The company is Access Industries and the Founder and Owner is Leonard Blavatnik
Along with what’s in the title, he is accused of reputation laundering against Ukraine and has been personally sanctioned by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He was also part of a WhatsApp group involving some of the United States’ most powerful business leaders with the stated goals of “changing the narrative” in favour of Israel and “helping win the war” against Gaza.
Everything is in the linked Wikipedia article about him, mostly under the “Controversies and disputes” part.
I switched to Deezer after seeing it recommended as a better Spotify alternative here on Lemmy, but after finding all this I immediately stopped using it. It’s as bad as the shit Spotify does and has done IMO. I’m not here to recommend or push an alternative, but if I can give info on what I use now if someone asks.
I literally switched from Spotify yesterday…
Everyone says bandcamp is a good alternative but the main added value from streaming services, for me, is discovery. I don’t think I can afford the time to go on bandcamp and download every song I like one by one. I would also be lost when in need to discover new music.
I find that it’s really easy to find new artists and albums I like on Bandcamp. I just started by following a few genres and listen to a some music at random. If I like it I add it to my whislist and carry on. And I just listen to the “new and hot” section. Gives way better results and more variety than Spotify ever did for me.
From time to time I go to my whislist and listen to some of it again and usually decide to either buy the album or delete it from my whislist.
I also use Qobuz for more mainstream artists that’s not on Bandcamp.
Recently started to put all my purchases into Jellyfin for easier management between the services.
I also have a few pirated playlists of my favorite songs from years ago. I go through them when I have time and money and see if I like the songs enough to buy some albums or songs from the artists.
My biggest issue with Bandcamp is that there’s so many artists I listen to that just aren’t on there.
Had the same issue, but between Bandcamp and Qobuz I find I’m not lacking much. Since I’m buying the songs anyway I don’t care too much about having multiple apps for my music.
I like Tidal, it pays the artists the most of all services.
Tidal might pay the most of streaming services (others in here are claiming it’s Qobuz) but Bandcamp pays the most to artists in general as the purchases pay much higher than streams. Bandcamp charge 15%, everything else goes to the band/label until they hit $5k in sales, and then Bandcamp’s fee drops to 10% and stays there for additional sales. If you wait to buy in bulk on ‘Bandcamp Fridays’, which happen about 10 times a year, the artists take 100% on those days.
Imo Bandcamp is by far the best service for supporting artists.
You can also buy music on Qobuz, I use it together with Bandcamp to get more coverage.
Oh yes, true. I do forget. Their catalogue in Australia is quite pricey which doesn’t make them a very good value proposition here.
For example Random Access Memories by Daft Punk is $27.09 for HiRes or $23.49 for CD resolution. I bought that album on physical CD from a brick and mortar store (JB HiFi) for $14.99. It was not on sale, that’s just a fairly standard price for a major release CD at the time - reissues of very popular releases are cheaper than that now.
A more recent example, Igor by Tyler the Creator is $23.99 at physical stores, or on Qobuz is $27.59 for CD res or $31.79 for HiRes.
(All these prices are in AUD).
It does get cheaper with their ‘Sublime’ subscription but not to make it worth it (33%) - unless you were buying heaps of music off them, or already using their streaming.