Down with Spotify! These 6 independent music streaming services want a better experience for musicians and listeners alike

Spotify might have over 700 million customers around the world, but it has its share of enemies as well.

The anti-Spotify movement has been growing in recent years, animated by what it sees as the service's poor returns for artists, outdated software and focus on profit over fan experience.

For us, despite finally launching its Lossless service recently, it still sounds worse than its rivals, while costing more per month, too.

But there is an alternative – a new breed of streaming services positioning themselves as very much anti-Spotify.

Here you'll find a focus on human curation over algorithms and community over profit. Some also offer better sound quality, though that's by no means a given.

Intrigued? Let's see what these six services have to offer.

1. Cantilever

The newest UK music streaming service, Cantilever launched in November 2025, and it's about as anti-Spotify as it's possible to get.

Not only does it exclusively feature independent music, it only has a handful of albums at a time. Each album stays for a month, and is then rotated out for a new one to take its place.

The idea is to encourage deep listening, rather than the throwaway abundance of Spotify.

Each album is accompanied by articles written by music journalists or even reflections from the artists themselves, for a deeper dive into what you're listening to.

• Price: £4.99 per month (1-month free trial)
• Catalogue size: 10 albums at any one time
• Sound quality: AAC 256 kbps / 44.1 kHz
• Platforms: iOS and Android
• Website: cantilever-music.com

2. Vocana

This independent music service has a greater focus on community, thanks to a big social element. You can personalise your profile, follow artists, join hubs, react to tracks and join conversations within the community.

Again, the entire catalogue is independent music with no big labels. Discovery happens through other fans and tastemakers, with no algorithms involved.

It's currently free in beta, but will cost $8.99 a month once it launches fully in 2026 (a UK launch is TBC).

• Price: Free in beta and then $8.99 per month
• Catalogue size: 33.5 million tracks
• Sound quality: AAC 160 kbps
• Platforms: iOS and Android
• Website: vocana.co

3. Coda

When experimental rock group Xiu Xiu pulled their music from Spotify in summer 2025, in protest at Daniel Ek's military investments, they chose Coda as their new streaming home.

The platform offers direct fan engagement with artists, and offers a "FanDirect" program that lets subscribers allocate $1 of their monthly fee directly to any qualifying independent artist.

But it's not just independents that are hosted on Coda. Thanks to deals with all three major record labels, it offers mainstream artists like Billie Eilish, Beyonce and Miley Cyrus, too.

This helps it offer a catalogue of over 130,000 tracks. They're currently available in the AAC format, but lossless (FLAC 16-bit / 44.1 kHz) is coming early in 2026.

The service is only available in the US and Canada for now, but it hopes to roll out to Europe in 2026.

• Price: from $10.99 per month (14-day free trial)
• Catalogue size: over 130,000 tracks
• Sound quality: AAC 320 kbps / 44.1 kHz
• Platforms: iOS and Android
• Website: codamusic.me

4. Lissen

Lissen is unique in that it only distributes your subscription fees to the artists you listen to. So if you only listen to one artist all month, they get your entire subscription fee. It's like you're paying them direct.

As Lissen puts it: "Artists therefore receive royalties based on the proportion of stream time their music received from each individual user's listening activity on the platform, rather than the proportion of streams their music received across the entire platform."

It has an impressive library of over 80 million tracks, and you can import playlists from other streaming apps, such as Apple Music and Spotify.

• Price: £4.95 per month (free ad-supported tier also available)
• Catalogue size: over 80 million tracks
• Sound quality: 16‑bit / 44.1 kHz
• Platforms: iOS, Android, web
• Website: lissen.com

5. Nina

Another service geared towards paying artists more for their work, Nina is an online music store with no subscription fee – instead you pay per track.

Artists receive 100 per cent of their profit – Nina doesn't take a cut. So if you buy a track, album or EP, you know that every penny you spend goes to the artist whose work you're enjoying.

All releases on Nina are self-published, so the catalogue is constantly growing. They're all semi-fungible tokens issued on the Solana blockchain, helping Nina act as a permanent storage space for artists' work, even if the service itself should cease to exist.

There are benefits for customers, too – by owning a semi-fungible token you verify that you own the release, letting you unlock bonus material.

• Price: priced per track
• Catalogue size: constantly growing
• Sound quality: varies per upload
• Platforms: iOS, Android, web
• Website: ninaprotocol.com

6. Subvert

Subvert aims to be a collectively owned successor to Bandcamp. It claims that through a series of corporate acquisitions, Bandcamp has abandoned its core values and community.

Subvert wants to go beyond the original vision of an artist-friendly space to one that's owned entirely by the artists themselves.

It's opening its doors gradually, with founding members being the first to gain access. It's an exciting vision, albeit one that might take time to come to fruition.

Find out more at subvert.fm.

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