A FEW WORDS RE: ONLINE MUSIC SERVICES

As you know, I am a person who makes music (thanks for being here). As such, part of my work is presenting my music for others to interact with. A not-insignificant portion of my compulsion toward music is related to my emotional relationship with other musicians - obviously the work of other musicians motivates me to do what I do - and due to my awareness of this, I often think about how independent artists present their work “in General.”

It’s really important that music made by non-corporate entities is accessible and *desirable* (this is significant); while independent artists have some freedom that commercial artists don’t have in every instance, what they don’t have (promotion and funding) is certainly more affective. The music industry controls most of what becomes popular either by manufacturing “preference” via saturation, or by co-opting successful makers and promoting them into “fame” via marketing. These are products, which are inherently for sale, and inextricably commercial. This is all fine - I’m not venturing an ethical judgement; I’m simply invoking a mechanism.

What I’m mostly aiming to say here is that online platforms - streaming services - are not all created equal (duh). I haven’t used many of the services, so I can only mention what I’ve encountered and what it’s led me to believe, which I’ll do as a numbered list cause it’s easier to read.

1. Spotify is easy to use, but it doesn’t really empower the listener to dig deep, find community, discover new music in a personal way. *It may seem like listeners are piloting the discovery process when browsing, but contrast listening to Spotify’s “editorial” playlists or algorithmically-generated “related artists” with

2. Clicking through genre tags on Bandcamp. Genre tags are somewhat a bane of my existence as an artist who likes to try my hand at basically any sounds that inspire me, but the big upshot here is that the artists on Bandcamp self-apply the genres. That makes a huge difference when a listener is clicking around. It allows the artist to position themselves where they are best able to find appropriate.

In light of these two early comparisons I give Bandcamp the definite edge.

3. The Bandcamp app is essential to the best streaming use for bandcamp. In web mode, unless the listener uses tabs, Bandcamp has the horrible behavior of ending a song whenever a listener clicks on a hot link. This is total trash, but it also does not occur when listening via the app, so please get and use that.

4. Ads. Maybe you pay for Spotify so there aren’t ads. Your $10+ a month gets you access to a nice streaming set-up provided you know what you want to listen to. That money gets dispersed somewhat to the artists you stream, but only on the order of .003 cents per stream (at best). According to my primary distribution service (holler atcha, Distrokid), songs I’ve put on Spotify have been streamed 4.5 million times. I have earned $114. That blows my mind. Could be an accounting error, but the .003 cents/stream is real.

5. You can listen to music ad-free at no cost to yourself via Bandcamp. The catch is, the artists who post their music are automatically opted-in (meaning they *can opt out) to have the amount of free streams capped at 3 before Bandcamp asks you to pay for what you listen to. I prefer this method.

If your streaming budget is $10 a month, and you really need to listen to tons of Led Zeppelin or Tay-tay or whatever, then Bandcamp might not appeal to that. But if you’re here and reading these words, that’s probably not you, so let me encourage you to think about trying to move some portion of your listening to the Bandcamp app to see how that works for you. I think you’ll discover a lot more musicians & artists that speak to you. And if in time you need more than you can get without kicking them a few dollars, I really think you should pay them something. You’re paying for variety in General. By supporting independent artists, you make their ability to continue to exist possible, and that ultimately makes more options for You to learn, not just about what they do, but about who you are and who you are growing to be, and the world we’re choosing to build together. If you prefer a co-operative environment with empowered variety, you have to take care of the non-corporate makers out there. Train your mind to seek them out and train your habits to see the power that the seemingly small choices you make in a day have on eventual outcomes. Vote with your dollar as much as you can, and if you don’t have much extra cash to spare, remember what they say: “time is money". Spend it purposefully, and “be the change you wish to” ______.