> You can buy physical and digital copies of any artist in the world, artists can set up Patreon accounts, and you with a small amount of ingenuity can probably

> You can buy physical and digital copies of any artist in the world, artists can set up Patreon accounts, and you with a small amount of ingenuity can probably even mail your favorite artists a check directly. > The issue is that people don't do this People did do this. From the time legit outlets like iTunes appeared to up through around 2013, revenue from digital recording sales rose into the billions, on the road to matching 90s CD sales. But then they fell dramatically over the last 5 years, and we shouldn't talk about this as if it's a law of the internet or there's a big mystery why. Streaming services offered on-demand listening of huge catalogs for a fraction of the price. Consequently, the demand for purchased recordings dropped, and artists get paid a fraction of a fraction. Patronage is nice, I'm glad the option exists, it's one of the rays of light. Still it lacks one of the virtues of retailed recordings: you know how much you're supposed to pay to make a meaningful economic contribution. Do you want to listen to this song again and again? Great, pay an asking price for a single or album, you have done your part. Or decide it's not that important and listen to it when it comes up on transient music services like terrestrial radio or shuffle-streaming. Or decide it's kindof important and pirate but you know in the back of your head you haven't really meaningfully participated yet and you'll need to decide to one day (which is another thing services like Spotify work against -- they grant an imprimatur of legitimacy which erases that sense in the back of your head that you might owe something).