Continuing with Spotify?

TIL, Neil and Joni are both polio survivors

I do want to ditch Spotify. I'm in the middle of a 3-month trial of Apple Music but I hate their UI and search functions. I'll give Qobuz a shot with their free month. One frustrating thing is having to pay some third party to migrate playlists, and the migration options seem to have frustrating limits. I just discovered the 1500-track Anthology of Dub playlist this past week, and the Spotify ---> Qobuz migration tool has a limit of 1000 tracks per playlist.

I don’t have any specialty loyalty to Spotify but I have become pretty dependent on streaming. The thing that is bumming me out is that moving to a service that would be equivalent would just be moving to another corporation… I mean, it’s not like Rogan is not in Apple because they are principled. They just lost out o a deal.

i'm continuing with spotify

“Speciality loyalty” = morning brain

My spotify and hulu subscriptions are intertwined, so if I ditch spotify for another platform I lose (free) hulu. As soon as it becomes clear where the greatest number of people are migrating to, I'll follow. But for now I'm stuck.

and the Spotify ---> Qobuz migration tool has a limit of 1000 tracks per playlist.

split the 1500 tracks into two playlists of 750, migrate them both, then drag and drop the second playlist into the first playlist, right?

As I said on the other thread, between collaborative playlists, and the family plan, I'm not sure how I could readily disentangle myself from using this platform. If I had a single-user subscription, I may just hop over to Qobuz or Apple (mixed results with the free version of SongShift last night, migrating playlists over to my Qobuz trial, but not insurmountable).

xp - merging playlists: may or may not be possible once they're migrated; last night's brief experience gave me a fixed imported playlist that I could neither add to nor delete from.

oh, weird? i shouldn't talk - i've never heard of Qobuz until this morning - but i just figured any playlist could be edited, if you made it in the first place! kinda weird.

i really hate my opinion on spotify and the alternatives, so much that for once i'll stfu

is it easy to import spotify playlists to another plataform?

Xp - yeah, was odd. 37 of 40 tracks matched by SongShift, figured I could add the ones it couldn’t find manually on Qobuz but no: that imported playlist was read-only. The attempt to do the same with one of the ILX c20 classical playlists was hopeless - barely a 10% match.

If I pay actual money to some service to migrate my Bacharach list (738 tracks) and the Dub list and wind up with a 10% match rate, I will be hot under the collar.

The thing that is bumming me out is that moving to a service that would be equivalent would just be moving to another corporation… I mean, it’s not like Rogan is not in Apple because they are principled. They just lost out o a deal.

Rogan signed with Spotify in May 2020, and Apple launched podcast subscriptions over a year later. So AFIK they wouldn’t have been in the running when Rogan made his deal (in fact, it was deals like his which got Apple serious about building out exclusive podcasts of their own)… which may not alter your overall rationale

Do people have to be paid subscribers to hear Rogan on Spotify? I figured it was just to get people to the platform. Apple surely would have made a deal with Rogan to keep people using their platform exclusively, but probably didn’t need to as much as Spotify did.

Right, I don’t think that was part of their business plan at the time. Maybe they would’ve signed him in a different scenario, who knows (in which case Young would presumably be pulling his music from Apple)

Idk, I found a Steve Bannon podcast on Apple. Is it still okay to switch to Apple? Maybe I’ll go to YouTube where absolutely no white supremacists or QAnon nuts exist?

It's his reach and influence that makes the difference, the size of his audience.

I mean, Spotify pulled a bunch of archived episodes - with Gavin McInnes and others - so there was pressure from the beginning not to spoil the platform with his show. The issue then becomes whether giving disinformation on Covid is a deal-breaker for an episode of his that Spotify chooses to host.

I dislike Spotify for a few reasons, but yes switching to Apple or Amazon for political reasons (or even the sole reason of disseminating Covid misinformation) does not make a lot of sense. Some people earlier were suggesting that the fact Spotify directly pays Rogan, rather than simply making money off ads a la YouTube, is worse but idk if I find that super convincing.

That said afaict, Qobuz and Tidal don't have the "we murder workers" problem that Apple and Amazon do nor the "paying Joe Rogan $$$" problem, so it's a little disingenuous to frame this as just "Spotify or Apple? what's the diff"

Maybe so. I’ve never heard of Qobuz until about an hour ago. Admittedly I’ve never tried Tidal.

It was initially challenging to get past the "Tidal? lol" reaction, I'll admit

The thing that is bumming me out is that moving to a service that would be equivalent would just be moving to another corporation… I mean, it’s not like Rogan is not in Apple because they are principled. They just lost out o a deal.

otm. also, to the extent that this list of top 100 podcasts on apple podcast is accurate, the current #10 podcast in the united states (on apple podcast) is the Joe Rogan Experience Review, a podcast where some enormous fucking loser spends 45 minutes dissecting the latest joe rogan podcast

#15 is the ben shapiro show.

ben shapiro is worse than joe rogan (but not as popular). he is a hitler youth

the matt walsh show at #35, what a wonderful person he is

i survey the landscape of american podcasts and i want them all to disintegrate my own brain

let me check google/youtube real quick, see if there is any joe rogan-esque content on there

I moved to Tidal from Spotify about 3 months ago after being on Spotify since it originally launched and for the most part I've been content with it. There are a few things that I miss from Spotify, but nothing that would compel me to go back.

The increased emphasis on podcasts combined with the Helsing.ai thing are what pushed me to pull the plug. I'm also trying to shift more of my spending/listening to Bandcamp, but I'm too hooked on streaming at this point to abandon it completely.

I mean, Tidal is now majority-owned by a gross tech bro, if you're looking for a "political" reason to avoid that too

gross how?

Dorsey? I'm half joking (though he's not my type of fellow). He hasn't paid Rogan $100m, that's for sure. If I were a heavy Spotify user, and not invested in Amazon or Apple, I'd prob switch to Tidal - the UI is v similar

The arguments that other platforms also feature reprehensible content are valid but imho the Spotify/Rogan issue is different because of the extent to which Spotify has made Rogan the face of their brand. Rogans show is one of the most popular media properties out there and Spotify's play for him was explicitly about identifying themselves w/him in a bid to lure his audience, which imho puts it in another category than just "I can find people saying worse stuff on other platforms too". Ben Shapiro is a monster & is platformed by Apple Podcasts, but at least they are not repeatedly giving him big public bearhugs the way Spotify does w/Rogan, giving him the PR boost that his views are something Spotify considers normal & mainstream.

That’s a good way of putting it.

they are all tech companies and as a result they are all going to do the awful things that tech companies do. there is no ethical consumption under something something. my point was more that if you decide to switch from Spotify to another streaming service (for whatever reason), you'll get a very comparable product, which wasn't always the case.

WmC, think about how much better dub music is gonna sound in CDQ…

The open letter from health experts, which inspired Young's action, also has specific reasons why they took issue with Rogan/Spotify (and which illustrates why the case is different from other podcast apps passively platforming all those awful but nonexclusive podcasts out there)

So is there a convenient way to, without registering for them, or signing up for a free trial or whatever, see what kind of content the other services have? Like run a few searches and see if they have the same stuff as Spotify?

listening to remain in light on qobuz, do they stream special mixes of certain albums? i'm wondering if some of the new shit i'm hearing in tracks isn't just because of improved sound quality but because it's like some audiophile SACD or whatever

i will say i am noticing the depth of field in recordings a lot more, where things are supposed to 'sit' in the mix is far more apparent

Pertinent question, it seems: How does one pronounce Qobuz? Like, if you're actually talking to someone and you say Spotify or Apple Music, it's easy, but what if you're talking about Qobuz?

Ko-buzz? Quo-buzz?

former ilxor "some dude" with a Spin piece:

https://www.spin.com/2022/01/neil-young-spotify-joe-rogan

Ku-buuss, but you have to say it in a French accent.

i basically cannot remember the name qobuz. i have to glance at the app every time

re: the sentiment of groovypanda's embedded tweet there

yeah, that shit is not cool. this "wrong/right side of history" argument is for tunnel-visioned blowhards. i think we should formally bring back the censure (which twitter started to do a bit with their "this might be misleading info" thingy they started to add to t®ump tweets before they rightfully banned him completely). let these assholes parrot their stupid libertarian scare tactic rhetoric all they want, just put an audio drop over it every thirty seconds that says something like, "this is opinionated misinformation and not based in fact." like yeah, you have free speech it's just that every word that comes out of your mouth is fucking stupid.

Something that’s been nagging away at me for the last two weeks of comparison: is this (ever so slightly better, richer, spacier) Qobuz track just… a tiny bit louder?

I did a very unscientific test today with some jazz and, yes: the Qobuz version AirPlayed to my stereo was maybe 1-1.5dB louder than the same off Spotify. But if I switch to the Spotify Connect version (streamer direct, not AirPlay) the levels appear to the same.

It’s just apples and oranges cos you can’t know how each platform has encoded their tracks, if they’ve normalised or whatever. I found the same frequency-sweep test-tone disc on both platforms - on Qobuz it was 15dB louder! They seemed to have normalised each track.

So… who knows what I’m hearing here. Volume diff, negative effects of 320kOGG to AAC on the fly for AirPlay, genuine improvements due to bitrate.

(No reason for anything to be less than 16/44.1 lossless over wifi thesedays, I’ll grant you that).

Volume diff, negative effects of 320kOGG to AAC on the fly for AirPlay, genuine improvements due to bitrate.

It'd be weird for me to decide now to drop Spotify when their bed-making with Rogan happened two years ago and I didn't do it then.

But I also don't use Spotify much as I buy all of my music digitally and use Amazon Music for 99% of the listening if I go exploring.

Mostly used Spotify cos of weird quirks like how they have Obituary's Slowly We Rot and Amazon doesn't and I only own that album in vinyl form

281 For Sale from $10.00

https://www.discogs.com/master/105649-Obituary-Slowly-We-Rot

That was one example, I'm not paying $10 a month for that one album

Just saying though, Rogans deal was signed in 2020 and he began the worst of his COVID transgressions last April. Neil Young incident a weird line in the sand for me, personally. It wasn't based on anything new Rogan or Spotify did, it was based on a gambit Young took that everybody knew would not result in him being dropped.

I still support his move 100% and hope more artists do it. But the social media HEY EVERYONE WE NEED TO CANCEL SPOTIFY MEMBERSHIP campaigns popping up now, like...why was their relationship with Rogan not worthy of cancelling membership 10 months ago, or when doctors put Rogan on blast?

But otoh whatever reason people want to boycott something is their right and the Rogan connection is a valid reason so I'm not too concerned about it

Mike's posts are becoming incomprehensible in a way that I heartily enjoy. Hope for more of this.

I don't know about the reasons for the controversy but in my own little world I would feel fairly happy for all streaming services to collapse and the world to prove that I was sensible to keep vinyl, CDs and even a CD player. But for individual tracks still to be randomly on YouTube for my convenience.

I don't actually wish for this to happen to damage everyone else's pleasure, though.

Rogans deal was signed in 2020 and he began the worst of his COVID transgressions last April. Neil Young incident a weird line in the sand for me, personally

I get what you are saying, but at the same time during those periods (2020 and April 2021), your average person was probably just a bit distracted by the raging pandemic to worry about taking a stand against Spotify. Yeah I absolutely wish this would have happened in immediate response to Rogan’s deal, but imho better late than never. And to be honest, it’s a little weird for me get nitpicky towards Neil about not doing this sooner when the opposite would be, what, saying he missed his window and needs to shut up about it? Even if I’m skeptical that this will turn out the way we hope, I’m absolutely thrilled that Neil has actually kickstarted a genuine backlash against Spotify and ignited this conversation. Maybe this would have fizzled and been drowned out had it come during the heat of the pandemic.

I found the same frequency-sweep test-tone disc on both platforms - on Qobuz it was 15dB louder! They seemed to have normalised each track.

A test tone would probably have almost no dynamic range and be normalised to 0dBFS so that's mostly accountable for as Spoify reducing it to meet its -14 LUFS standard, I would think?

What is Swedish for "chutzpah"?

big meatballs

BRÄNNBOLLS

I’m not a lawyer but how on earth would a company with a market cap of 100billion sue for 13 trillion!? That’s like 3 times the net worth of the biggest company in the world (NVDA).

If I were a judge I’d instantly throw the case away and recommend psychiatric help.

I think that covers the value of the IP in general, as controlled by the labels. Spotify is a party to the suit as they were the ones scraped, or something like that?

just in case anyone did not get the inside joke spotify was started using pirated content

(The development of the music-player software was started using pirated content, but the app was not actually launched until they got licenses.)

why are you still being an apologist for this terrible company?

I didn't work for Spotify until well after then, but that doesn't change the facts.

we don't need some weird stooge running interference for a company that we can all see is blatantly evil and hypocritical. if you feel the need to "just point out the facts," go do it on Quora.com or something

Or maybe I'll just participate in conversations here on ILM where I've been before, during and after my time at Spotify. The irony of the "Since day one, we have stood with the artist community against piracy" isn't that Spotify "started with pirated content", it's that as a commercial entity it started by actively perpetuating the major-label-dominated music-business power structures, not supporting the "artist community". Spotify didn't initially pay any attention to artists at all.

I appreciate Glenn's expertise here and elsewhere

^ Very much this

The lawsuit is interesting to actually read if you care about this subject.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/files/2026/01/Annas-Archive.pdf

The absurd total amount quoted is just a function of multiplying the $150,000/work statutory damages by the number of audio files scraped, just the same as when Anthropic was class-action sued for training on copyright-protected books. (Except 86m audio files vs 480k books.) It was 100% certain that Anna's Archive would get sued for scraping and redistributing audio files. Spotify is officially one of 20 plaintiffs, although if you look at their addresses you immediately realize there are actually only 4: Warner, Sony, UMG, Spotify. (I was sorry to be reminded that Fueled by Ramen belongs to Warner.) I also think it is 100% certain that if Apple, Amazon or YouTube had been the service scraped, this same suit would have been filed with just that 4th plaintiff switched. This is abusive capitalism, but it's not surprising abusive capitalism, and there's nothing uniquely abusive about Spotify's involvement in the suit.

It is, however, uniquely abusive that Spotify has cut off new API access for developers as a response to their own system vulnerabilities. It was uniquely developer-hostile that they constrained API access in several ways before that, ostensibly for "security" but very obviously out of fear of AI stealing all their value, which is a thing you don't fear unless you know that all the "value" you're adding is actually AI in the first place. Just to pick a couple recent examples from the long list of things that are actually uniquely criticizable about Spotify.

Personally, I think it's unfortunate that Anna's Archive didn't start by announcing just the scraped music metadata, and not mentioning the audio. It would have been interesting to test the application of copyright protection to the factual metadata about the music, with the possible big win of effectively ruling that it can't be protected that way, and thus could be productively open-sourced. A public database of aggregated metadata for all the world's music (ongoing, not just one snapshot) would make a lot of interesting things more possible.

would better if artists had their own music files available online for all companies to freely access for a streaming rate the artists set themselves, then the music services could compete on UI features instead of catalog availability

we don't need some weird stooge running interference for a company that we can all see is blatantly evil and hypocritical. if you feel the need to "just point out the facts," go do it on Quora.com or something

― budo jeru, Thursday, January 29, 2026 11:18 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tired of seeing you attacking other posters for purity reasons.

??

everyone here knows that Spotify is not an ethical company and you're derailing an interesting discussion just to belabor an obvious point.

i don't follow the politics threads but budo jeru is a great poster on the music threads and afaik not known for anything like snarky behavior

I personally agree that it's a treat to have glenn here and always appreciate his perspectives (and his book which I recently read!) even if I happen to completely disagree with him on pretty fundamental issues such as is streaming good or bad (as it stands, bad imo)

well, i can live with being called a hotheaded thread derailer. not really sure what “purity” means in this context, but i can explain my thought process at least

i get that we all have to draw a paycheck, that’s fine. i’m not here to police anybody’s occupation, certainly not their consumption. but when you make your whole brand The Guy from Spotify, and even get a book deal out of it, then i think it’s fair to say you’ve identified yourself to some extent with the topic under discussion, and people are going to criticize you. this is a message board, i’m sharing my opinion on the relevant thread.

tbh being an “insider” in the music biz doesn’t mean anything to me, except that you should be regarded with suspicion until proven otherwise. if Bob Lefsetz started posting here i would feel the same way. or if some ex-congressional aide starting posting on the us pol thread mansplaining about this or that. and i get that that trust and that context exists with some of you w/ glenn — that’s fine. it’s not there for me and a few others, from what i can tell.

i’m totally fine with people who have an intellectual interest in this topic, the same way you might be interested in anything else. i don’t object to glenn’s presence here, what i object to is popping in randomly with some “wall, actually” splitting hairs bullshit when people are correctly telling Spotify off for their shameless hypocrisy.

the business model of Spotify is, in my opinion, indicative of the predatory and harmful rot that’s endemic throughout the music biz, and also reflects the scamminess of our present economy as a whole. i’m pretty angry about it and feel like calling it out from time to time. it’s always near the front of my mind. i see its relationship to other systems that devalue labor and perpetuate hardship and oppression, and so i refuse to silo it off. i’m sorry if that makes anyone uncomfortable or annoyed or if it feels like “belaboring” a point. i’m not posting like this because i think i know best, it’s just my way to process and move through the world as it is right now for me and my community.

i am protective of musicians and other creative people, as well as the non-artists who still foster scenes and help artistic communities flourish — the bookers and sound ppl and bartenders and small space operators and music store clerks and all that. this is the real work, the real source of the value, of music not just us a product for consumption but as the emblem of a community that made it possible. and we’re supposed to believe that a few assholes in expensive suits really run the show because they developed some fucking app? sorry, fuck that! these people and their enablers and anybody who tries to make it seem respectable can, i think, be told to fuck off. (and i’m not even saying that’s glenn, btw.)

so, that’s where i’m coming from. anybody is totally within their right to see it as juvenile, obnoxious, whatever, but i’m telling you clearly that it’s not some personal attack or “purity test” (again, whatever that means). i value this ilxor community, i get a lot out of it, and i try to feed good things into it when i can. otherwise i wouldn’t even bother caring who posts here and what

Idk it really just seemed like Glenn was offering a salient fact check.

FWIW my comment earlier was my 7th note in this entire thread, and the first time I've posted in it since early 2023. I think one factual clarification, which was directly relevant to the discussion of hypocrisy and clearly some people don't know it, didn't really qualify as "belaboring" anything.

[xpost; what pgwp said]

I just assumed that number they came up with in the lawsuit was just some cold BS calculation. Like when Metallica sued Napster for $10 million in damages, $100,000 per illegally downloaded song. Or like when the MPAA sued some grandpa for a million dollars or whatever. Or when Trump sues anything for a bazillion dollars based on some arbitrary shit, like how many of his feelings were hurt and how much those feelings are worth.

Sorry if I'm mixing you up with someone else Budo. There are so many forms of purity around here it's hard to keep up, i.e. "Fuck anyone who still uses Spotify/Twitter/Substack" etc.

always love when glenn contributes to this thread, i'm thankful that he ever bothers doing do considering the shit that people often project onto him.

i hate spotify but always enjoy reading glenn's perspective because he knows a shitload about spotify & how it works and i always learn something interesting from his posts, and when it comes to hating on stuff i generally find that knowing as much as i can about the thing is more useful than not knowing about it.

^^^ otm and otm

See, it's interesting that all these cases tend to be reported on the same way. But the Metallica and MPAA cases were both the same as the Anna's one: the legally established penalty for willful infringement, multiplied by the number of works involved. This penalty was $100,000/work as of the accused Napster infringements, but by the time of that lawsuit had already been raised to $150,000/work by a new law. The MPAA case involved four movies the guy's grandson had downloaded, so $150,000 x 4 = $600,000.

Trump, on the other hand, pulls all numbers he says out of his ass.

Also, I agree with f. hazel that it would be better if artists could control their own rights much more directly, and there's a section about how this might work in my book, which I don't expect anybody to read if they assume my time at Spotify makes me inherently untrustworthy, but it does have a lot of stuff about how streaming works, so if you're in this thread you're pretty much the kind of person it was written for.

fwiw i’m pretty sure f hazel was saying budo jeru was belabouring the point (about spotify being unethical), rather than you, glenn

oh, sorry, didn't mean to bogart the outrage

https://stereogum.com/2488594/alexis-krauss-explains-why-sleigh-bells-cant-easily-walk-away-from-wasserman-spotify-ticketmaster/news

Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells on why the band can't walk away from Spotify, the Wasserman agency, and Ticketmaster (part of Stereogum article below)

When I was a teenager in a girl pop band my body was digitally altered without my consent to make me look thinner. That was probably the first time I realized that my personal values were out of alignment with the priorities of the music business.
Today, despite being in a band that I'm deeply proud of, that has tried to treat people ethically, work with. individuals and companies that share our values and act with integrity, I find myself often beholden to corporations and systems that prioritize profit over ethics. Do I wish I could burn it all down, boycott and divest? Sure I do. But to be totally honest I can't afford to. My band can't afford to. Our ability to make a living in this industry is dependent on our engagement with these companies. This might not be the case for all artists but for a mid-tier band like ours, I struggle to find a way around it.

Would I love to take our music off Spotify? Yes I would. Can we afford to lose the platform Spotify gives us? No we can't. It would be devastating for us. Would I love to never support Live Nation and Ticketmaster again? Sure I would. Is it possible for a band that barely breaks even touring? No. I can't even fathom how we would do it. We
just don't have that type of leverage. Would I love to just leave Wasserman Music? Yes I would. Can we? No because I love and respect our agent and I trust him to make the decision that is best for himself, his family and his artists. The agents at Wasserman are not the villains.

Have my values aligned with every sync we've ever approved? No they haven't, but does that income enable me to pay mine and my child's health insurance every month? You bet it does. Cause let's remember that there's no such thing as healthcare for working musicians. Call me spineless but this is my truth. This is the hypocrisy of our realities, as we try to do the least harm in an unscrupulous system. Could I do more to hold these individuals and corporations accountable? Absolutely. Do I have the capacity to? No I don't.

In my opinion it's not the responsibility of the artists, especially those struggling to make a living, to fix these broken systems. I'm not saying we're powerless, but without systemic change and accountability for those at the highest levels of power, no meaningful change is going to occur. I certainly wish more multimillion and billionaire artists would step up and try to hold these institutions accountable. At some point you just don't need anymore fucking money. People with real power need to speak up. I'm always grateful when an artist uses their platform to disrupt the status quo. You might say “it's not enough" but it's something. None of these corporations are going to bat an eye if Sleigh Bells bails on them. It'll just leave us losing more money on tour and making less streaming income than we do now. It's a shitty place to be but it's the truth. What we need is greater regulation and accountability at the highest levels of the industry...

Hmm I mean they call it the "courage of one's convictions" for a reason