This month's #BandcampFriday haul:

- Psytrance: Psychedelic Tribal Ambient - Saula https://naturalevolutionrecords.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelic-tribal-ambient-full
- Chillwave: Plume Valley - Windows96 https://windows96.bandcamp.com/album/plume-valley
- DnB: Unity - Ganja White Night https://ganjawhitenight.bandcamp.com/album/unity
- Jazz?: One Fish Was The First Fish To Walk on Land - Carbon 7 https://carbon7.bandcamp.com/album/one-fish-was-the-first-fish-to-walk-on-land
- DnB: Neptune - RuptureLDN https://ruptureldn.bandcamp.com/album/neptune
- Witch Pop: EXORCISM - Sidewalks and Skeletons https://sidewalksandskeletons.bandcamp.com/album/exorcism
- Prog Rock: Handmade Cities - Plini https://plini.bandcamp.com/album/handmade-cities

Don't forget: Giving a musician $10 is worth as much as streaming their song 1,000 times on Apple Music and 2,500 times on Spotify.

@stevestreza yea incidentally this is why I don't put my music on streaming sites. It takes away your power as a listener and mine as an artist by making the value be in the service not the music.

Incidentally no one ever buys my music on bandcamp either :(

@SEGFAULT @stevestreza

I know that asking if potential reach isn't worth more than the money you can make from direct sales is the equivalent of "you get paid in exposure" for internships, but is it?

I am just wondering if fighting this system is worth it in the end. I found a lot of artists on Spotify, Soundcloud and YouTube and I bought their songs on Bandcamp.

An average listener doesn't buy music. An average music enjoyer could at least consider it.

@panda @stevestreza
Thats a very good question. I will do my best to answer but please keep in mind I have never actually distributed my work beyond band camp and promoting it on fedi/twitter, so this will bias my answer.

Spotify pay an artist about 0.3cents (US) per play. In my currency thats more like 0.2c EUR. The poverty line in Germany, where I live is 1,148eur a month. (this would not cover the cost of living in Berlin, where I actually live) So, spotify would have to find me 575,000 monthly plays consistently to pay me poverty wages. Based on surveying the playcounts of most small electronic artists similar to myself that I do listen to on Spotify, most are getting a reported couple of thousand plays a month, maybe. that#s if they've been discovered by an audience already. Spotify also has several malicious practices that prevent you from getting that money, like demanding you use a distribution platform that is nearly as exploitative as the traditional labels. 1/2

@panda @stevestreza 2/2 So yes spotify does pay you in exposure

The problem (other than how do I feed myself in the meantime) is that exposure is only worth a damn if it leads to something else. "What are you exposing me to?" if you will. The sad truth of the modern music industry for anything other that pop-radio-superstars aka anything not mainstream is all that lies behind the exposure is more exposure.

If Spotify did successfully nurture a following of a few thousand fans for my work and I got a few thousand plays a month, how many of those fans would convert into paying customers on bandcamp / CD sales? The answer is sadly 1 or 2.

The problem is in the eyes of the consumer they pay spotify 15€ a month for the subscription so in their eyes they've already paid for my (and every elses) music so why should they pay another 5€ on band camp for the same thing, they'll still need their spotify subscription next month. And I get that people have tight budgets. 2/3

@panda @stevestreza 3/2 The genius move of spotify was to decouple consumers concept of value from the volume of media they are consuming. (something iTunes made explicitly clear with its pay per track model)

So after decades of music exploration and widening tastes a heavy user of Spotify is spreading their 15€ a month between dozens if not hundreds of albums each only getting a handful of plays. The listener base is a finite resource causing all artists to be competing in a zero sum game to try and grab ears.

But at the same time the listener is trapped. If they went to bandcamp & CD stores in an attempt to "buy back their playlists" they are faced with the realisation that their collection has grown to thousands of euros of media (I actually tried this myself last year, My "core" collection of artists consisted of over 8000 tracks) that is impractical to purchase back quickly and inconvieniant to store, browse, and continue to discover new music with.

3/4

@panda @stevestreza 4/4 (Fin)

I have seen people turn to piracy over this, or just flat out give up and return to Spotify. I think few people are motivated to actually own their music collections anymore.

So no. Exposure doesn't "eventually pay off" there's no audience left willing to pay.

Every expert in the industry actually agrees on my one final point: "The only way to make a living off of music any more is to perform live"

My music is preprogrammed into a computer using a mixture of modern and 30yr old equipment too fragile to move. There's nothing for me to perform.

- Segfault