Services are leaving the market. Spotify removed the application from the App Store and Google Play, and stopped subscribing users. Deezer did the same, and YouTube discontinued its premium subscription on March 10, so YouTube Music is also completely unavailable (a pity, as the service had a huge royalty free music library). And users of less popular Qobuz and Tidal report massive outages.
It is impossible to pay for subscriptions to some services – because of the payment systems Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay. Whereas iPhone owners used to be able to pay for an Apple Music subscription using their cell phone account, this ability has now been taken away too (payments only go through some carriers, and not always).
Music is “disappearing” due to the departure of labels. The world’s largest music rights holders Universal, Warner, and Sony Music have left the market, which has complicated the publication of new releases: Yandex.Music and VKontakte are having problems adding to their catalogs.
Despite all the difficulties, there are solutions. Here are some of them.
SoundCloud
Let’s start with the not-so-obvious options. SoundCloud is an open music service for artists and listeners. You won’t find Boris Grebenshchikov’s entire discography here, but you will find a lot of independent underground musicians, podcasts, playlists, mixes, radio broadcasts, and more.
There is a web version and mobile applications for Android and iOS, you can like, repost and comment on tracks and chat with other users in messenger. There is an algorithm for recommending tracks, but (judging by my personal experience) it works worse than in other popular streaming services.
Most importantly – everything is free. The service has a subscription, but it will be useful only for musicians: with it they can download their music without restrictions.
Feature: a huge library of independent artists.
Price: free.
Disadvantages: very few official releases; unusual chaotic interface – albums are rarely arranged in order.
Suitable for: the listener, who is ready to understand the new interface and look for something of his/her own in the sea of underground.
Bandcamp
This service is considered one of the most honest in the music industry for its financial model. Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services have a non-transparent payment system: an artist can get a couple thousand dollars for millions of listens, but an indie musician gets almost nothing. Bandcamp, on the other hand, has a clear and simple model: the company offers artists a platform for direct sale of albums and charges a standard 15% commission on each transaction.
For ordinary users, it is a service with published albums that you can listen to for free in a web version and in the Android and iOS apps. The library here is the same problem as SoundCloud: there are few popular artists, but there is a whole archive of indie, undiscovered ambient, black metal and other joys. If you’re ready to search, go ahead.
You can also buy albums: digital versions or real vinyl. But Russians will have difficulty paying, because Bandcamp accepts Visa, Mastercard, or PayPal, which has been suspended in Russia.
Feature: not exactly a streaming model of the platform. On Bandcamp you can not only listen to albums online, but also buy vinyl, CDs, cassettes, t-shirts and other merch.
