Just speaking for my own band: we have had tens of thousands of streams on Spotify, yet we have made over 4x more revenue from music sales on BandCamp than we have on all streaming services combined.
BandCamp is more-or-less an "indie" place to find music. People have to be "into" it to go there and find music.
Spotify and Pandora are far lower barriers for every-day people. Just put on some station you've created from your favorite band, and eventually it'll start playing new bands you've never heard and might love. It's amazing.
I read somewhere that the artist behind this discovered that the streaming songs he made the most from were songs that were apparently requested by random small child requests so he created a whole bunch of songs for just that purpose and makes the bulk of his income through that. Discovery on the streaming services is awful and the renumeration for indie artists is also awful. It's the worst of all possible worlds.
This artist has made a business out of their music. Most music isn't a business, it's a passion and hobby.
This is the music equivalent of that. It's also why there are gajillions of crappy cover songs on the streaming services. It's turned into a money extraction thing and is crowding out the, you know, music.
Once upon a time, not that long ago even, a talented musician could make a living from their music. It's depressing to read biographies of entertainers who came up in the first half of the twentieth century who needed a job so they became entertainers. We've traded our culture for a mess of pottage.
Since the beginning of time, certainly modern times, artists have largely struggled to survive off their artwork. Most don't survive.
There is no time in modern history where artists, of any kind, on average made a living from their art. Even our most famous artists very often die poor.
There has always been a gross abundance of art. It's not a bad thing - but it does mean making a living off it is _hard_. Really _hard_. It's not good enough simply to be talented - there's a lot of luck involved too.
For every Taylor Swift, you'll find dozens of wannabe's with nearly as great, or sometimes as great of songwriting abilities and voice talent. Some even play instruments at the same time! Somehow, Taylor Swift was "picked" and propped up by record labels et al, and now is a household name.
How many artists can you name from the 19th century? Probably a few of the most successful ones. Do you think they were the only ones writing music, or painting? Definitely not.
I mean... If you pointed me to your BandCamp store page and told me to buy an album, without first hearing it - I wouldn't buy it.
I wouldn't buy "your band's" album, even if I could listen to it right before buying it. I don't have the time to listen to 30 minutes of audio without being hooked onto it first.
One unknown song in my Google Music or Soundcloud auto-playlist may get me hooked... But you need to build a desire to buy the album beforehand.
I don't think I'm the only person like that, btw.
It might be that “listen on Spotify before you buy on Bandcamp” is the 2020 version of “download on Bittorrent before you buy the CD”. But it feels like “is this slightly better for musicians than music piracy” is a pretty low bar for a $50 billion company to shoot for.
>is this slightly better for musicians than music piracy
They're a music streaming and recommendation service company, not a "we kill piracy" company. Maybe they should get into more promotional business... but they're not in that business.
I would argue that Spotify is "(insert more successful band in the genre here) is looking for a warm up act for their gig in your town".
If you're in a very middle of the pack mass appeal genre - you're definitely screwed on Spotify, or anywhere, without a breakout act(corporate contract/viral video)