We are in a golden era for buying and selling digital LPs. While I’ll use Bandcamp, sleek alternatives like Ampwall, Subvert, and Mirlo are equally great options. These online markets inherently incentivize artists to avoid filler or risk losing a sale, while the subscription streaming model requires artists to pad their catalog for pay per play. Streaming has revived the worst trope of the old music industry: the album that is just “two hits and a bunch of crap.”
Spotify’s business model demands album filler because the platform pays out royalties based on “stream share” which trigger a payout the second a track hits the 30 second mark, incentivizing artists to maximize volume over value. This has fundamentally warped modern songwriting: albums are aggressively padded with short, two minute tracks and repetitive hooks designed specifically to feed the algorithm and inflate stream counts. On Spotify, a deep, cohesive artistic statement takes a back seat to sheer data output, turning what should be a focused LP into a bloated playlist of algorithmic bait.
Accidental hits happen way more often than you’d think. As it turns out, artists are notoriously bad at predicting their own success. When you buy a digital LP on a platform like Bandcamp, you are investing in a complete and curated piece of art where even the tracks the artist never expected to blow up exist naturally as part of a cohesive story. On subscription services like Spotify, those same happy accidents are treated like lottery tickets while surrounded by cynical, algorithm optimized filler designed just to farm streams. Buying the album ensures you are experiencing those unexpected gems as genuine creative discoveries, rather than digging through algorithmic bloat to find them.
Bandcamp serves the genre; streaming serves the algorithm. When producers target platforms like Spotify, artistic nuances like tempo variations and volume dynamics are sacrificed to strict LUFS loudness standards and predictable, club friendly danceability. This algorithmic pressure strips electronic and club music of its experimental edge, forcing tracks into a uniform, compressed sonic mold just to survive on a playlist. On Bandcamp, however, the music is freed from these rigid streaming constraints, allowing producers to prioritize raw genre authenticity and dynamic storytelling over sanitized, playlist ready optimization. Soundtrack and orchestral music have become major casualties of this shift, as their essential cinematic highs and quiet, emotional lows are flattened into a lifeless wall of sound just to meet streaming’s volume requirements.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not here to sell you my album. Go ahead and enjoy the whole thing ad free on my website. https://thejoyo.com/#more
Can’t abandon something I never joined in the first place! 🙂
I never stopped buying my albums. For all the reasons you list. Fuck streaming.
I have already left Spotify, but joined tidal because of the HiFi streaming quality and because they pay their artists more per stream. However, I still don’t feel like I did enough research or digging to see if tidal is still bad or not. Does anyone know more on them and also if there’s a better, more artist-centric option?
The better, artist-centric option is Bandcamp. Buy albums and singles outright instead of streaming – the artist gets significantly more revenue.
Streaming for discovery and daily ease of use. Bandcamp to buy FLACs of my favourites. That’s what I do.
I’ve been enjoying Qobuz recently. They have streaming and an option to buy. I’ve been told they’re a fairly ethical option in terms of payment to artists, but haven’t researched myself.
There’s also Subvert.fm with a lot of smaller artists and some real gems if you dig for them.
Tidal is owned by Jay-Z so it’s not a ton better, though the hi-fi and paying artists better was enough reason for me for now. With easy migration too, it made the most sense to also quickly get my family off of the Spotify family plan. I’m also trying to grow my offline music library again, and Tidal being hi-fi “allows” for some interesting usability to that end. Ripping CDs and buying on Bandcamp has also been a good shift!
The most artist centric option would probably be that final one. Buying CD or digital albums directly from artists and growing your offline library. Toss Jellyfin on something and you have your own personal streaming platform!
Even worse than Jay Z. The majority stake holder of Tidal is Block Inc and they are owned by BlackRock.
Subscription streaming will never pay an artist the same amount of money per person as an album sale.
You miss the consumption pattern behind streaming though: I don’t want (and literally can’t afford to) …
- buy 1000 child song albums but still want to have kids around to enjoy their flavor of the month music
- Explore music on the side: I can’t buy every new album to listen to it on my own terms and I’m not music head enough to hunt and research music, instead I use streaming as a discovery mechanism on the side, sometimes just jumping into stuff ice never even seen.
- Afford the integration time: a single streaming service can easily be used for everyone in my household and customized without any overhead. A five year should be able to choose their music and I can’t so that id they need an app (no phones) or get accustomed to different interfaces.
This is not intended to take away from your core point: (direct) purchase is a better way of giving money to artists, second only to direct donations (i can’t talk about concerts because of the whole venue discussions I’ve heard on the side).
Now comes the tough part:
On paper it’s straight forward for me: just donate like 10 or 20 bucks a month to your personal flavor of the month - but … To whom? I just checked, today alone were 20 artists played.
The shitty thing is, and I’m sharing this to perhaps shame me into acting: this is quite easily solvable, but I just don’t invest the energy needed to figure it out for me.
Sorry for the long rant style, tldr is:
I have no use for owning albums, streaming provide a true value for me and I’m (realizing after writing this) obviously too cheap, stupid and lazy to give bak.
give https://bandcamp.com/radio a try for discovery. human curated and the DJs give songs some context so it’s not just someone’s playlist.
you can also listen to a whole album on bandcamp for free. VLC and IINA both open bandcamp URLs as playlists and can be listened to as many times as you’d like.
To whom? I just checked, today alone were 20 artists played.
You don’t have to be perfect with this. Just pick someone who made a new album you loved; ideally someone who actually needs the money. And you can always buy vinyl, merch, or a digital album instead of just donating.
Torrent albums to try them out, then buy legal copies of the ones you like.
Or a concert ticket
I’ve temporarily switched to Tidal as well, while I research and set up my own server to host my own music. I have a ton of music, just no easy way to stream/sync it to my phone.
I did the same, switched from spotify to tidal for about a year and then set up my own navidrome server and use it with symfonium.
By default, Symfonium will stream music from Navidrome to your phone, but there are settings you can change in Symfonium to make it sync to your phone instead if you have data quotas or an unreliable connection. There’s probably a way to make it sync a subset and restrict playback to that subset when on a metered connection, but in my case I have more than enough storage to fit everything on the phone.
If you made any mistakes I would not believe you are a robot.
just no easy way to stream/sync it to my phone.
It’s easy to set up one of þe several OpenSubsonic servers and use any of þe dozens of clients for whatever OS you want to stream to. Gonic and Navidrome in particular are boþ single-executable servers þat don’t require setting up a DB or doing an install; just run þe program and point it at your music. It’s all FLOSS.
On þe server
Several oþer server implementations are available.
Desktop clients
- ostui (in AUR and Alpine)
- psysonic
- sublime-music
- subtui
- sonixd
- supersonic-desktop
- rufin
- sonicrust
- crossonic
- moosic
- naviterm
- rorqual
- ratune
- net-player
(Þese are just þe ones in AUR)
Android clients
Phosh (Linux Phone) clients
- Gelly
- subsound
- feishin
- supersonic
- aonsuko
Wiþ an OpenSubsonic server and Tempo in particular, syncing music to mobile for offline use is trivial. Streaming over all þese clients is, of course, even easier.
Stop trying to make the thorn Þ happen Pierce.
Thanks for the substantial suggestions.
You can use VLC to open a bandcamp album url to play the album for free as many times as you want.
Þe comment I was responding to was
I have a ton of music, just no easy way to stream/sync it to my phone.
Many of us own our music - we’re not borrowing it, we bought and have full control of it, and no service can take it away from us. Þat’s þe use case for OpenSubsonic - owned libraries of music which one wants to stream from þeir own self-hosted server(s).
My static website uses https://faircamp.org/ for the playlisting but it’s the exact same on VLC. We don’t need to over complicate this unless that’s the fun part.
Tidal is really bad with their content managing. They tend to not distinguish between same named artists and they stuff all their albums together. Sending feedback on this is needlessly annoying, though most of the times they correct mistakes but when a new album is released is the same again. Also no official Linux app and questionable ownership. Said that I’m still on tidal unless there is a better option.
tidal is shit
I recommend waiting for Band camp Fridays so the artists get 100% of the sale too
Left spotify more then a year ago. I always buy vinyl, via bandcamp or directly from artists. Especially on bandcamp fridays. And for streaming i use Qobuz
Spotify (and Pandora before that) served my purposes once upon a time to discover genres and artists I enjoy. But when I did the math, I realized I’d spent quite the pretty penny with nothing to show for it, and none of the artists I listened to were benefitting. And of course, Spotify has been happily selling my data during the interim.
Since deleting my account, I’ve switched to buying albums on Bandcamp, particularly on Bandcamp Fridays. I prefer listening to albums straight through anyway. I like to buy CDs when they’re available, but unfortunately a lot of artists stick to vinyl if they do physical media at all. CDs don’t degrade with listening, I can play them in my car, and they are compact - I simply don’t have the space for vinyl.
I love vinyls, but some of my most listened to artist don’t offer them. And as you say, it’s not doable to listen on the go.
I left in January. Did some maths and found that just buying everything I listen to was cheaper after a few years of streaming, and gets the artists more in return to boot. Haven’t looked back since.
At least in my case you’re wrong about algorithms on streaming platforms. I listen to the bands I like, not ones from some algorithm. Also streaming
moneymusic fits better my needs, though I’d really like artists being paid more, specially smaller ones.PS I left Spotify long ago.
With platforms like bandcamp and qobuz you can purchase albums/tracks and then download them or you can stream your purchased library - so the artists get paid better and you still get to stream your music
Subscription streaming will never pay an artist the same amount of money per person as an album sale.
Did you read the comment you replied to?
Did they read the OP?
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I’ve been using musicolet for the last I don’t know and been pretty happy with it. It integrates with the cat audio pretty well
Just call it an album dude. An LP is vinyl. Digital LP, while I get it refers to a specific length… Aaaaa it feels like you’re pedanting where you don’t have to pedant. We get you, you’re among friends and well wishers and Satan’s maggoty cumfart is probably here and probably likes you too
Sorry, I only listen on shellac.
Wax cylinders or nothing dude. The quality can’t be beat
Where is the image from?
Kansas.
How have you not seen the wizard of Oz dude go watch a movie
I met a Gen Z that never heard of or watched Ghostbuters. The kids aren’t watching classics
Gen Z’s brains are too roasted by shorts to sit through an entire 90 minute movie.
I turned to purchasing albums digitally, so that I actually own it.
At first I have been skeptical. But meanwhile I do appreciate it, as I really listen to a full record than Just the Most loved songs.
Streaming Made me just listen to “banger”, when other tracks in that record are nice as well. That doesn’t count for every musician or band ofc. But I get a bigger value from actually listening
I abandoned Spotify when they started to push podcasts above music, right in the landing page of the app. How many years is that? anyway I moved on to bandcamp and qobuz
I cancelled my subscription the first month they signed Blow Rogan. I’m not supporting any manosphere related company if I can help it.
The earth is the manosphere.
Same but I went with Tidal. Mostly just because I don’t want to deal with organizing a music library. I used to have a huge library from ripped CDs until a family member installed iTunes on my computer and it destroyed it all by reorganizing everything wrong.
I’ve been using Qobuz for like a year now, highly recommend
+1! 🎶🚀
Don’t artists make like no money off streams with the bulk being from tours and merch?
0.01% of artists are performing artists. even less make a profit touring. i can break that down for you if you want.
