I’ve had an Apple Music subscription for years and use it A LOT. I tried some alternatives (Tidal, Sirius, and maybe one other?) and wasn’t super happy with the options.
Is there a service that people recommend that is good, like $10/month or less, maybe gives better pay to artists? I’d like to spend on a better company if possible too. If Apple has enough money to buy gold trinkets for elected officials they probably don’t need more from me.


For what it’s worth Apple Music has much higher payouts than other platforms like Spotify, Pandora or YouTube Music. Like 4x higher. I dont know if 0.8 cents is a fair price for compensation, but it doesn’t seem terrible… if you listen to an hour of music per day that’s maybe 15 cents to artists per day? That doesn’t sound like a ton but that’s about $4.50 per month to artists. Meanwhile according to the BBC artists get like 13% of CD sales so at $20 that would be a $2.60 cut. Meaning unless you were buying 2+ albums a month streaming on apple music gives as much money to artists as buying physical media.
I think thats my takeaway from the streaming era - its a lot less money per listen, but people are listening a lot more.