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The money you spend at Spotify, Apple, etc DOES NOT GO TO ARTISTS for the most part. The money that DOES go to artists on those platforms goes by and large to the 1% of musicians -- the Taylor Swifts and the Beatles and BTS's of the world-- who have leverage to get decent contracts. Your typical independent, o and even many/most "successful" artists on smaller labels, make essentially NOTHING from streaming.

By contrast, today at least, EVERY DOLLAR YOU SPEND goes into an artist's pocket (ok, we still pay payment processing fees, but it's like 50 cents). And even on a normal day, Bandcamp takes a *very* reasonable 15% of each sale.

Three sales today is equal, or better, to a YEAR'S worth of typical streaming revenue for the majority of artists out there...

And the bottom line is, if you don't support the art you like, it's going to stop being made.

So go find an artist you like, a smaller one, on Bandcamp and drop the same $15 you send to Spotify every month in their pocket. For truly small artists, a single sale can literally make their day!

NO ONE is going to notice or care that you spent $15 on Spotify, but the same $$$ spent say BC can be life changing to a struggling artist.

And yes, I'm one of those artists (and here's my album, just in case:
https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/) but this isn't even about me per se; if this post inspired zero sales for me but one for another indie artist, it's done its job.

THE STREAMING ECONOMY IS A LIE. SUPPORT ART WITH DIRECT PAYMENTS.

One more time, for those in the back (and those who want to repost it as a standalone message):

THE STREAMING ECONOMY IS A LIE. SUPPORT ART WITH DIRECT PAYMENTS.

One more note for those that don't know: it actually COSTS ARTISTS MONEY to be on the streaming services! While it's not a huge amount (starts at $20 a year), it's actually a net loss for possibly the MAJORITY of artists on those platforms. How fucked up is that?!?

By contrast, Bandcamp allows you to directly upload your music and host it FOR FREE, even if you don't charge people to download it.

So yeah. Support artists, not streaming corporations.

@kkarhan @etherdiver it's not so much the platforms themselves, but the digital distributors that place an artist's music on the platforms, like DistroKid

@dave_heumann @kkarhan correct. None of them, afaik, allow artists to directly upload and manage music on the platform. They all require use of a third party intermediary, and those companies charge $20/year and up.

Note there's NO technical reason to disallow direct upload and management of your own music; it's strictly a way to cut costs and minimize liability/need for customer service.

@etherdiver @dave_heumann @kkarhan

It’s also a bit of gate keeping, Spotify et al doesn’t want to make sure each track uploaded “by an artist” isn’t the audio of a horrible hate crime because that takes real humans with wages. Farming it off to a label, even if self-publishing musicians saves them money.

@etherdiver @dave_heumann @kkarhan (and I don’t say that as a defense of the corporate overlords, just that curation is a legitimate function and the people that do it should get paid for their work. The grim future is that AI does all this if it’s not just making all the music too.)

@kkarhan @Dorolfe @dave_heumann @etherdiver I think real music will always have a place in the hearts of real people - they can tell the difference. OTOH, I’ve heard some awful soulless stuff from people using loop packs I’m sure AI could do a better job of. There are two kinds of art - original new conceptions and “good of its kind”. Great art is both. There’s a flood of good music today that AI could easily replace but AI will never be “great”.

@BenjaminRussell @kkarhan @Dorolfe @dave_heumann @etherdiver AI systems, like the human beings used as as their development target, cannot be specialised in many things. There will always be good and bad music, regardless of being made by humans or AI systems.

@pedromj @kkarhan @Dorolfe @dave_heumann @etherdiver why are you telling me this?