Sick of Spotify? These Are the Best Alternative Streaming Platforms

People have been listing several reasons to dislike Spotify lately, including astronomically low royalties per stream paid to artists ($0.0032 per stream), advertisements for ICE recruitment, and its CEO, Daniel Ek, investing millions in military AI software.

Meanwhile, alternative streaming apps have emerged that offer better sound quality, pay artists more money per individual stream of their songs, and make more ethical financial decisions than Spotify. As an added bonus for those focused on smaller local artists, most of these superior platforms also cover Denver artists’ discographies remarkably well.

We’ve collected data comparing the compensation paid by different music platforms as well as how many Denver musicians out of a sample of fifty, across all genres and levels of popularity, appear on multiple platforms. (Anyone curious to see all of the data in one place can also access the spreadsheet.) Check out these alternative streaming services below:

Apple Music
Per-Stream Royalties: $0.0080 Per Stream
Coverage: 47 Full Coverage, 1 Partial Coverage, 2 Not On Platform (Best)
Considering that Apple Music is the third-biggest music streaming app behind Spotify and YouTube Music, it shouldn’t come as a major surprise that the platform covers more Denver artists than any other service represented on this list. One of only two services that has the full discography for Ron Miles and the Magic Beans, it also pays artists almost three times as much as Spotify does, and has better sound quality.

Bandcamp
Per-Stream Royalties: Individual Purchases Per Song/Album Only
Coverage: 24 Full Coverage, 8 Partial Coverage, 18 Not On Platform
Bandcamp technically isn’t a streaming service, but we wanted to spotlight it as the best way to buy digital music as well as CDs, cassettes and vinyls directly from artists. Surprisingly, less than half of the artists from our sample group have their full discographies on the platform, but it’s still the most effective way to support groups that don’t currently have any physical releases, such as Rootbeer Richie & the Reveille or Wild Love Tigress. It’s also worth noting that if purchases are made on monthly Bandcamp Fridays, 100 percent of your purchase will exclusively go to the artists.

Qobuz
Per-Stream Royalties: $0.0187 Per Stream (Best)
Coverage: 34 Full Coverage, 12 Partial Coverage, 4 Not On Platform
Given the relative obscurity of Qobuz, it is a delightful surprise to see so many local musicians on the service and benefitting from the highest royalties of any streaming service. Considering that and the degree of discography coverage on the platform, there are very few downsides to switching over to the service beyond a lack of podcasts and audiobooks. Most of the music we found consisted of the earliest works of specific musicians, such as the first half of DNA Picasso’s discography and Horse Bitch’s first two albums.

Soundcloud
Per-Stream Royalties: $0.0025 Per Stream
Coverage: 10 Full Coverage, 16 Partial Coverage, 24 Not On Platform (Worst)
Famously great for discovering undiscovered artists and the most obscure music, Soundcloud is much less of a priority for more established groups. Still, you can find some interesting early work from some of these artists that you can’t find anywhere else, such as Dzirae Gold‘s first EP and live recordings from Polysanto.

Tidal
Per-Stream Royalties: $0.0128 Per Stream
Coverage: 40 Full Coverage, 8 Partial Coverage, 2 Not On Platform
Between high royalty rates, good coverage, and potentially the best sound quality in the streaming industry, there’s a lot to like about Tidal. However, searching for local artists can be a challenge, as the software often hides them beneath better-known artists with similar names. On top of that, the discographies of groups such as Aleister Cowboy, Rhett Haney and several others are inexplicably split across multiple profiles. So we’re recommending this for high payment alone.