Voting with your wallet on Spotify? Here are some alternatives. – Houston Chronicle

When veteran rocker Neil Young said last week that he would remove his music from Spotify over COVID-19 misinformation being touted by comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan there, it caused a lot of people to rethink their relationships with the streaming audio platform.

Youngs action inspired only a few other musicians to do the same, including Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren, a guitarist for both Youngs sometime-backup band Crazy Horse and Bruce Springsteens E-Street Band. But it also caused Spotifys stock to take a $2 billion tumble and send subscribers troubled by Rogan giving unchallenged time to COVID quackery to seek alternatives.

Spotify is the streaming-audio leader with 381 million active monthly users worldwide and 150 million paid subscribers. Rogans presence is part of the companys drive to also own the podcasting space. He was reportedly paid $100 million to podcast exclusively for Spotify and has 11 million listeners, which partly explains why Youngs me-or-Joe ultimatum went the way it did.

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There are other reasons besides misinformation-peddling to consider alternatives to Spotify. Other services offer better music quality, and Spotify is notorious for not paying artists much per streaming play. Actually, the entire streaming-music business is stingy, paying at fractions of a penny per play, but Spotifys rate is way down a list of payouts recently compiled by Digital Music News, coming in well behind the competing Apple Music and Tidal.

Ive compiled a list of Spotify competitors, how much each costs and their various strengths and weaknesses. If youre looking to listen elsewhere, you have quite a few choices. And since they all have trial periods some as long as three months you can test them concurrently and determine which works best for you.

music.apple.com

3 months free trial, $9.99 monthly, $14.99 family, bundles available

If youre an iPhone, iPad or Mac user, you likely know already about Apple Music, even if its not your streaming service of choice. Born as iTunes back when you actually paid to own music, it is now the second-biggest streaming service behind Spotify. Apple recently made news by beefing up its audio quality at no extra charge, offering lossless songs (they are less affected by audio compression) and, for many titles, 3D Spatial Audio, a k a Dolby Atmos. But you must have the right Apple-owned hardware to hear it.

But generally, Apple Music isnt limited to Apple devices. The company has an Android app, and iTunes for Windows is still available, though the lossless/3D audio music isnt available on those platforms. And, as with most services, theres a web-based version that allows you to listen anywhere to its 90-million-song catalog. Listening to Apples massive podcast selection requires a separate app.

music.amazon.com

Music Prime included with $119 Prime membership; Unlimited has a 3-month trial, $9.99 monthly, $14.99 family plan, discounts for Prime members

If youve got an Amazon Prime membership, youre already got access to Music Prime but if you listen to a lot of music, youve probably run into its limitations. With standard-definition audio quality, its really a subset of Music Unlimited, and doesnt have nearly as many songs or artists. But both are designed to work very well with Amazons Alexa voice assistant.

As with Apple Music, the Unlimited tier offers a huge selection of songs in lossless and 3D audio. In fact, it was one of the first mainstream music services to offer higher-resolution audio. Young, upon his departure from Spotify, was pushing Amazon for the quality of its sound.

music.youtube.com

1 month trial, $9.99 monthly, $14.99 family, $4.99 student, bundles including YouTube Premium.

While YouTube offers an ad-supported free music service, it has one drawback thats so annoying that its almost not worth considering: You must keep the app open on your phone to listen to music. Switch away to another app or a web browser and the music stops. No multitasking for you!

The Premium tier gives you full background-playing capabilities for its 60-million-song catalog, but there are no lossless or 3D-audio options. However, if you are willing to pay a couple bucks more each month, you can get a subscription to the larger YouTube Premium service that lets you play videos ad-free and gives you Music Premium as well. If youre a fan of YouTube video, thats a great bargain.

tidal.com

Free tier, 30 days free trial for paid tiers, HiFi $9.99 monthly, HiFi+ $19.99 monthly. Family, other plans available.

Launched in 2015 by rapper Jay-Z, Tidal is now owned by Block Inc., the financial transaction company originally known as Square. From the beginning, Tidal emphasized better audio quality and bigger payouts to artists for streams. Both remain true today.

Tidals free tier, which was only recently introduced, offers its 80 million songs in lower sound quality and with limited ads. But once you move to the first paid tier, called HiFi, audio jumps to CD quality and you have access to 350,000 music videos. At HiFi+, things really get interesting, as Tidal offers different audio formats that are far above the quality level of other services. There are 3D audio and lossless formats, but also Tidals own Master format, in which the artists certify that master recordings were used. Youll need serious headphones or speakers to hear the difference. If I were switching from Apple Music, Id most likely choose Tidal.

All these services focus on mainstream music, but if your primary interest is discovering new tracks from independent artists, youll want to take a look at services such as Soundcloud (soundcloud.com) and Bandcamp (bandcamp.com). Both cater to musicians on the rise, so expect audio quality to vary.

And there are many, many niche streaming services for fans of all kinds of non-mainstream music. For example, I subscribe to an internet radio station called DI.fm, originally known as Digitally Imported. Dating to 1999, the service features trance and electronica, with dozens of channels and styles. I like to listen to the Psy Chillout channel when Im writing.

Also, check out Soma.fm, another radio station from the earliest days of internet radio. It has a wider variety of genres, from electronica to lounge to Americana to indie rock to metal. It functions similarly to public radio, relying on donations to keep the bits flowing.

dsilverman@outlook.com

twitter.com/dsilverman

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Voting with your wallet on Spotify? Here are some alternatives. - Houston Chronicle