Listen to the Music

How to access the world of music while supporting artists, not billionaires

Streaming Is a Bad Deal for Most Artists

Music artists took a big L in their fight to get paid for their work, when streaming became the dominant form of music distribution. Streaming services pay out pennies per month to indie artists, while artists with medium to large audiences simply don't make as much as used to when people bought albums for $10-20 a pop. Only megapopular artists and industry execs are reaping the benefits from the shift to streaming.

Big Tech Can't Stop Being Evil

Making matters worse from an ethical standpoint, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has recently taken to investing his company's profits into military technology. While Apple has not made such boldly evil moves, they did make a $1,000,000 donation to Trump's inauguration to curry favor with the would-be autocrat. Big tech companies just cannot be trusted to not do evil things with the money you give them in the form of subscriptions.

Tidal

If you're looking for a way to continue streaming music while avoiding big tech companies, you'll want to look at Tidal. Tidal is an alternative music streaming platform that works much the same as Spotify or Apple Music, but without the political nonsense that plagues the latter two. They might pay artists ever so slightly more as well, but we're talking about very small differences here.

Physical Media

If you still have your old audio gear lying around, and you have some extra space to store stacks of records, CDs or casettes, a large percentage of artists are still selling music in these formats. Artists make a lot more money when you buy albums from them or their label, instead of including yet another middleman in the form of a streaming company. If you don't mind some of the practical inconveniences that come with physical media, this could be a great choice. Physical media also tends to create more intimate connections between the listener and the music, because you are more limited in what music you have access to. You'll end up spending more time with certain albums than you would if you always have access to millions of songs.

Bandcamp

If you don't have the storage space or extra money for physical releases, or you just want to play music from your phone, there are some smaller streaming platforms that have much better payouts for artists. Bandcamp is a streaming service that allows users to purchase digital (and physical) albums on the platform, at which point a flat percentage of the purchase goes directly to the artist, or the artist's label. You don't have to purchase albums to stream them, but Bandcamp will start prompting you to purchase an album that you have listened to several times. The key downside to Bandcamp is that it is mostly home to underground and independent artists and labels, though there are quite a few larger artists on the platform as well. You're not going to find older music or the most popular artists on here as you would expect from the larger platforms. There are some even smaller platforms that are sprouting up to provide alternatives to Bandcamp, but they are not very useful for regular people.

Local Digital Library (Plus Self-Hosted Streaming)

Even as streaming has become the dominant form of music distribution, people are still buying vinyl records. What seems to have been forgotten is the more recent paradigm of buying digital music and loading it up onto an iPod or MP3 player. This still works though, and it actually hits a sweet spot between being a better deal for artists, and having the convenience of playing music off of a small, portable device. You can even buy downloadable digital music from larger artists through their own websites or surprisingly, on Amazon. Bandcamp allows you to download all the music you purchase, so Bandcamp + MP3 player is a great combo. Of course, your phone can work as an MP3 player. There are various reasons a dedicated device might be better though, and newer devices have conveniences like bluetooth.

The next level from having a music library on your computer and syncing it to your portable device, is to put your library on a server and stream music from it using an app like Jellyfin. This is suprisingly not that hard to set up, but it does require a moderate level of technological aptitude. It's just not a simple solution. If you are willing to put in some work though, you get all the convenience of streaming with all the control of owning your music library.

Most music artists would be very happy if you enjoyed their work in whatever way is best for you. You can also help out artists a lot by sharing your favorite music with your friends and family. When it comes to directly supporting the work of artists though, the bottom line is simple: buy stuff from them. Buy albums, buy merch, buy concert tickets. Buying this stuff puts way more money in artists' pockets than streaming payouts.

Music and the artists who make it add an incredible amount of value to our lives, so please show them your appreciation however you can!

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