When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.

By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.

    • Neuromancer49@midwest.social
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      6 months ago

      Thanks for the recommendation, I was worried they would be missing some of my artists but they had 99% of my music. Can’t wait to ditch Spotify.

      ETA: dear lord the sound quality is so much better. I had no idea what I was missing.

      • Logi@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Yeah, happily using Tidal as well. Haven’t missed any music that wasn’t also missing from Spotify, so…

      • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        Tidal on Linux is a crap shoot, which sucks because pipewire is awesome for HiRes music since it can change sample rate on the fly to match a source. Best bet is Firefox and their web player, and using the middle tier “high” that’s blue colored, and letting pipewire play @ 44100