Lol. Signed up for Qobuz (super annoying they block all of Proton’s email mask domains), and within 10 minutes I get an email from Spotify that my monthly price is increasing.

Use the free trials with both and see what you prefer!

For podcasts, if you’re on android, check out AntennaPod

edit: Adding some more information

• The podcast format was designed to be decentralized and open. Most creators still do direct distribution, so you can follow your favourite podcasts without needing a centralized entity like Spotify to collect it for you
• The exception is the platform exclusive paywalled stuff that Spotify produces themselves. Joe Rogan is one of those iirc, but I don’t think that affects the majority of people here
• If you listen on multiple devices and want to synchronize your listening history, see here: https://antennapod.org/documentation/general/synchronization

I’ve been testing out Qobuz recently since I’m in a similar ditching-Spotify place in my life. Honestly I think it’s a great alternative. Sound quality is great and it has the multi device sync/status like Spotify.

I don’t know what that feature is actually called but the feature where you can have a song playing in the app on your phone, open the app on a different device like your tablet, and it will show the “now playing” in the minimized player along with the name of your phone that it’s playing (and you can swap it to play immediately on the tablet now instead). That feature in Spotify was a big one for me. Love that Qobuz has it.

I’m still building my listening history so I can’t comment on how good the recommendations will be. But the suggestions I’ve gotten in the last few weeks were spot on.

Not sure what people are talking about with the app ui. It’s a good app. Maybe it was bad in the past and they have made improvements? But coming from Spotify I think you’d have no issues using it.

Give the free trial a shot.

EDIT: Take this post with a big grain of salt. I couldn’t verify the claim, because I couldn’t find the twitter profile of the CEO (then and now) Richard Sanders. However, the company is ultimately controlled and owned by Block, Inc. (formerly Square inc.), where Jack Dorsey has a 79% ownership (2025). He’s a billionaire, the twitter co-founder, Bluesky founder, and so on.

I’m moving from Tidal asap. Because the CEO seems to be pro-genocide, at the very least.

Claims I’ve seen here and some other shit elsewhere:

Tidal seemed like a good alternative but it’s problematic as well, as the CEO retweeted on X a few days after Oct 7th that said ‘we stand with Isr’. I think he may have shared other pro-Isr posts since but perhaps deleted them. Deezer CEO also under fire for being part of a WhatsApp group with senior politicians etc about supporting Isr…

The one decent alternative I have found is Qobuz, which I’m looking into – it seems to have a lot of variety in terms of music catalogue and I can’t find anything ‘problematic’ about them (they don’t operate in Isr). Also allegedly offers higher payout to artists than many others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoycottIsrael/comments/1bi8cnq/music_apps_that_are_not_on_the_boycott_list/

I recently switched to Tidal, before realizing is was US american. However I am pretty happy so far, I especially like their algorithms. While Spotify always went to the same shitty pop songs, Tidal started to get a grasp of my taste after about 2-3 weeks. What I really don’t like: I have to search a song with every letter spelled correctly or I won’t find the song. Also I can’t search via lyrics, a feature I really liked about Spotify. Is Quboz able to do those two things?

I had tidal for about a year and was happy with it. Sound quality is nice, app is clean, tidal connect is nice. Recommendations were not great and discovering new music I liked was a bit of a chore.

I have qobuz now (had it in the past too, for a while). App is more to my taste, very little clutter. Qobuz connect is now here and it works, so I can stream music over wifi to my stereo system. Finding new music is a lot better than spotify or tidal (imho) Recommendations are better, the magazine and editorial stuff is super nice and they have one simple feature that makes a world of difference to me: you can click on the record label of albums and see what else is on that label. So simple, but it’s by far my favourite way of finding new stuff.

Anybody know how much each of these two pays the artists? Tidal has been trying to profile as a service where the artists get more money than at competitors, but that does not necessarily mean Qobuz is really different from it in that manner!

Anybody know something about this aspect?

Qobuz because its not American

Qobuz wouldn’t allow me to sign up with a proton alias. I also tried deezer but they wouldn’t stop sending spam. Out of the two I’d recommend deezer.

Is there anything wrong with Pandora?

I am locked into a family plan with Spotify that I justify by thinking that we’re not actually family so we’re cheating them.

I see Quobuz also has a family plan but with the same proviso that you’re supposed to live at the same address. How strict do they check?

We have never had any problems on Spotify.