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Even better, skip streaming services entirely and own your music. This directly puts your money where you want it, as physical media sales increase while stream

Even better, skip streaming services entirely and own your music. This directly puts your money where you want it, as physical media sales increase while streaming revenue decreases.

masklinn 3y ago
Streaming services can be nice to discover new artists, or get reminded of artists who dropped off of your radar.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Yep, discovery is really the primary point. It's hard to discover new music now otherwise.
- capableweb 3y ago
  This is what I do. Use Spotify and YouTube Music (but mostly Spotify) for discovery, keeping up with releases and previewing music, while actual listening happens locally with files purchased from Bandcamp et al. Artists that don't sell their music in this way tends to get a skip.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    I am friends with a music band and they told me that Bandcamp is scammy and takes insane fees on digital music sold. I was surprised because I like Bandcamp as listener and thought I support musicians directly They insisted that "80% to the artist" is a lie and those special Friday promos are somehow even worse. However they said they get almost all money from physical goods sales on Bandcamp so merch is a good way to support them. Any professional artist (aka music sales is your income) can confirm?
    - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      Interesting to know, thank you! Do your friends use any other service, say iTunes, to sell their music, and can compare between the two? And I’d be interested in a link to their Bandcamp if possible!
      - user_7832 3y ago
        Not the person you replied to, but apparently Deezer is waaay nicer with paying out artists than Spotify/Apple music. It's apparently due to how revenue is distributed (paying per total minutes played vs share of user-minutes or something, I'm not very clear.) Essentially with Spotify the vrey popular Tailor Swifts get a much nicer payment whereas if you listen exclusively to indie artists on Deezer they actually see more of your money. Fun fact, Deezer started off as a piracy website that grew big enough to turn legitimate when sued :)
        throwaway290 3y ago
        Since you mention "per minutes played", not sure it compares with Bandcamp... If you like to buy HQ files instead paying for streaming. Could be that Bandcamp is ripe to be disrupted by someone more friendly to artists. Edit: good to know, I'll have to take a look at it.
        tourmalinetaco 3y ago
        Deezer offers both a way to purchase and a way to stream music. They have a monthly subscription plan to stream their catalog alongside the ability to purchase outright and download in standard formats.
        tourmalinetaco 3y ago
        Deezer has definitely caught my eye in the past! Them paying artists better is an even sweeter deal. And I love piracy-turned-legitimacy stories. For instance, Crunchyroll, originally an anime piracy streaming site, turned legit and eventually overtook a monolith in the US anime industry with Funimation. Funimation and Crunchyroll were both bought by Sony, and Funimation’s brand identity was deemed weaker (something unthinkable back during their 90s/00s peak) and had everything renamed to Crunchyroll. Unfortunately though I can’t recommend Crunchyroll, as last I was aware they heavily underpaid their subtitler staff.
    - the_other 3y ago
      Hardly a pro, but I've sold exactly three copies of the one track I put on BC. I got a reasonable payout. BC definitely take a fee, but it's not "insane". I'm fairly confident that selling via BC gives artists a significantly higher % per item than selling through a label or physical media through bricks & mortar. The artist gets to keep 100% of copyright this way, too. The artist probably has less reach and lower volume of sales this way unless they're great with self promo or can get in with DJs/tastemakers in a scene. Happy to be schooled if I'm in error, but "scummy" isn't a word I'd use for BC.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        > I'm fairly confident that selling via BC gives artists a significantly higher per item than selling through a label or physical media through bricks & mortar. Physical media is probably rounding error these days right? But from what I heard BC is good for selling physical merch including CDs and stuff, apparently it's transparent and most money goes to the artist. But surprisingly not with digital tracks. So I stopped promoting BC as a place to buy music to friends for now. The band I know now use some "distributor". From what I understood, distributor does a bunch of stuff mainly including promotion. What their distributor does, it seemed like a label to me but they say it's not a label... Again I have no idea but perhaps pros will know the difference.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        By the way what's your BC if you are OK disclosing? I might buy the track if it's good (as I mentioned I use BC and if you say it works for you...)
zirgs 3y ago
I don't want to own most of the music that I listen to. If I wanted to buy all the stuff that's in my spotify "liked songs" playlist - it would cost me thousands of euros. Until relatively recently you could only buy whole albums not single songs. I don't want to buy the whole album if it only contains 1 or 2 songs that I actually like.
- masklinn 3y ago
  > Until relatively recently you could only buy whole albums not single songs. Uh? Singles have always been a thing, and most if not all digital platforms allow buying by the track. You’d need a very specific artist demand to avoid this unbundling.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    In fact, singles were the original way to buy music. 78rpm records could only hold up to 5min or so of audio after all.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    Not all songs are released as singles, and it's silly to buy a CD with only one song in it. So people just sailed the high seas.
- capableweb 3y ago
  Maybe my "liked" playlist is not too big in Spotify, but if I paid $4 for each song, that'd be ~$2400, not at all unreasonable considering that's songs collected since 2015 (so 75 songs per year or ~$300 per year). Of course, it's OK not to want to own the music you listen to. Personally, after 8 years of trying to use Spotify (and lately YouTube Music), the amount of graveyard playlists I now "posses" made it so I basically had to revert to buying music again as I want to be able to listen to the playlists I create years in the future too. Quick look (~20% of my total playlists), around 10% of my playlists contain more than half songs that are no longer available. That's just unacceptable in my personal case.
  - 3y ago
MikusR 3y ago
But its expensive. Bob Dylan songs alone is 300 million $.

Even better, skip streaming services entirely and own your music. This directly puts your money where you want it, as physical media sales increase while streaming revenue decreases.

masklinn 3y ago

Streaming services can be nice to discover new artists, or get reminded of artists who dropped off of your radar.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Yep, discovery is really the primary point. It's hard to discover new music now otherwise.
capableweb 3y ago
This is what I do. Use Spotify and YouTube Music (but mostly Spotify) for discovery, keeping up with releases and previewing music, while actual listening happens locally with files purchased from Bandcamp et al. Artists that don't sell their music in this way tends to get a skip.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  I am friends with a music band and they told me that Bandcamp is scammy and takes insane fees on digital music sold. I was surprised because I like Bandcamp as listener and thought I support musicians directly They insisted that "80% to the artist" is a lie and those special Friday promos are somehow even worse. However they said they get almost all money from physical goods sales on Bandcamp so merch is a good way to support them. Any professional artist (aka music sales is your income) can confirm?
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    Interesting to know, thank you! Do your friends use any other service, say iTunes, to sell their music, and can compare between the two? And I’d be interested in a link to their Bandcamp if possible!
    - user_7832 3y ago
      Not the person you replied to, but apparently Deezer is waaay nicer with paying out artists than Spotify/Apple music. It's apparently due to how revenue is distributed (paying per total minutes played vs share of user-minutes or something, I'm not very clear.) Essentially with Spotify the vrey popular Tailor Swifts get a much nicer payment whereas if you listen exclusively to indie artists on Deezer they actually see more of your money. Fun fact, Deezer started off as a piracy website that grew big enough to turn legitimate when sued :)
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        Since you mention "per minutes played", not sure it compares with Bandcamp... If you like to buy HQ files instead paying for streaming. Could be that Bandcamp is ripe to be disrupted by someone more friendly to artists. Edit: good to know, I'll have to take a look at it.
        tourmalinetaco 3y ago
        Deezer offers both a way to purchase and a way to stream music. They have a monthly subscription plan to stream their catalog alongside the ability to purchase outright and download in standard formats.
      - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
        Deezer has definitely caught my eye in the past! Them paying artists better is an even sweeter deal. And I love piracy-turned-legitimacy stories. For instance, Crunchyroll, originally an anime piracy streaming site, turned legit and eventually overtook a monolith in the US anime industry with Funimation. Funimation and Crunchyroll were both bought by Sony, and Funimation’s brand identity was deemed weaker (something unthinkable back during their 90s/00s peak) and had everything renamed to Crunchyroll. Unfortunately though I can’t recommend Crunchyroll, as last I was aware they heavily underpaid their subtitler staff.
  - the_other 3y ago
    Hardly a pro, but I've sold exactly three copies of the one track I put on BC. I got a reasonable payout. BC definitely take a fee, but it's not "insane". I'm fairly confident that selling via BC gives artists a significantly higher % per item than selling through a label or physical media through bricks & mortar. The artist gets to keep 100% of copyright this way, too. The artist probably has less reach and lower volume of sales this way unless they're great with self promo or can get in with DJs/tastemakers in a scene. Happy to be schooled if I'm in error, but "scummy" isn't a word I'd use for BC.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      > I'm fairly confident that selling via BC gives artists a significantly higher per item than selling through a label or physical media through bricks & mortar. Physical media is probably rounding error these days right? But from what I heard BC is good for selling physical merch including CDs and stuff, apparently it's transparent and most money goes to the artist. But surprisingly not with digital tracks. So I stopped promoting BC as a place to buy music to friends for now. The band I know now use some "distributor". From what I understood, distributor does a bunch of stuff mainly including promotion. What their distributor does, it seemed like a label to me but they say it's not a label... Again I have no idea but perhaps pros will know the difference.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      By the way what's your BC if you are OK disclosing? I might buy the track if it's good (as I mentioned I use BC and if you say it works for you...)

zirgs 3y ago

I don't want to own most of the music that I listen to. If I wanted to buy all the stuff that's in my spotify "liked songs" playlist - it would cost me thousands of euros. Until relatively recently you could only buy whole albums not single songs. I don't want to buy the whole album if it only contains 1 or 2 songs that I actually like.

masklinn 3y ago
> Until relatively recently you could only buy whole albums not single songs. Uh? Singles have always been a thing, and most if not all digital platforms allow buying by the track. You’d need a very specific artist demand to avoid this unbundling.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  In fact, singles were the original way to buy music. 78rpm records could only hold up to 5min or so of audio after all.
- zirgs 3y ago
  Not all songs are released as singles, and it's silly to buy a CD with only one song in it. So people just sailed the high seas.
capableweb 3y ago
Maybe my "liked" playlist is not too big in Spotify, but if I paid $4 for each song, that'd be ~$2400, not at all unreasonable considering that's songs collected since 2015 (so 75 songs per year or ~$300 per year). Of course, it's OK not to want to own the music you listen to. Personally, after 8 years of trying to use Spotify (and lately YouTube Music), the amount of graveyard playlists I now "posses" made it so I basically had to revert to buying music again as I want to be able to listen to the playlists I create years in the future too. Quick look (~20% of my total playlists), around 10% of my playlists contain more than half songs that are no longer available. That's just unacceptable in my personal case.
- 3y ago

MikusR 3y ago

But its expensive. Bob Dylan songs alone is 300 million $.