The Best Spotify Alternatives to Ease Your Conscience

By my count, there are at least five more music subscription services worth considering that compete with the giants like Spotify and Apple Music: Tidal, Deezer, Pandora, Qobuz and Coda. Tidal used to be looked at as a streamer trying to make things better for artists, but it was acquired by Block Inc. (the parent company of Square and Cash App among other things). Thanks to that acquisition, it's hard to say Tidal isn't run by a tech giant, albeit a less obvious one than Apple or Amazon.

And while Tidal used to offer "direct artist payouts" where up to 10 percent of a user's subscription fee went directly to the musicians they listened to the most, this offering was discontinued in 2023. I asked Tidal for information on how they currently pay artists but received no response; it's safe to assume they use something similar to the "streamshare" revenue calculations detailed above.

Deezer, Qobuz and Coda are all intriguing options for people who want to better support artists. Deezer is doing a lot to level out various imbalances that have popped up in the streaming world. The company's "artist-centric" model starts out the same way as Spotify and others — after taking about 30 percent, the rest is distributed to rights-holders based on an artist's overall share of streams.

But Deezer has a few "multipliers" that try to reward artists with more human engagement versus passive playback. For example, if a user manually searches for an artist or song, streams that originate from that search are paid out double the standard rate. And artists with more than 500 monthly unique listeners and more than 1,000 listens per month also get double the standard rate. These qualifiers are stackable, so meeting all these conditions leads to a 4x stream rate. Deezer also de-monitized background content (think simulated thunderstorms or other white noise), something Spotify also did a few years ago. Finally, Deezer has a 1,000 stream per user "cap" as a way to help minimize fraudulent streaming.

Deezer is also actively fighting back against AI-generated music and its impact on artist revenue. The company said in April that it can identify and remove AI-generated music from recommendation playlists; it also said that it considers 85 percent of AI-generated music to be fraudulent and de-monitizes those streams. Overall, the company says between one and three percent of total streams are from AI-generated music, so not something making a huge impact on the bottom line — but it feels like they're the streaming service most actively monitoring AI music and its impact on payments to real musicians.

Qobuz is an interesting proposition for anyone interested in high-resolution music. Its basic plan is on the higher end of the price spectrum at $13 per month, but it drops to $10.83 if you sign up for 12 months. And that tier includes music in FLAC 24-Bit up to 192 kHz — so if you have a setup capable of playing back lossless music, Qobuz is definitely worth considering. The company also offers a "sublime" tier for $180 / year that offers pretty significant discounts on any music you want to purchase from Qobuz and own forever. (I'll go further into options for purchasing digital music shortly.)

As far as how it pays artists, Qobuz actually released the amount paid per stream to artists averaged across 2024. "Qobuz distributed royalties due to labels and publishers corresponding to an average amount of US$0.01873 per stream¹ for the fiscal year 2024," the company said in a March 2025 press release. "In concrete terms, if a track reaches 1,000 plays on Qobuz, this represents US$18.73 paid to these rights holders, who then pay out to the artists, songwriters and composers, according to the terms of their contracts."

The company also said that its average revenue per user was $121.13, compared to a market average of $22.38. Obviously, without knowing how this compares to other services, it's hard to say if these rates are "good" or "bad," but Qobuz said that it wants to be more transparent about how compensation works to make streaming less of a black box more broadly.

You may not have heard of Coda Music before, as it's a relatively new entry to the streaming space. It has the same catalog as you'll find on most of the other major streaming services, but there are a couple things it is trying to use as differentiators. The most apparent is a focus on user recommendations, not algorithmic recommendations. Coda has you set up a social media-style profile where you can show your recent plays, public playlists, favorite artists and "posts" where you can share and recommend whatever you're listening to. There's also a large space on your profile where you can highlight your favorite releases; I set mine up with three relatively smaller albums that I've been in love with lately.

Beyond the profile is a following page where you see posts from those you're following, whether that's another Coda user or an artist you follow. The "home" tab in the app shows the usual recent plays and playlists that the app generates for you, but there are also lots of community and playlist recommendations that are all generated by other users. As with all social networks, the catch is finding people who you want to follow; right now, I don't think I have any other friends on Coda, but I'm still enjoying finding recommendations from like-minded strangers.

Coda is also being transparent about its payment rates. CEO Randy Fusee told me that the company paid out an average of $0.014 per stream in April 2026, slightly behind the rate Qobuz shared for 2024. But Coda also lets users pick a specific artist who directly receives $1 from their monthly subscription. Unfortunately, at this point everyone I tried to set as my artist to receive that payment wasn't eligible; it seems like they need to opt-in to that program. I think it's a good idea, but Coda will need a little more traction if it's to become an answer to the ethics of streaming.

Vocana is another intriguing new option, albeit one that's more limited than the other streaming services. It has a 100-percent independent catalog, and your monthly subscription fee only goes towards artists you actually listen to. "If a fan spends 50 percent of their listening time with one artist, that artist receives roughly 50 percent of the royalty allocation from that user after platform and licensing costs," Vocana president Neil Sheehan told Engadget. "If a user only listens to a handful of independent artists during the month, the majority of that subscriber's royalty pool stays within those artists' ecosystems rather than being diluted across the entire platform."

Given that it doesn't have the same massive mainstream catalog as the other streamers we've covered here, it isn't really a direct replacement for Spotify. But you can try it for free right now in beta, and it'll cost $9 per month when it fully launches.