What instead of Spotify?

On the occasion of the JRE scandal, a large number of musicians and their fans decided to leave the streaming service Spotify. This is a great opportunity to test this market. Well, there are music and podcast services without Joe Rogan on board, and the app is not a monopolist in this matter, which many of us may not even know. The only alternative is not to switch to a subscription in Plus, although this is some solution. What can you choose if not Spotify?

In a word of introduction, MT editors do not advocate against or support Rogan’s character, and the context of the statement here is a sentence in the nature of a joke. Getting to the heart of the matter.

The largest area is green

Spotify itself has a huge share in the market of streaming services – the largest. The share of “green” is a substantial 31 percent. The biggest competition for the service is Apple Music. According to mobirank, the service from Cook is the second most used music streaming service with 15% of the total number of listeners. market share. This means that Spotify is twice as big as its most significant audiobrator.

The third place of the podium, according to the data provided by MIDiA, was occupied ex aequo by Tencent and Amazon’s Music app. Both players got 13% each. market share. YouTube Music in fourth place with an eight percent contribution, with NetEase catching up with its six percent. Deezer and Yandex Music fared a bit worse than the others, which gathered 2% each., and the rest was in the “other” tandem, which together account for 10 percent. market share. We may think it’s a pretty paltry two percent of the streaming audio market, but when we realize that there are just under 524 million subscribers to this type of service, and that this number is bound to grow in the future, we can be convinced that the companies listed here have nothing to worry about in this regard.

King of kings, green (or not)

Spotify is the king in this field, and its results for the last quarter indicate that it will surely remain the king for a long time. It hasn’t been swept away by the controversy surrounding Rogan, and who knows if it hasn’t boosted its future prospects. Protection of the creators for the sake of the bitter musical elite? – It’s not exactly the kind of rhetoric that rings out from Daniel Eek’s mouth, but an outsider might take it that way when they see how Spotify would rather remove tracks from its source than whip up a fat. There is, however, a shadow cast over users who do not support such a policy. There will also be a group of people for whom the platform’s capabilities do not meet their realistic expectations, and they will still want to refresh their repertoire of apps they use.

What’s beyond Spoti?

I think most music streaming platforms have already undergone a podcasting transformation. It means no more, no less, than being able to hear a song or conversation straight from a service hitherto associated with vocals rather than interviews or mono-talk. After all, it was similar with Spotify, and today audiophiles can rummage through their audio libraries to no end. Excluding green from this list, however, it’s worth taking a look at the previously discussed shareholders in the streaming pie.

Apple Music

The second largest player – Apple Music boasts that it has 90 million songs 300 thousand playlists on its disk. You could say that’s quite a lot, because even if one song averaged 15 seconds it would take over 4 years to listen to them uninterrupted. And it is known that the length on average will be much greater. So it’s a huge database of audio files, which can be beneficial from the point of view of any ecosystem geek from Apple. What’s more, hardware in the form of some of the best-rated wireless headphones, as well as downloading and streaming music to Apple watches can impress their owners. As is standard with Apple, you have to pay the company from Cupertino a lot for such a pleasure: for an individual package about 40 PLN / month, for a family plan (up to 6 people) you will pay 60 PLN / month. There’s also the budget crowd, which is Apple Music Voice for approx. 20 PLN and the Student version for the same amount of coins. The latter two options involve limiting its functionality and the quality of the music it streams. All versions can be checked out for free on a one month trial subscription.
If you love “AppleOS” and are sick of Spotify, take a peek here.

Amazon, in and out of context

Amazon is getting greedier and greedier in the market. His e-commerce is one of the most recognizable in the world, making Bezos the billionaire of his era. It’s unseemly to call the company a labor camp, however, and Lord of the Rings fans have made no secret of their outrage as Amazon executives set about “adapting” it. It will probably suffer a fate worse than Netflix’s The Witcher, as the showrunners have admitted that they don’t have the rights to the Silmarillion, which is responsible for the era the writers want to capture in their work. – “We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.” – says one of the producers in an interview with Vanity Fair.
Against the backdrop of Spotify’s rebuke, Amazon is nursing a layer of thicker scandals and scandals, but the Amazon Prime platform is being praised by customers. Customers get access to fast and free delivery from Amazon (even next day), plus movie and TV releases, games, and Amazon Prime Music and Unlimited. Amazon Music service in the basic version allows access to playlists and radio stations, but has the usual sound quality in SD without the ability to play specific songs and albums. Music Prime is a free service within the paid Prime package that is ad-free and has over 2 million songs, but is only available on one device. Music Unlimited is an extra charge of 60 zloty and to the family package, where we have no ads, the sound is somehow ultra, and there are already 75 million songs. Trial version standard 30 days, however only for Unlimited and Single Device

If Amazon Prime accompanies your daily entertainment despite its corporate infamy, this solution may appeal to you. See here.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a music store, where artists share their songs, and those willing to support them buy their albums. It is also a great promotional platform for those artists who do not have the backing of huge publishers and record labels. A musician or podcaster who wants to grow can set up their own website within Bandcamp, for which the portal charges 15 percent. margin and an additional 10 percent. If you earn more than $5,000 for an album. The service is free for users as it earns a percentage from performers. Artists set their own sales prices for their audio products. A portal ideal for every music connoisseur who likes to explore new listening horizons is available at this site.

YouTube Music

YouTube has the advantage of giving you access to the music that you won’t get on other platforms very soon. This is ideal for people who want to listen to music and only music, and not be distracted by other content. The free feature is clogged with ads, but it lets you discover new songs, categorize them and create playlists. You can also use it to search for songs by typing in a piece of lyrics, keep up with new trends, and youtube’s well-learned algorithms will recommend songs according to your tastes or location. You can’t listen to music in the background, though, and the app demands a ton of battery life during that time. YouTube Music Premium The trial version cuts down on these barriers and costs a bagatelle 19.99 PLN/month. See here.

SoundCloud

An app for listening to music and podcasts. There are both big and small artists who like to promote themselves on this platform, such as Doja Cat, who owes a lot to this service. The free version offers skipping, pausing and playing songs from the locked screen view and also allows you to record your own content. If we buy a paid package we can also use SoundCloud offline, with better sound and no ads. SoundCloud Go costs approx. 25 PLN per month.

Tidal

In Poland, it is known for the fact that its extended version in a free package you get from a subscription included in the PLUS network.Besides music and podcasts, we also have videos and interviews or documentaries about artists who have their songs on Tidal. And here there is a catch, because there is no free version, at least in Poland, unless the trial (monthly, as usual). The user can choose between two paid plans that differ in sound quality for 20 PLN or 40 PLN. The app gives you the option to save songs for offline playback. Tidal can be found here, or through your mobile carrier.

Podcasts

For podcast geeks, we detail Apple Podcasts and iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast, Lecton or Groove Podcast. The following were also rated quite well Google Podcasts, but after the last update the application “bushes” and discourages more and more users, which is a pity because it was simple, intuitive and had a large selection of materials to listen to. Let’s hope it improves quickly, and we wish all audiophiles a pleasant listening experience. No reception!