Four alternatives to Spotify: swapping is easier than you think

How do you switch over from Spotify to another music service? What are the options? And which service pays artists the most?

So what are the options?

The user experience now seems much closer to Spotify. Apple also has launched lossless and spatial audio for a better quality of listen. Lossless audio is something Spotify promised in 2021 but has not launched.

If you want to avoid giving three of the largest tech companies your money, though, there are a growing number of other options.

In addition to high-quality audio and all the expected features, Tidal has more than 350,000 videos and concert live streams.

Other non-major companies offering streaming services includes Napster (yes, the former peer-to-peer file sharing service has gone legal), Qobuz and Pandora.

The companies tend to keep the information about how much they pay artists for each stream a closely guarded secret but a report from Tricordist in 2020 gives us a picture of the rough payments artists can expect.

According to the report, Spotify pays US$0.00348 a stream, Apple Music pays US$0.00675 a stream, Amazon pays US$0.00426, Google pays US$0.00554, and Tidal pays US$0.00876. Surprisingly, the fitness company Peloton comes out on top of the list, paying US$0.03107 a stream. Napster also rates higher than others at US$0.00916.

But if you want to support artists more directly, you can buy vinyl, or digital copies of the music through iTunes or similar services, or pay directly through Bandcamp or Soundcloud.