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.
Get Tidal instead
Or better yet buy directly from the artist
I don’t understand the mental gymnastics some people do to reach the conclusion that piracy is the “ethical thing” to do. What about the artists? How is that any better for us? If you all pirate then we go from getting peanuts to getting nothing.
In fact, piracy sort of birthed streaming in the first place. There were Limewire and Napster, then streaming platforms came along to basically legalize piracy… Hell, the Spotify CEO used to be the CEO of uTorrent
People used to upload pirated music to YouTube. So you know what happened? YouTube came up with their song detection system that now pays artists when their track is streamed, even if it was uploaded by someone else. Even if it plays in the background of a vlog. See what I mean? Legalized piracy.
PS: I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed
Tidal is ok, its american though and they suck.
Oh no what will Taylor Swift do? Pirating from someone with $30 versus $2 billion are 2 very different things, bud. Plus non megastar artists typically make more of their money from things like performances and merch these days.
Well if you only listen to Taylor Swift then that’s valid, but most people have a more diverse music taste so for them this doesn’t apply. The artists I personally listen to (and the labels they’re signed to) are often relatively small and genuine, and to them every bit of income is appreciated. Obviously merch, shows, and direct music sales help more, but getting paid more by streaming services sure would help a great deal as well.
the megastars aren’t the ones we care about making money, they’re fine. it’s the 99% of the rest of the artists that either get screwed by the labels or are independent and rely on fan support