Here you can find reviewed, impressive and comprehensive European alternatives for digital products and apps if you wanna break from American (big) tech companies.
Have a look, you’ll be impressed…
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This is a good source, but why the fuck is Spotify listed as a suitable alternative? Spotify is one of THE apps that people are trying to break away from.
Wild guess: Spotify was founded in Europe.
It’s now based in the US, and a lot of its revenue goes to alt-right loonies. Renewing their podcast contracts is why you’re paying more year after year to stream music.
I like Apple Music because they pay artists more, but I might be a little biased as it came with my phone and computer and I have a family plan with others who enjoy it (and yes, they are family).
The true alternative to streaming anything is using Plex (or something like it) to make your own music streamer, buying all your media (that pays artists more than any streaming platform), and streaming it to yourself that way. It is illegal to rip CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays in the US, but technically if you own the media it’s fine to have it, you just can’t have broken the copy protection. Kind of a catch-22. But it costs a lot more as you have to buy everything. If you already have a massive CD collection, it’s not as big a deal.
Deezer is the way if one wants to continue streaming.
Deezer is France-based.
Wasn’t there some kind of controversy with them? CEO being a trumpet or something?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Blavatnik This guy owns the company that owns Deezer.
There we go
I will change immediately when a service distributes my payments to the artists who I’ve listened to. Every service basically pools em up and gives them to Pitbull, Justin Bieber and the blonde singer who dates a football player. Only the share varies a bit, not the model.
have a look at Qobuz. I’ve heard they have some of the highest payouts to artists. I don’t have sources unfortunately :/
Qobuz redistributed royalties due to Labels and Publishers, corresponding to an average amount of US$0.01873 per stream¹ for the fiscal year 2024. In concrete terms, if a track reaches 1,000 plays on Qobuz, this represents US$18.73 paid to these rights holders, who then pay out to the artists, songwriters and composers, according to the terms of their contracts.
https://the-ear.net/news/qobuz-pays-artists-5x-more-to-artists/
Source? I would like to learn more
Spotify btw fiances a lot of podcaster that helped this actual situation
I totally agree with you. Especially since they tried to take down Anna’s archive…
Anyway, besides that, this remains very instructing.
Call me out of touch all you want. I have big sd cards, and mp3 files. No ads. No subscriptions. No bullshit.
And that is less energy consuming too!!
I am socked by the sheer amont of energy needed by streaming platforms (Spotify and others) but nobody seems to care.
By the way there is a telegram bot that allows you to download anything you want from Spotify. And then you own the files forever… no more connection needed.
Kobuz is my suggestion.
I’m test driving Deezer as Spotify alternative.
Looks really promising. You can even import your Spotify playlists and music to Deezer.
Man, I remember having to use a VPN to sign up for Spotify when it launched, because it was founded in and available to the UK only.
This is a good source, but why the fuck is Spotify listed as a suitable alternative? Spotify is one of THE apps that people are trying to break away from.
Qobuz has been the better alternative. From France, pays artists considerably better, has HiRes as standard. Human curated content and also has a DRM free digital store to actually buy the music. (and on one of their streaming tiers gets you a discount on purchases).
I have really been enjoying it as it works on my dedicated Digital Music Player so if there is something I want to listen, but don’t own there is the option, and I still get the convenience of using it on the TV with the nice sound system.
So no smartphones.
Nokia is Finnish and I’m not sure if t hat’s considered European. It’s not American though. In fact the only American company left making phones is Apple. The problem is, the rest of them uses Android, which spies on you. Counterpoint: Apple won’t let you install apps your government doesn’t approve of. Counterpoint to the counterpoint: Android. Fucking. Spies. On. You. Counterpoint to the… you get the idea: Apple still hasn’t shipped a working software keyboard. Pick your poison. Spyware or a broken keyboard and you can’t use a few apps you may not care about… but you’re buying from an American company whose CEO kisses Trump’s arse and literally gave him a solid gold participation trophy.
I want to see real Linux phones that don’t run Android and are somewhat competitive with Android phones, at least in the mid-range space. No one expects them to compete with the iPhone, or the equivalent Android phone that comes out 3-5 years later and stops getting updates while the iPhone it matches on performance is still getting them… but it shouldn’t have to. We kinda hit a plateau a few years ago.
Otherwise, definitely worth a look.
Nokia is Finnish and I’m not sure if t hat’s considered European.
Pff of course they are!
Yeah, why wouldn’t it be? Lol
I want to see real Linux phones that don’t run Android and are somewhat competitive with Android phones, at least in the mid-range space.
There’s a large graveyard of attempts at this. The most recent and successful is probably Tizen. Prior to that Firefox OS. People just don’t buy them so there’s no market for them.
The iPad also wasn’t Apple’s first tablet. The Newton basically sucked and no one liked it. But now there’s really no point in buying anything but an iPad if you want a tablet, even if you use an Android phone.
There were a ton of bad MP3 players before the iPod and a bunch of smartphones before the iPhone, except in both cases, some of them were good. You just had to be real savvy to find those diamonds in the rough, because it sure was a rough market.
The problem is, Google is a data services (advertising and marketing) company. The only reason Android even exists is because Google bought it from a hobbyist (Andy Rubin) because they knew they could use it to scrape more data than Gmail alone. Android exists to harvest your data so that Google can collect and sell it.
Meanwhile, Apple is still kind of trying to sell phones like computers. They’re pushing performance harder than their rivals, and they want to be a privacy-first company, but they’re based in the US, and are licking fascist boots, so it’s not a good look. And now Apple is pushing services as well, subscriptions and whatnot. Is it really better than Android? Especially given the shortcomings in app choice (e.g. sideloading) and the broken ass keyboard? I dunno. I’m a Mac guy, I like Apple tech, warts and all. And I still think they protect your privacy. I think, like Mozilla, they collect telemetry so they know how their products are used, but I don’t believe they are tracking your activity across apps/the web, building a profile on you, and selling this to advertisers. And they’ve gone after companies that try to do so on their platform — when CEO Tim Cook came out and said “starting today, we’re still going to let Facebook track you across apps and the web, but we’re going to make them get your permission first” or something like that. And from then, you had to agree to the tracking. If you said no, the app was stopped from doing it. Apparently it was effective, Facebook ran a huge ad campaign claiming to be a small business and saying Apple was hurting small businesses like them. (They’ve since found ways around it. Apple has tried to block them. It’s a cat-and-mouse game.) Anyway, point is, I don’t know how long Apple can keep selling phones like computers. Arguably, they stopped a while ago. And that’s a shame. And it’s why, as an Apple guy, I’m rooting for Linux phones. Because if Apple won’t sell a phone like a computer, well… that’s the kind of phone I want. A pocket computer that can call.
A pocket computer that can call.
I held that same mindset for years in the prior generation of technology. I had a Sharp Zaurus and later a Nokia n700 for pocket Linux computing. It took a large amount of effort to make them useful devices. Most people simply don’t have the time or ability to do that for themselves and products like iOS and Android deliver what they’re looking for right out of the box.
We indeed need to degooglize smartphones.
There are ways but difficult to implement for now…
i remember learning to degoogle with adb. it wasn’t easy and i had to reset more than a couple of times
then i installed LineageOS, after adb it was easier. For somebody else it may be “difficult” indeed
then i installed GrapheneOS for a friend. It can’t get any easier. Their web installer makes degoogling accessible to everyone.
Their web installer makes degoogling accessible to everyone.
With the right hardware
Interesting!
I mean, the best way is to throw iPhone money at Google, and get iPhone 11 level performance out of a Pixel 10, then wipe the firmware and replace it with GrapheneOS. This is problematic for a couple reasons. One, if you’re gonna pay iPhone money, maybe just get an iPhone? Solves a big chunk of the privacy issue, but doesn’t get you away from American tech companies, which was your original point. So we set that option aside. Two, you have to give Google money, so they win either way. Sure, they lose out on that targeted ad money, but they sold you years-old tech at a premium price — so they win. Of course, you can buy a used Pixel, but it’s gonna be even less powerful (assuming it’s an older model).
I think the best option is to take the open-source AOSP (Android Open Source Project) that the closed-source Android is based on, and make a fork that doesn’t use Google, like Amazon did with Fire OS. Then you’d just need a hardware partner.
Apparently, Graphene OS is looking into this, but I don’t like the idea of a stripped-down Android phone. If I’m paying iPhone price on years-old hardware, the OS better kick some ass. The alternatives to iPhone just offer too many compromises in the name of virtues that I don’t really think matter enough. If we can’t get an alternative that can match iPhone on performance, it should have an awesome user experience.
Jollaphone would be an alternative. Not a good one though.
