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.
Spotify can die in a fire for all I care. Sail the high seas and if you like an artist buy physical releases/merch/tickets.
I still buy everything on CD that I can get from good bands. Nothing beats CD quality and durability. My CDs from 30+ years ago still play just fine except for the few that have too many scratches from abuse.
After I get a new CD I rip it to high quality MP3 and add it to my personal streaming library.
I’ve seen quite a few download codes included with vinyl releases that have 24 bit wav/flac files available. Some will even offer 88.2/96kHz files.
You could argue that the quality difference isn’t detectable between those and an MP3 rip of a CD though.