Are you wondering why I use Deezer over Spotify when I’m listing music streaming services? Spotify is the biggest, so wouldn’t it make more sense to go where the biggest audience is? Let’s take a look.

Why Spotify Sucks

Spotify went hard on AI music. Or, I guess I should say, AI slop was relentlessly pushed to Spotify. So far they claim to have clamped down on AI impersonations, they don’t seem to have done anything to curb the tidal wave of “original” dross people are spewing out. And why would they? Spotify has one of the lowest royalty share of every major music streaming service at just under USD$5 per 1000 plays.

Why Amazon Music Sucks

It’s Amazon. It’s Bezos. I don’t think I need to say any more. Amazon Music has the lowest royalty rate, at around USD$4 per 1000 plays.

Why YouTube Music Sucks

Google is a terrible company. They made their search bad. They now push AI into everything. They harvest more data than anyone could even comprehend. Use DuckDuckGo instead. YouTube Music pays around USD$7 per 1000 plays.

Why Apple Music Sucks

Disclaimer: I use an iPhone and a Macbook Pro. Personally I don’t have too many problems with Apple – mostly. I actually like their closed ecosystem and I like that all of my devices communicate with each other. I like that they haven’t pushed AI into everything yet (whether that’s by choice or not). But they’re still Big Tech so they’re far from good. Apple Music pays around USD$10 per 1000 streams, which is good, but only if enough people are using the service!

Why Tidal Sucks

Tidal is owned by Block, which is a company run by Jack Dorsey. It used to be Norwegian (yay!), but now based in the US (boo!). Dorsey seemed cool a long time ago, but either he was fronting or he just lost his mind when Twitter got big. It’s built around having the highest quality streaming audio, but unless you’re listening to music on giant studio monitors in a sound treated space, nobody is going to know the difference. Tidal pays around USD$12 per 1000 streams, which is great. But do you know anyone who actually has a Tidal subscription?

Why Soundcloud Sucks

Soundcloud claims to be an “artist-first” platform, and it’s been responsible for a bunch of success stories. Yet at the same time they bought an AI company in 2022 and have it in their Terms of Service that your material can be used to train AI models. They claim they haven’t used the platform to train any AI yet, but I don’t think there’s any way to realistically check this. Soundcloud pays around USD$6 per 1000 streams.

Why Deezer Sucks

I’m not sure yet, but there must be something. Part owned by another billionaire (boo!) but at least headquartered in France (yay!) so it will have to comply with EU regulations. They pay around USD$6 per 1000 streams, although they said that users who regularly hit that amount per month will get a better rate. They’ve said that AI tracks will not receive royalty payments (yay!) and won’t be recommended by their algorithm (yay!), so that should slow down the slop train. So I don’t know how they suck, but my experience with Big Tech tells me they’ll do something eventually.

The Payment Tier List

^{*numbers are approximated and sometimes based off averages}

I will update this page and this list if I get any new info. Maybe.