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.
You can also buy music on Qobuz, I use it together with Bandcamp to get more coverage.
Oh yes, true. I do forget. Their catalogue in Australia is quite pricey which doesn’t make them a very good value proposition here.
For example Random Access Memories by Daft Punk is $27.09 for HiRes or $23.49 for CD resolution. I bought that album on physical CD from a brick and mortar store (JB HiFi) for $14.99. It was not on sale, that’s just a fairly standard price for a major release CD at the time - reissues of very popular releases are cheaper than that now.
A more recent example, Igor by Tyler the Creator is $23.99 at physical stores, or on Qobuz is $27.59 for CD res or $31.79 for HiRes.
(All these prices are in AUD).
It does get cheaper with their ‘Sublime’ subscription but not to make it worth it (33%) - unless you were buying heaps of music off them, or already using their streaming.