Bandcamp is waiving fees today in support of artists
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
If something isn't on Bandcamp these days, I often don't even bother messing around with the alternatives and just pirate it.
"But the pandemic and its impact on the music community aren’t over, so today, as well as on June 5, and July 3 (the first Friday of each month), we’re waiving our revenue share for all sales on Bandcamp, from midnight to midnight PDT on each day."
You'll have to wait for next month but do consider it!
It is great Bandcamp has flac, et . But I don't enjoy going back to the days of managing media on a filesystem and syncing between devices.
I have a catalogue of music that belongs to me, which I can sort and curate and manage exactly to my whims and desires. It's a matter of quality over quantity.
Streaming is convenient for some use cases, and dreadful for others. e.g. DJing.
Even Spotify fails in some of its aims: I can no longer share to, or follow now new friends IN Spotify, because I joined pre-facebook accounts and I don’t use facebook. I have to share from it via IM/email, which is exactly like if the music was on webpages/ftp/etc. So just as I have no control over the catalog, I also have no control over sharing/following friends. It is however brilliant for discovery (within the admittedly huge catalog).
I found Apple Music worse than Spotify: the catalog changes more often, so you can’t guarantee music you tried to “keep” (with likes or downloading) will stay where you left it. Apple will delete music from your device (or otherwise lock you out of it), if you move to a geographic region they don’t have a licence agreement covering that music in that place. It’s also got terrible UX for those times when you want music but don’t know what you want. It’s playlists are rubbish and the way it promotes them gets in the way of real discovery.