I hate to say it, because I know people are not a huge fan of the company, but Spotify is also European. They're Swedish.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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That's mentioned in the article?
To be clear from the beginning, Spotify was founded in Sweden but now operates within financial structures that place it firmly inside the global Big Tech ecosystem.
Maybe article but not in the post
Whats up with the downvotes? I was just saying what i think the 1st comment meant. I thought this wasnt as negative place as Reddit, but i guess i was wrong
You get downvoted because Spotify has no place on the list of European alternatives despite it being based in Sweden for the reasons mentioned in the article, and yet you highlight them? Plus who cares about downvotes as there is no profile bound karma system.
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True, but they have tons and tons of american investors and partners. They are firmly in that grip and also a shit company partnering with military surveillance tech as well as trying to stop paying their artists by stealing their work and making AI slop with it.
Nestle is also European and yet one of the worst companies in the world.
Just because a company is European, doesn't mean they aren't a horrible company that nobody should support or buy a single thing from.
Your client might have glitched out. It seems like you posted the same comment four times.
Thanks. Eternity hasn't been updated in 8 months, so maybe it is a bit buggy. I will go delete the extras.
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It should be said that Deezer is owned mostly by Russian oligarch Len Blavatnik.
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Written on the American Nazi platform Substack. The irony.
After getting Qobuz two months ago, my listening habits have changed; I listen to albums now instead of songs, and the quality provided by Qobuz is absolutely amazing!
You're not wrong to call them out, they have a plan to migrate:
Without meaning to, we would be contradicting the spirit of this newsletter. Something similar happened when we chose to host Choosing Europe on Substack. Regarding that subject we are still working on our own solution which is getting closer. It will likely be ready later in February or in early March.
Reiterating for the millionth time: Spotify is European. You are obviously allowed to not like them for other reasons, but calling them non-European is simply untrue.
Yes. It's my go-to example for how we don't need US Americans to have billionaire capitalists who spend all of their considerable influence to fuck the rest of us over and make the world a worse place.
Navidrome.
Been self-hosting it for a while now and love it. Try Tempus if you're looking for a good Android client app.
I store my music locally
Do you have good sources for buying digital albums apart from bandcamp?
I'm mostly a pirate but there have to be some internet stores left around. Try looking up the names of the songs you're interested in + "digital" maybe you're find a good site.
Iโve been using uk.7digital.com for multiple years. Quality is great, I can download FLAC, and I find their prices tend to be a bit lower than Qobuz (at least for the music I tend to listen to).
Thereโs been an occasion or two where the music I bought was no longer available (they donโt hold the distribution rights in perpetuity), but I download it right away and keep good backups locally (same as I would with my old CD rips because CDs donโt last forever either).
I accept that, as with anything digital, Iโm purchasing temporary right of access and take steps to secure it in case that access is removed or the company goes out of business.
[Edit: nothing against Qobuz, Iโve just been happy with 7digital for years and I donโt see Qobuz offering me a compelling reason to switch or 7digital offering me a compelling reasons to leave.]
MP3Caprice is Ukrainian and apparently a bit dodgy in that it doesn't pay the royalties it should. But I've bought from there in the past. These days I would use 7digital, although it's more expensive
Kinda related question: is there an EU version of Bandcamp?
I'd like to suppport smaller artists, and bandcamp's business model is great (I can stream an album before purchase)
I buy a lot from Bandcamp. https://subvert.fm/ is supposedly an alternative but it's not open yet and I'm not sure it is EU-only.
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I tried Deezer and I might stick with it. Out of my whole music library it was missing a very small percentage of songs that TBH I don't really care about. It sounds good and it doesn't push podcasts down your throat. The only issue I encountered after about 2 weeks of using it is that the UX is not as good as in the Spotify app. I can live with that if that means I won't contribute to the wealth of their CEO who's slowly turning evil. I love the recommendations algorithm. It doesn't feed you the same songs over and over again. In Spotify it feels like you're in a constant loop. Open the mix and it regurgitates the same songs you've been listening in the past month. Scroll down and you see the recently played. Open discover weekly and listen to AI slop. Deezer flags albums that might be AI generated garbage and that's another plus for me.
Qobuz is not available in my country (Romania) because I assume they just dont want money. Man, I hate geo-locking so much. It's one of the dumbest things in the world. Just shut up and take my money!
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As someone who switched to qobuz a few months ago, if you want to switch stick with it for at least 2 months because while it is missing some core features over Spotify and Tidal, I think I found I enjoy music more without those features. And I don't miss them as much anymore.
Yeah indeed! much better the whole albums instead of the endless spotify music diarrhea. Their music picks and magazine are great as well
Really glad Iโve found Qobuz.
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There's also ~/Music/MP3
I'm thinking of self hosting my music, but I'm going to miss the discoverability of Spotify for new songs
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I recently tried to switch from Spotify to Qobuz, had to give up basically immediately. Two reasons:
- Your can't put playlists in folders. At all. Like WTF.
- Every playlist was missing around 15% of all songs. Some favorites included. Going from 860 to just over 700 songs isn't really ok for me.
Surprisingly, 1) was a bigger deal breaker than 2). I need to find the time to check the other alternatives.
I recently made that switch and while the website to transfer playlists gave me errors and missing songs, they were actually in Qobuz nevertheless.
For 1 I canโt say as I donโt use folders.
I didn't check all missing songs (wsy to many), but the ones I did check were actually missing, and it wasn't just an import or transfer error. I mostly checked those that were important to me and stood out in the import-list marked as missing when quickly scanning across them.
I have probably 100+ playlists. Not having folders is just not feasible. I wish use playlists in non-normal ways, more like notes in some cases, which is harder or impossible without folders. So for me it isn't an option to use a service that doesn't have them.
Kind of same story here, tried qobuz and dropped it almost immediately.
For me, it was the missing assistant integration, as I couldn't get it to properly play music in the car by giving some basic voice commands... If I'm in control of a three ton death machine, I want my eyes on the road, not entering some obscure pop punk band's name in full via the on-screen keyboard in the car's media system. Also, I know that qobuz' content is supposed to be curated instead of generated, but the amount of playlists compared to Spotify was really underwhelming. Add to that that the onboarding was terrible enough for my wife to give up before fully finishing the process and me cursing constantly while trying to set up my kids' accounts, my kids being annoyed they couldn't share music with their friends easily anymore and that it felt oddly hard to discover new music beyond their articles and just based on my preferences and the whole thing just didn't work as I wanted it to.
Yes discoverability for new music is also critical for me, but I never even got that far to give it a shot. The majority of the time in listening to music is to discover new-to-me artists/songs. I had heard mixed reviews on that, some incredibly happy with it some saying it's just horrible, but the other issues are already showstoppers...
Any alternative from europeen countries thst do not kwep defending Israel?
Piratebay is Swedish of it helps
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Qobuz, at least, doesn't really deserve to be on that list.
They don't offer their service in a bunch of European countries with no plans to change it.
Agree... And it's impossible (at least I couldn't find a way) to use a VPN to use it - you can create the account, but when you set up the card it detects where you're from and don't let you use it. At least this is my experience with them.
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It looks like the availability list was shorter years ago, so maybe they plan, but it's not blazing fast progress for sure
Iโve been using Deezer free for a good while now but Iโm getting kinda tired of it. I also read that they, like a lot of companies, have some problematic ties higher up the chain.
Yarrr.
I use the family version of Qobuz. Comes to CAD $3.20/M per user, or CAD $38.40/Y per user.
They pay the artist super well, sound quality is good.
Some songs are missing, but can found in their store purchasing in other countries (for example, I not find some albums in their Canadian store, but I could find them in their U.S. store).
There is also AD free YouTube for missing songs. Or but them from Bandcamp during Bandcamp Fridays (for max artist revenue)
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