With Spotify Wrapped hype dying down, I’ve had an opportunity to consider my music consumption habits over the past yr – I listened to greater than 48,000 minutes of music this yr on Spotify alone, accounting for about 14% of my waking hours.
That’s a whole lot of time, and a whole lot of streams, however as we’ve all come to know that doesn’t essentially imply some huge cash making it to artists’ pockets. How might it? I pay the equal of $14 every month for my Spotify premium membership, and at a going charge of about 800 streams per thirty days, there’s solely house for a penny or two per play on the very most.
Based on Ditto Music, Spotify pays out a most of $0.005 per stream. I’m not the primary individual to seek out this a contact unfair – we’ve seen requires boycotts from the likes of Neil Younger and Joni Mitchell, whereas others just like the late Prince have had their discographies pulled (although this was later restored.)
Nonetheless, as lopsided as I discover Spotify’s payout mechanism, I can’t keep mad at customers for taking a very good deal. Spotify is reasonable, simple to make use of, and one of the vital extensively supported apps in fashionable tech historical past, discovered on smartphones, tablets, browsers, TVs, good audio system, automobiles, and even fridges.
An album bought for $10 could possibly be price greater than weeks and even months of streams
Fortunately, there may be an alternate: Bandcamp.
For these not acquainted, Bandcamp is an internet music storefront with some streaming options that primarily serves as a method for artists to distribute their music at a fairer worth. The location is owned by Songtradr, a large music licensing firm, so it’s not totally ‘impartial’, however however affords artists a 85/15 income cut up within the artist’s favor for digital music. This implies an album bought for $10 could possibly be price greater than weeks and even months of a person listener’s streams.
I began utilizing Bandcamp years in the past as a method to search out impartial artists and accumulate increased high quality variations of a few of my favorite underground albums, and have since switched to utilizing it to supply tracks for DJing. However in 2025 I’ll be making an effort to make use of Bandcamp extra for informal listening and style deep-dives, in addition to a supply of recent materials.
High suggestions for beginning out on Bandcamp
1. Make a free account
Bandcamp permits customers to make free fan and artists accounts to buy and add music. It’s also possible to hyperlink completely different accounts underneath one e mail handle, which means you may preserve your collections separate by style or period when you like.
2. Scroll all the way down to the digging space
Scrolling down by means of the homepage reveals a cluster of style tags. Clicking one will take you to the search space, the place you may look by means of finest sellers and new releases alike. You possibly can preview every launch’s standout monitor, or click on on them to go to the artist’s web page.
3. Begin your assortment
As soon as you’ve got discovered some releases you are grooving to, head to the checkout so as to add them to your assortment. You will get immediate entry to limitless streaming, the power to obtain in numerous codecs (together with lossless WAV and FLAC), and the data that your cash has (largely) gone straight to the artists who made the music.
We’ve come to some extent the place digital media has a really low financial worth, which impacts its perceived worth too. Listening to 800 songs a month prices $14, enjoying 800 hours of a reduced online game prices $10, and watching 800 hours of video on YouTube prices nothing in any respect. That is usually linked to a scarcity of tangibility, of physicality. But talking from expertise, even having a digital copy of an album or track in your bought assortment affords a way of funding that’s merely lacking from streaming. It makes you need to join with the music, to seek out the worth in your buy.
For reference, Bandcamp’s residence web page proudly shows that followers have paid artists $1.42 billion for the reason that web site’s launch in 2007.
There are different advantages to purchasing on Bandcamp too – the location solely permits artists to add lossless information, so you understand you’re getting a high-quality model of whichever tune you’re downloading. I’m no audiophile – I beforehand wrote about my affinity for listening by means of cellphone audio system – however when you do need to get a pleasant set of audio system or headphones out, an album downloaded from Bandcamp will smoke something on Spotify by way of high quality.
And, as my use of Bandcamp tracks for DJing implies, you may truly do what you want with the music: put it on any system, remix it with music software program, stick it on a USB and play it by means of some decks. Spotify and apps prefer it relegate the listening expertise to 1 place, however Bandcamp actively encourages you to suppose greater.
In case you do need to get a pleasant set of audio system or headphones out, an album downloaded from Bandcamp will smoke something on Spotify by way of high quality
There’s one thing to be mentioned additionally about escaping the algorithm apocalypse. Spotify’s suggestion algorithms are so correct and so highly effective that even once I go on the lookout for new music, I usually really feel like I discover refined variations of what I already know. Bandcamp’s search function has three major tabs – best-selling, new releases, and shock me, the latter seemingly combining the primary two.
I’ve discovered some actually weird and actually wonderful music with this combo of decisions – particularly as there are many smaller and extra mysterious artists on Bandcamp that you simply’ll discover nowhere else. My newest obsession is the German techno auteur Skee Masks, who pulled his discography from Spotify years in the past for political causes.
If I’d by no means stepped onto Bandcamp there’s an opportunity I’d by no means have heard Skee’s uniquely ethereal tackle dance music, or adopted him to a reside present in London final month. It actually seems like a way more natural development than clicking a sponsored playlist on Spotify’s touchdown web page.
That every one mentioned, I most likely received’t be ditching Spotify any time quickly. Bandcamp remains to be lacking a whole lot of mainstream heavy hitters, artists like Beyonce or Kendrick Lamar who make sufficient from normal distribution. Spotify stays essentially the most cost-effective method to construct day by day playlists and share music with mates – constructing a Bandcamp assortment can rapidly develop into an costly endeavour, and there’s no reselling a digital assortment like you may with CDs or vinyl.
Regardless, I see Bandcamp as a champion of music’s worth in an period of digital overload, and I am pleased to make it the middle of my 2025 tech decision. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is price greater than $7 billion; he’s richer than any musician in historical past. Let me say that once more: no musician has ever made as a lot cash because the CEO of Spotify. I’m not calling for a wholesale boycott, as the patron can’t be blamed for taking a very good deal, however I do really feel that as a lover of music there’s some delight to be taken in shifting cash away from the pockets of billionaires and in the direction of the artists themselves.
