Unlike the blogs I've written before, this one contains my personal opinions, and not just sharing news. Spotify is the most popular music streaming platform, at least at the time of speaking. Spotify may seem like a great platform, as it can play and find music blazing fast, while being very easy to use and they are based in Europe! They also recently announced that they're adding lossless audio for premium users up to 24-bit/44.1kHz, which makes it seem even better than it already did.
Unfortunately the backstage is very different than what is presented. Spotify has a lot of problems, now mostly being ethical as audio quality seems to not be an issue anymore as they're adding a lossless option. Let me start with the most recent problem, which is AI generated garbage invading the Spotify library. This might not seem like a big issue if you only use Spotify to listen to songs that you already chose to listen to beforehand, however when you let Spotify recommend songs for you (which is an essential part of music streaming), you will most likely end up encountering audio that has no artistic value, and is generated by AI.
Even worse, AI-generated "tracks" have been uploaded under the name of deceased artists. But it doesn't stop there, it gets worse. Spotify also used to pirate songs to add to their own library, back when it was in it's beta version. Also compared to other popular music streaming platforms, Spotify underpays artists. Platforms like TIDAL do a much better job at paying artists per stream. Yet somehow it can even get worse. Spotify's CEO has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to AI kamikaze drones. No matter anyone's take on political conflicts or war, it is not acceptable for the money given to a music streaming service to be used to invest in drones that are designed to literally blow themselves up in combat, like a kamikaze plane. This is by far in my opinion the biggest ethical concern with Spotify, as the money gathered from users' subscriptions / data is being used to benefit such weaponry that is actively being used in combat.
With all being said, now back to the main point of this whole blog. Considering that Spotify added AI generated garbage under deceased artists' names, their CEO investing in weaponry that is designed to kill people in combat and Spotify themselves literally pirating songs to re-distribute, it is safe to say that individuals pirating songs has far less ethical concerns than what Spotify is currently doing and has done in the past. A good way of pirating while supporting artists is to give a listen to their content, and buying (via platforms such as Bandcamp, or physical media) the content if you really enjoy it. This method is way effective at supporting artists than what Spotify does, and gives you the right to the music you own, so no one can take it away from you.