AI-generated music is appealing to streaming services, not least because it could potentially eliminate royalty payments and boost profits. While providers such as Qobuz are distancing themselves from AI-generated music, Tidal and Spotify already have very lax AI policies. According to a report by the Financial Times, Spotify is now planning a full-scale AI push, set to launch as early as the first quarter of 2027.
The streaming market leader is apparently adding an optional AI package to its Spotify Premium subscription, reportedly costing $4 to $5 per month, which could make the service’s Premium subscription up to 39 percent more expensive. Those willing to pay these additional costs are expected to receive two main new features. First, the ability to have artificial intelligence regenerate existing songs as remixes. And second, the option to generate any song as a cover version by any band, thereby changing the song’s style.
I would recommend Qobuz to anyone who wants almost the same ease of use, but with higher audio quality.
What the hell is qobuz?
Edit:
Decided to do a trial, then they asked for a credit card. Meh. I can’t stand this business practice.
I think in the case of Qobuz, asking for your credit card details actually isn’t some dirty tactic to get you to subscribe accidentally. They just have to avoid people creating new trial accounts month after month, because it would become very expensive for them if they didn’t. They don’t have an ad-supported plan by design and pay out $0.018-0.019 per stream (Spotify supposedly pays about $0.003-0.005). So if you listen to 500 songs during your trial, they lose about $9 in payouts alone.
I think, in this case, it’s actually legitimate to use your credit card details in order to verify that you’re actually a new potential customer.
Well it’s just another thing for me to remember and I don’t want to deal with it. 🤷
It’s really good though. I stopped using Spotify about a year ago and switched to qobuz.
It’s not perfect (no podcasts and their generated “daily” mixes are meh), but the quality is top notch, and you can also buy DRM free music through them.
Sell me on it more. I look at the lack of podcasts as good because I hate blending them together. It messes up your stats, resumes a podcast when you’d rather listen to music etc. I don’t want to clear my awesome queue I might have going on just to listen to a podcast with no way back to that queue.
I switched to them because they didn’t have podcasts. Podcasts are a fundamentally different experience and have no place in my music streaming app. At this point, I just host a navidrome server with about 600 albums, but I still use Qobuz to buy music that isn’t on bandcamp (they offer flac downloads for bought music).