If you pay for one or more music streaming services, I'm asking you to spend an equal amount this Friday on buying music directly from Bandcamp artists. Your streaming dollars DO NOT GO TO ARTISTS. They go to tech execs. Bandcamp dollars go to musicians.
Please share this widely, too many people STILL don't know that 99.999% of every dollar they spend on Spotify et al goes directly into a tech bastard's pocket.
#Bandcamp #Musicians #SupportMusicians #SupportArt #MusiciansOfMastodon
It certainly doesn't have to be me! At least some of your favorite artists are on Bandcamp, and lots of upcoming acts in the genres you love are on there.
If we don't support musicians we're all going to wonder why there's so little music we love being made in 5-10 years.
@etherdiver I just wish Bandcamp was more involved when resolving customer disputes. I have two orders and both times the label has not responded.
Other than that, I do spend a lot of money with Bandcamp.
4 track album
I will add that Bandcamp has a very good set of filters that allow you to specify genre and format, and also that you can listen to the music before you buy it.
#Bandcamp #Musicians #SupportMusicians #SupportArt #MusiciansOfMastodon
6 track album
For me, the answer is jazz — classic jazz.
Well, I like Vince Guaraldi quite a bit:
https://vinceguaraldi.bandcamp.com/album/jazz-impressions-of-black-orpheus-deluxe-edition
Also, I like The 8-Bit Big Band (various pieces on Bandcamp).
https://the8bitbigband.bandcamp.com
And I'll add Malcolm Strachan
https://malcolmstrachan.bandcamp.com/album/point-of-no-return
24 track album
@etherdiver I wonder whether it'd be reasonable to have something of a Bandcamp buying subscription. That is: I have a monthly subscription of N$ at Bandcamp that allows me to listen to music on a per-song basis in the worth of N$. However, since the songs are actually bought when listening, listening twice doesn't charge twice.
I'd bet that after a few months, most people would have "bought" good deal of their music and would actually only buy more songs per month of the same monetary amount their subscribing to Spotify.
The big issue is getting people on board when starting out, because just like that this would mean you'd either have a small music library worth the N$ of the first month, or need to commit to buying a *lot* up-front. Maybe a model where you subscribe for a while year for the first year and thus get 12×N$ of "music budget" unlocked from the get go would be a good starting point?
Of course, not everyone is on bandcamp though.
Also, I didn't bother to research yet, but how does actually Bandcamp work? Don't labels get their 90% cut their as well?
@etherdiver The thing is, I'm just a plain music shill and most of the musicians I listen to are on big labels. I.e., there's virtually no difference b/w buying through Spotify which means 70% × 20% = 14% (Spotify cut times label cut) vs. Bandcamp which is 85% × 20% = 17% (Bandcamp cut times label cut). I think the label even gets a bigger cut in many contracts.
Bandcamp mostly works for artists when they're independent (most artists who promote Bandcamp are independent) and through Merch.
Either way, I mostly care about "how to make streaming sustainable". And the above model was an idea for that. Because the "ownership model" actually could help there.
@etherdiver Why I'm rambling about ownership is because it's actually critical to solving the Spotify problem. And Spotify *is* a problem despite spending 70% of their revenue on royalties etc. Because while what you say is about artists only receiving a miniscule amount is true... for the artists we care about. However it's not for the big players. And I think it's important to be precise here because despite being on the same page, it's easy for some libs/ancaps/... to come around and "disprove" that Spotify is giving artists less because it kinda is true *and* untrue.
The thing is, if you spend 10$ on Spotify and listen to some unknown artist, only a small fraction of the 70%×10$=7$ is paid to your artist. It does get paid to artists though, but just to the more popular ones >.<
The problem is that it's not the individual user who actually controls where their money goes but Spotify's metric: The # of streams. And so your favorite artists has maybe 1000 streams through you and others, but whoever is popular right now is getting billions. And those 10$ you paid to listen to your favorite artists is now used to pay Spotify (3$) and the royalties Spotify needs to pay so that others can stream the most popular artists for just 10$ a month. You're crossfunding the popular artists!
@etherdiver There's a reason why it is like that: In order for Spotify to succeed, they'd had to get the big players on board. And these big players (or their labels) want to see money. That's why the model is set that way. It actually works for them. And then Spotify can leverage that to also get smaller artists on board "for the exposure".
Basically, Spotify is a huge Pyramid Scheme set up by Spotify for (the labels of) the big artists.
But by now Spotify is so big that even if big artists had a say (they often have not, labels again) and wanted to pull out because this is unfair, they couldn't because by now a huge source of income... is Spotify!
@etherdiver Oh, ah, I thought you cared about actually ensuring artists get money and not only hating against tech that, while wrong, doesn't get us anywhere. *shrug* bye then.
(But do note that I don't "care for" Spotify as well. At all. Which should be clear from what I wrote.)
@etherdiver The problem is not that Spotify pays less than others (they don't really do), it's how they distribute the money. Basically it is equivalent to everyone (!) in the world having all the albums of Beyoncé (or whoever is popular right now) in their home. In some cases even as if they'd have bought the same album twice!
Small artists are payed less because in relation to big artists, they are listened to a lot less. Of course libs (and ancaps?) would argue that the former model was skewed "for" small artists since the payment wasn't related to how big the "demand" for streaming was and an album that's once bought and only listened to seldomly gets the same money compared to an album that's bought and played all over again, and Spotify just "reflects" what the demand is.
Of course, when looking through a Marxist perspective this is bullshit. A service or product's should reflect the labor cost, and while this is obviously difficult to measure for art, the Spotify model inflates the "labor cost" for popular artists.
But even for a classic capitalist this should look wrong. We had a system for reflecting the demand: Higher prices. An album by Beyoncé may simply cost more. But not 1000x as much, because the arguable "quality" of her album is clearly not that much "better".
@etherdiver In principle, the difference in "likeability" of an album is suddenly multiplied through the many people using Spotify and thusly inflated into the "popularity" number Spotify uses to pay out artists (or their labels). Even a traditional capitalist would see through it, they'd just not blame Spotify, but say that all those people using Spotify to listen to popular artists are effectively ripping off the others by using their money to cross-fund their listening habits.
AFAICT the Bandcamp model through ownership of music inverses this effect and returns it back to the old times. Music is paid for, regardless of how often you listen to it. You pay for the "quality" of the "product" *you* listen to and not some popularity metric.
@etherdiver The alternative streaming model could mean paying artists only from the money received by users listening to that artist. It would be fairer but probably the big players wouldn't be on board.
However actual selling of music files (ownership!) allows us to implement an equivalent model with the comfortable service that made Spotify so popular while getting the big players on board to make it succeed, because "selling" is so ingrained into labels and economy that I think we can convince them to take part.
@etherdiver I'm not going to spend an equal amount to what I pay for TIDAL to musicians on bandcamp tomorrow.
I'll pay *MORE*!
@etherdiver for all the people trying to take blame away from the tech bros here by pointing to the rights holders/labels (who are indeed also terrible), I would point out the data-harvesting side of Spotify's business. Yes, record execs have been milking artists and ripping off consumers for decades, but it took tech bros to turn the very act of listening into a product.
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