When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.
By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.
Fuck stopify. If u have any respect/appreciation for music and who created it you should not be using spotify.
I’ve tried all the popular alternatives, and not one was better.
Theoretically, buying the songs without DRM felt best, but having enjoyed nearly 6,5K different artists on Spotify so far, that won’t really work.
Unfortunately, as an average consumer, that means I’m sticking with Spotify for now.
I hope their platform soon becomes over inundated with AI slop from Udio and Suno to the point it is unusable and collapses.