i just mentioned this to a friend who didn’t know about it but in case you are unaware, to get music on a streaming service, artists must pay a distribution service. if they stop paying, the music gets taken down.

which means that many artists are out there paying and also not making any money because spotify now requires a thousand streams to make a fraction of a penny. spotify's playlists are increasingly filling with ai slop that is preventing people from hearing these artists.

supporting artists directly through services like bandcamp, faircamp, mirlo, etc, means that they get more money than they would make from thousands and thousands of streams.

on bandcamp friday, all their fees are waived and the money goes directly to the artist. so for example somebody paid me 6 dollars and all i lost was 37 cents in payment processor fee

edit to add: i am told that some services are a one-time fee for example cdbaby was a one time $14.99. that is still a LOT of spotify streams to recoup