per minute on a radio broadcast, that means that would equal $82 for a 4 minute song, or the equivalent of 27,000 streams.
Now before Streaming was a thing, a popular radio show most likely had more listeners than that. Also, small stations would pay less, OR be far more selective with artists since they could only afford to pay so many (the example was for BBC radio, which is, or was, very similar to the Scandinavian model).
