The company is Access Industries and the Founder and Owner is Leonard Blavatnik

Along with what’s in the title, he is accused of reputation laundering against Ukraine and has been personally sanctioned by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He was also part of a WhatsApp group involving some of the United States’ most powerful business leaders with the stated goals of “changing the narrative” in favour of Israel and “helping win the war” against Gaza.

Everything is in the linked Wikipedia article about him, mostly under the “Controversies and disputes” part.

I switched to Deezer after seeing it recommended as a better Spotify alternative here on Lemmy, but after finding all this I immediately stopped using it. It’s as bad as the shit Spotify does and has done IMO. I’m not here to recommend or push an alternative, but if I can give info on what I use now if someone asks.

  • nnullzz@lemmy.world
    5·
    5 days ago

    As a music artist and software engineer, I wish more self hosted options were accessible. I’ve tried and stopped a few times to build an open source platform like that but there’s always some kind of software knowledge needed, whether it be just for deploying. Faircamp is a really neat project, but it’s not really accessible to most artists. Till then I think Bandcamp is the best option.

    For me personally, I’m no longer planning to release music to most of the streaming services. It’ll be either sold directly on my website using Stripe for payments or via Bandcamp.

    There are ways import downloaded music to local libraries on apps like Spotify which helps a bit. But still an inconvenience for the average fan of music that just wants to search or discover and hit play.