but what would Russ do?
A couple of weeks ago I cancelled my distrokid account. Which put my music up on spotify and all the others.
It did not benefit me at all over the period my account was active. I did not reach more listeners, it did not lead to sales on my bandcamp page.
About a week ago I put up an album on bandcamp and shared a link here and privately with a few friends. Since release that album has sold more copies than anything I have released in the last 6 years, and has had more plays than the most popular release that has been there for 6 years. I’ve gained a few more followers on my bandcamp as well.
Absolutley incredible response. From just bandcamp and zero social media.
Bandcamp is free, it costs you money to get your stuff up on the other streaming sites. So yeah, spotify can get bent.
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But did share your Spotify link here?
There is a floor and a ceiling to Bandcamp and Spotify. Bandcamp and Spotify both have a $0 floor. But Bandcamp’s ceiling is going to be much lower than Spotify based on users alone.
That being said, I think you do see a lot of smaller artists making a few hundred bucks per release on Bandcamp vs streaming sites like Spotify where they may not even make $50.
Also, another big draw is the control you have with releasing your music on Bandcamp. You name the price. You can upload music with samples (and likely get away with it). You can upload extra files and give those away with your music.
The only thing Spotify has going for it is the size of it’s user base.
Sure did. Plenty.
I would say people dont use Spotify, they turn it on an let an algorithm do the rest.
Dont get me wrong, I’m not whinging. I think for many people, spotify is great.
But many other people, it is totally evil. Utter scum, a plague on the music world.
And I reckon @darenager is right. Its up to us the artists, to tell spotify to fuck off. Until then, spotify wins.
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It could also be that the folks on here would rather support you through Bandcamp knowing you’d make more than if they just streamed your albums a few times.
To each their own is the only way. Artists have a choice to be part of it or not. And that’s a great thing.
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Absolutely! I applaud your actions 100%!
The rest of my response is not directed at you, @Microtribe, but are more general thoughts on the topic. So many artists complain about Spotify and get absolutely nothing from the incredibly arrogant leadership of that company but they don’t have the balls to say ‘I refuse to play your game’.
That’s why I started that Spotify hate-thread:
And as a side point. There’s something like 60,000 tracks released a day – whatever the actual number is, it’s a fuckton. No one has time for all that shit. I’m quite happy discovering the more underground stuff on Bandcamp, thank you.
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Maybe I’m just a over opinionated salty old dinosaur but I think that the cost of things also gives them their worth, I’m not just talking about monetary value either.
I also think that the number of things you have is directly related to overall contentment, too much stuff is overhead and stressful, it could be argued that digital media and streaming is a solution here, but I personally don’t agree with that, inbox0 being a good analogy.
Instant gratification is rarely long lasting, effort, scarcity and labour are often more fulfilling, because you invested something into them, IMHO.
Back in the day (and it staggers my younger self to say this) the music industry was less efficient at screwing artists out of royalties, of course it still happened but it was not as accepted and easy.
Now on the other side of the coin, streaming offers convenience for casual music listeners to discover and listen to music they would not normally buy, great in theory but without being in the right algorithm your average “nobody” artist has little chance of being discovered, regardless of talent or musical merit.
Eventually DJ’s will be redundant too, some cynics might say that is a good thing, but I don’t think it is, there will be no more John Peels, or Electrifying Mojo’s, or Frankie Knuckles etc.
Oh well, thats progress I guess. I feel fortunate to have lived in both the pre internet and internet era’s, it would be easy to say the pre internet era was better, and indeed in many ways it was, but not in all ways, I think that it does sadden me though that the internet is a false democracy in many ways, but then the same could be said of actual democracy too.
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Just a bit of tangent comment from my side, but whatever.
I didn’t like what I was being fed in spotify for the month that I tried it, but I feel like youtube does a pretty good job in my case for recommending me stuff I’m actually interested in. Never any big shot names coming up, sometimes I even get some videos/tracks with barely a hundred views and sometimes I even like those, haha.
Although maybe that’s because I’ve been grooming (?) my youtube recommendations for a much longer time than I did with spotify. 
I used to have Distrokid too. TBH, it’s pretty cheap and very convenient. But I stopped it anyway because I realized I didn’t care about the listeners that use the big streaming platforms.
I may be wrong but I imagine they’re mostly casual listeners. I imagine Bandcamp tends to appeal to people that really like music. Not just people that enjoy music as much as their wallpaper.
I’m not a pro, so I don’t care about the economics and all. But I do appreciate some feedback from genuine music lovers. Being drowned in automatic playlists for the casual listener is just not something that feels good to me.
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You share my thoughts on the topic.
I do feel better for not supporting spotfiy any more.
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What? Totally not true. Or I guess define “less efficient”, I guess everything was less efficient before the internet but record labels have ALWAYS been very adept at screwing artists over. Thats their whole business model, really.
As I said they still did it, but not on such a scale and with such ease as today.
It’s just different innit. Artists screwed in both eras.
In the past you had no choice but to be screwed.
These days, there are many more options to retain creative control of your output and how it is released and distributed. But the returns, even if moderately successful are still very poor, so you can see why the big platforms suck people in, in the hope it will increase exposure.
Yup, in the 90’s out of 4 deals I had only got paid for 2.
there might be a more current thread than this to post but I couldn’t find it 
last week I decided to ditch streaming services altogether n go 100% bandcamp. feels great, fuk those cnts.
searching for new stuff on bandcamp & buying albums I genuinely like feels more like crate digging back in the 90s. I’m happy, n it feels good to be paying artists who make quality tunes.
also, my growing collection looks beautiful, all top tier sh1t, as opposed to streamers where I have to wade thru the worst kind of tripe daily to find the stuff I like.
anyone else doing something like this?
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i am. i setup a plex server at home. and am now “streaming” the music i bought via plexamp to my smartphone and other devices. very convenient. Hi-Defintion codecs, smart playlists and other goodies which some streaming services lack. of course it’s more work and more expensive. but that’s worth it for me
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sounds like a nice setup. I’ll have to look in to plex.
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Same, all FLAC.
Are there any 3rd party options for Plex playlist creation? I’m not expecting Spotify level algorithmic options but curious if there’s anything better than default.
Here is an interesting but not a very informative article on the curated playlists.
I found this part sort of a chicken and egg situation…
“We look at where people are listening to this music, what it fits with, what kind of neighboring tracks are people listening to…”
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