Sounds a bit rich from Spotify when you consider there are competitors paying the artists more, but charging the same subscription fee. And at the same time, Spotify probably has a bigger economy of scale.
I don’t know, Spotify is somewhere in the middle together with Amazon and Apple Music. Tidal and Qobuz might pay a bit better, but there are also services paying a lot less (like Youtube).
Also Tidal is losing a lot of money each year:
Spotify is making a (small) profit:
Which business model will be more sustainable in the long run? Time wil tell…
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It’s of course also scale, Spotify supposedly has 155M subscribers, Tidal 3M. Considering Spotify has been reporting big losses as well until recently, you could wonder who’s doing better relatively.
I guess a nice business model would be if you could choose to pay a bit more which would then go to the artist. I guess a kind of tipping functionality, although maybe not to a specific artist, but more in general to also be distributed amongst smaller/niche artists. Or even only to not yet established artists.
People could still choose not to pay allowing them to keep their subscription costs low.
Let’s see what the future will hold. Spotify now coming out with a HiFi tier, which will likely hurt Tidal, so maybe the whole discussion will be moot in a few years.
Right, percentage wise Spotify still only makes a small profit. If they would pay the artists a tiny bit more per stream, based on the number of streams this profit could quickly turn into a loss again. It’s a difficult game i’m sure…
A tipping feature would be nice yes 
Paying artists per stream instead of their ‘part of the pie’ would seem like a fairer approach, but it’s a lot more difficult to base a business model on. The amount of money that flows in from subscribers is externally determined, so if the subscribers start to play more music, this becomes a problem if the rate per stream is fixed. Dividing the ‘bounty’ between all the artists based on play time is in principle a safer approach (for Spotify).
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As has been mentioned previously the spotify app compared to tidal’s works brilliantly, I find when I am using tidal to stream the NAIM app takes over, which is annoying as I play a lot of playlists and I then can’t tell whats next in the playlist. I have to go back and forth between the 2. Very frustrating. Also if I start tidal on my phone then open my laptop tidal it doesn’t recognise i’m using it from another device whereas spotify does. Guess its what we prioritise as important. I like slickness of the spotify app
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Then you have options in the pipeline which may suit you. Either go for Spotify when their lossless service becomes available, or wait for Tidal Connect to arrive so that you get full control of the streamer from the Tidal app. Or there’s Roon.
@ChrisSU Thanks Im looking forward to both options, Ive been thinking about Roon but Ive currently only got one endpoint (although thinking of adding a Mu so) Roon seems to make sense with multi endpoints
You don’t necessarily need Roon just for multiroom, although it does it very well. You could just use Naim multiroom, although Roon allows you to group non-Naim devices, or a mixture.
Roon is also good at merging multiple music sources, so if you use Tidal and/or Qobuz as well as a locally stored library, it merges it together so that you can browse it as a single collection.
Chris,
Not sure what you mean by “a mixture”?
My understanding is that Roon will group, say, multiple Naim devices or multiple Linn devices. However, it won’t group a Naim device with a Linn or say a Sonore or a Chromecast device.
You are correct. It will group by the same mfg but not different ones together.
Of course I meant to say multiple Naim devices in my post (not multiple Roon devices).
Roon will group any devices together as long as they are ‘proper’ Roon endpoints. They will only group AirPlay devices with other AirPlay devices, because they are using AirPlay instead of Roon RAAT as a server, and the same applies to Chromecast.
I don’t have any Naim streamers apart from a Muso Qb which uses AirPlay.
Do other Naim streamers use RAAT when used as Roon endpoints? Linn streamers don’t - they use Linn streaming protocol.
I have Linn Klimax Ds/1, Sonore microRendu, Chromecast and AirPlay (Muso) Roon end points and no two of them can be grouped together.
Current Naim streamers are all Roon endpoints, so can use RAAT. They can also be grouped by AirPlay or Chromecast should you want to group them with other sevices that use them.
I presume Linn are using a non-standard version of RAAT if you can’t pair them with non-Linn endpoints?
I think (but I’m not entirely sure) that Roon has accepted Linn’s streaming protocol rather than Linn have switched to a version of RAAT.
Yes indeed. Spotify is a joy to use and I find the sound extremely satisfying too through my SN3/NDX2.
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That part of the market is so small it can be ignored.
Note that Spotify now talks about Audio and Creators. Various new audio applications and apps are expected to expand the market … not just podcasts and newer stuff like Clubhousel.
This is also where the audio entrepeneur may have a chance to make money - including musicians.
Apple has been trying start such markets several times starting back with iTunes LP.
Speaking of Linn. Spotify (paid) do very well on a tunedem comparison with the competitors.
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