Google admits Spotify pays no Play Store fees because of a secret deal | TechCrunch

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Google admits Spotify pays no Play Store fees because of a secret deal | TechCrunch
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What alternatives do you guys use besides Bandcamp? I am open to paying a sub as long as the artist is getting a decent cut.

Pirate and buy official merch, they make more of that anyway. Also live shows

Tidal seems nice

Can confirm. Tidal has "lossless" audio, but app is horrendous, albeit better than Spotify's.

Also tech support is absolutely useless, still would prefer over Spotify every time.

Buying the music and selfhosting a streaming server is an option, though obviously not for everyone

As a Spotify user, I'm not really ok with how much they pay artists... But I don't use Spotify for "streaming" even though I stream a lot from them, I use it to discover new music, find obscure bands, their algorithm is amazing at that.

I could easily selfhost as you suggested, but then it would be my own music bubble.

I go to concerts and buy merchandise as much as possible when I want to support an artist.

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Apple Music pays more than Spotify. It's probably still not "decent", but it's more.

NetEase Music. It's a spotify clone from China, and the VIP version costs like $1.20 a month.

It doesn't spy on your phone and requires zero permissions (I've tested this extensively), but you will need a VPN set to China, Hong Kong or Taiwan for it to work (assuming you don't live in either place).

China and doesn't spy on your phone, I'll take things that don't go together for 200 Alex

I'm in China and work as head of IT security for a European company. As such I monitor my phone religiously for any transgressions. Netease Music works with zero permissions (unless you want to use the downloader) and doesn't try to exfiltrate any data whatsoever.

Install PCAPdroid and see for yourself, you can monitor all traffic on system level on a per app basis.

at the very least, I expect it to make requests for every song you're streaming which are associated with your account and payment information.

they also get your music consuming habits, because they know the times you listen to music and to which music at each time.

that's a hell lot of data to analyze and sell.

As if Spotify and other services don't lmao.

Spotify even dug your bluetooth device name.

definitely. You're absolutely right, Spotify is a privacy nightmare and I didn't say otherwise.

The post I was replying to was arguing that the service they were using was private, I just told them that even if the app doesn't need any permissions they still have the ability to spy on their users and most probably do so.

And how, prey tell, should a music streaming service that delivers suggestions based on your preferences deliver content if not by analyzing your listening behavior?

If you're afraid of that, then there's no music service whatsoever you can use.

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