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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

I am in a small and new band. In 2023 we earned roughly

     500 Euros via Bandcamp (digital, physical and merch)
     300 Euros selling merch on gigs
    2000 Euros playing gigs
      20 Cents on Spotify

There is no monetary reason to be on spotify, the only reason we are on there is because fans asked.

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This is exactly the reason why my preferred method of music consumption is piracy + Bandcamp. Every Bandcamp Friday (when Bandcamp doesn't take a cut) I buy about 2 to 6 albums I've listened to in the past month or a few. If an artist is not on Bandcamp, I'm less likely to listen to them, but if I do, I eventually pirate their stuff.

All the music I buy and pirate is in FLAC and funneled into my local library, where I can enjoy it without any streaming service taking it away from me.

And I usually end up contributing more to my favorite artists financials than fans who use streaming service, so that's a bonus.

In case of smaller artists we'd be better off pirating music instead of helping cement Spotify's brand as a central platform. The only person losing money in this case is the platform holder so we could argue the decentralised aspect of piracy helps fighting monopolisation of the industry.

But don't they give out a flat % of what they earn from the subscriptions? The low return would mean that either:

a) Spotify doesn't charge enough for a subscription

b) Spotify takes too big of a cut right now from the subscription revenue

c) The model doesn't work as a lot of people from low-income (and low subscription cost) countries are "sucking out" the money that goes mainly from rich ones. So 1 listen from USA = 1 listen from India even though the USA listener pays around 7-8x times more and the subscription income gets divided equally by listens.

People use Spotify because it is comfortable and provides additional features liked by users. That has always been the only way to beat piracy.

These numbers definitely give piracy a shine.

What's better for music as a whole? Boosting Spotify's share price and Taylor Swift's private jet habit? Or putting that $11/month towards some gigs for an artist you really like?

If bands are not on Bandcamp, I buy them on mp3million.com, which is legal but feels like piracy given their pricing.

Wow thats cheap! How is that even possible?

https://musicfans.stackexchange.com/questions/1045/do-those-...

Thanx a lot. That’s insightful.

> mp3million.com

Reminds me of allofmp3.com before the WTO asked Russia to kill it if they wanted to join.

Well. It doesn't seem that legal, and certainly not a good solution is your primary goal is to help artists : https://musicfans.stackexchange.com/questions/1045/do-those-...

Very shady at best.

Problem is that in take of new music is harder with these.

I don’t know if YouTube is any better, but I have switched all of my music consumption to youtube music app with the premium subscription.

I don't require a huge intake of new music: I obsess over those dozen albums I really love a month, always listening to them in full and appreciating them as art. Browsing Bandcamp tags, music review and catalogue sites, and music critics album reviews is really all I need to get that hit.

But it's not for everyone ig...

Where do you store the files, how do you take your music with you on the go?

There are media servers you can host locally and Bandcamp has an app you can play music in.

Not the poster you're replying to, but I acquire music the same ways as them.

a1) on my computer, in folders. I manage it using iTunes/Music, but could just as well use anything else, or do it manually. I also have Serato for DJing, which imports my iTunes/Music library xml to share the same collection.

a2) to be fair, in the past year, I've gotten lazy and started streaming from the band camp app for more recent purchases. I'm not DJing much these days.

b) I buy phones with a lot of storage and don't upgrade very often

Music is just files, so just use any filesync service like iCloud, Google Drive, Keybase, OneDrive, DropBox etc.

I have both a Jellyfin and a Subsonic-compatible (Gonic) server on my local NAS. Those are used for streaming and work anywhere where there's internet thanks to Tailscale. If I need to go offline, for a flight or something, I pick a dozen albums to download full quality to my phone and listen to them with the Retro music player.

> Every Bandcamp Friday (when Bandcamp doesn't take a cut) I

It's great that BC still does BC Fridays... but if fans only buy music from BC on BC Fridays, BC will lose all revenue and will fold or resort to shitty tactics. BC are one of the few "good" businesses in this space, and have reached an impressive scale. I'd hate to see them fold. I reckon it's worth buying some music on normal days as well as BC Fridays.

BC was acquired recently, so that may come sooner rather than later. It's not due to BC Friday, bur rather that selling MP3s piecemeal is a hard business. Artists sometimes also remove their albums from BC if they sign with a label that wants exclusive distribution rights.

Selling mp3s piecemeal might be hard but they were profitable for 12 years prior to the previous sale to Epic. Spotify havn’t turned a profit in 18.

I too fear the recent change of ownership will bring on changes in business model. But I live in hope that it wont, because it doesn’t need to.

Well, I do sometimes buy on normal days too, but not as much :)

And if they removed BCFs or took a small cut I wouldn't stop buying from them either.

> All the music I buy and pirate is in FLAC and funneled into my local library, where I can enjoy it without any streaming service taking it away from me.

Where do you get these FLACs? Do you have a pipeline/automated system or it’s done manually? Asking for a friend.

You can get these FLACs via Bandcamp. In some cases, you can download for free (enter $0.00 if there is a "name your price" tag)

If you wish to sail the high seas, look up "piracy megathread". Soulseek and Doubledoubletop are some of my favorites.

Your process sounds a lot like this new change by Spotify... Anything you don't listen to very much doesn't get paid for.

It ain't piracy if the record I want is out of print and no longer commercially available. Most of the music I listen to is pre-2010, so there are a lot of records that fit that description.

Same goes for live recordings, remixes and radio sessions. P2P has had this for 20+ years, Spotify doesn't and never will.

Same here. A lot of artists and a good chunk of the recording crews from before the early 1980s are dead and have been for decades, and the only ones getting the money are the record companies. Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jim Croce, Stevie Ray Vaughan, all of them have been gone for thirty years or more at this point. Not even their kids or some sort of charity managed by their estate get any of the money. Piracy of their albums is denying wealth from graverobbers, really.

It’s still copyright infringement just like copying the latest Taylor swift album is.

Taylor Swift albums are not out of print and she owns her record label. I am talking about recordings that were never released commercially, or released by labels that are long gone. This is closer to the videogame emulation legality argument than it is Metallica v Napster.

Still copyright infringement (assuming it’s not so old to have left copyright). Doesn’t matter if it’s a song that was last printed on a 78 in 1945 and the artist decided to burn all copies, or the latest album from some k-pop band that you can get free with your cornflakes.

Being in print or not makes no difference

Would you/your band be interested in trying out a pay-what-you-want system? I started the work to add crowdfunding support to communick (described on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39399121) and I'm looking now for musicians/artists/FOSS developers for some beta testing.

it's already possible to do pay-what-you-want in Bandcamp

always good to have more options though!

But does it provide a way for them to stream all of the artists catalog?

Yeah, most artists let you listen to the whole album before you buy it. Sometimes there are songs that don't have previews, and I think there are sometimes hidden songs included with the album but not even listed, but in general you can stream a few times before buying, and then stream as much as you want afterwards.

> but in general you can stream a few times before buying, and then stream as much as you want afterwards.

Not exactly what I have in mind. I am working with the model where all songs are always available (like Spotify) and people simply choose how (a) how much they want to give per month and (b) how to split this amount among their preferred artists.

In effect, it's the same as a "pay as you want", but there is no overhead of thinking about which songs to "buy".

Similar experiences (but from a few years ago).

Even people who have Spotify end up buying stuff in Bandcamp, anyway. I never had merch but had CDs, and sometimes people would buy two physical copies, one to gift.

For me there was never any difference between Spotify and piracy.

Absolutely. I always buy music from artists to support them on Bandcamp. Spotify lets you discover bands that are little known, which is cool, but it's not a place that enables you to support those artists. Unfortunately, Bandcamp might also change since they are changing owners.

I use Spotify because my SO wants it for podcasts and stuff and family subscription is just tad more, and it's in my car and similar which is convenient.

I also buy the music I listen to a fair bit on Bandcamp or at concerts.

As an example, last fall a song from a band came up in the randomized post-album "radio" on Spotify as I was driving, and I added the band to my favorites. A month ago Spotify notified me the band was playing in town, so I went and ended up buying several CDs, including from the warmup band as well.

That said, I agree that Spotify should pay more to small artists. I really dislike that my money goes to Talor Swift and similar artists who have more than enough and that neither I nor my SO listen to.

Those are fair points, and I agree.

I think I should have said that Spotify is the same as piracy from an artists POV.

It's definitely not illegal for users, and it definitely helps with "exposure", but it's not really a platform for making real money with your music, except when it's listened to in massive quantities.

For me, it's no different than putting a free album link in Instagram, or when Nine Inch Nails put it on PirateBay as a stunt...

I'd wager the income from playing gigs would be substantially lower if you weren't on Spotify.

Your arguments veers close to the "for exposure" payment.

People don't go to indie concerts because of a spotify track. Nor to big name concerts. And 20 cents corresponds to around 50 to 100 plays according to the numbers mentioned here.

> People don't go to indie concerts because of a spotify track

Do you have numbers behind this claim?

I definitely got aware of some unknown artists thanks to Spotify and YouTube, some of them had low hundreds views/listens.

Ended up supporting them, going to concerts and buying merch.

Same. I see a show advertised and I want to hear what the bands sound like, the easiest way (for me) is to search for them on Spotify and check out the top few tracks and the new release. If I like what I hear then I'll buy a ticket and go. I probably could have found the tracks other ways if I really tried, but this way just works, almost always.

> And 20 cents corresponds to around 50 to 100 plays

Unfortunately more like 5000+ plays. People tend go to concerts of music they listen to and for a lot of people that means hearing it on Spotify

Actually, the spotify rate is 0.003 cents per track, which reflects my 83 plays ‘earning’ $0.25 on Spotify before this.

It is extremely common and often perfectly rational for creatives to do things in exchange for exposure. There is nothing fallacious about this.

> People don't go to indie concerts because of a spotify track.

Yes they do.

If there's any fallacy here, it is comparing "for exposure" between a gig at your local dive bar (this is where you typically hear the phrase), and uploading your material to Spotify.

The first requires committing time and effort to get 50 people to see you, 20 of which are your personal friends. The second is making the music you have already produced available to millions of people around the world, with virtually no effort.

Surely Spotify should improve on compensating artists, but all-in-all it is still a better deal for the artist than the "for exposure" gig at the local bar.

I'm not sure what your basis is for this claim? I've most certainly discovered artists from Spotify and later on bought e.g. merch to support them. I would in a heartbeat also go on their concerts if I was given the opportunity with travel distance, vacation plans etc.

Spotify can't give you these experiences no matter how hard they try so this claim doesn't make much sense to me. A concert isn't exactly competing with streaming services or anything.

Same. Anecdotally I discovered khruangbin on spotify and will be seeing their concert next tuesday.

Your absolutist claim is already false by virtue of the fact that I have gone to an “indie” show after hearing a track on Spotify.

Next?

Next should be the advice to not take comments of that form as "absolutist" but understand them to mean as "in general"...

> People don't go to indie concerts because of a spotify track

Anecdotically I've attended multiple gigs for artists I discovered via Spotify.

If Spotify's search page wasn't so broken and useless, I'd probably have gone to _more_ indie concerts.

>Your arguments veers close to the "for exposure" payment

While it does, note that paying or doing stuff free "for exposure" is exactly how many artists got big and huge hits were made, from payola to DJs (starting way earlier than Alan Freed with radio DJs, and going all the way to EDM DJs being paid to break a track), all the way to paying for artist ads or record shop placement, buying fake streams, followers, and views to appear more popular and drive exposure, or doing for free (or, often, paying for) the support spot on a bigger band's concert.

I have no data on that, but my stochastic feeling (based on conversations I had with people visiting our concerts) does not imply that at all. Most came because (in that order of frequency):

1. They saw our sticker/poster and thought the name is interesting

2. They checked the venue/festival-site and thought it sounded interesting

3. They knew us from social media

Exactly zero times I had someone tell me the found us on spotify and came because of that. Of course that doesn't mean no such people exist, my sample size might be too small. There might also be people who find us on spotify and then buy on bandcamp, no way to check on that.

But my feeling right now is that our more traditional boots on the ground marketing does a lot more than the online stuff. That doesn't mean that dynamic can be totally different for other bands or other genres tho.

Yeah for some bands, letting people listen to a sample of their music before paying the cover charge might work against them ;)

> There is no monetary reason to be on spotify, the only reason we are on there is because fans asked.

This isn't an excuse for Spotify not paying much for plays, but I bet having music on spotify helps the gig revenue though.

In some ways this is also true for Taylor Swift et al - they also make thousands times the amount from playing gigs than 'selling' albums, streaming, and radio plays but that drives ticket sales.

Indie: No one pays you.

Popular: Gigs pay you.

Taylor Swift: Governments pay you millions of dollars for regional exclusivity. (essentially, play 2 - 3 concerts instead of 10+)

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/05/taylor-swift-s...

Of course that's a quite rare case of a small nation with many neighbors with interested listeners, trying to get an artist to play there exclusively in order to drive concert tourism.

The music industry is the most vicious example of inequality.

While some artists are so big that governments compete to have you come to their country (and NOT to your neighbours), the vast majority has trouble even getting to play free gigs.

Spotify should then be run as ad business—charge artists to let them advertise on Spotify.

Isn't that exactly what they do if they have the stream-cutoff discussed in this thread then? At least implicitly..

This is literally their current business model. Large music distributors pay for streams, the songs rise up the charts, people see the songs. If that’s not advertising I don’t know what is.

That sounds like good old fashioned payola.

Reading this has made me buy the last two physical items on my Bandcamp wishlist.

Bandcamp isn't perfect, but it fits well with my listening habits and I'm glad it earns _some_ money for you in the grand scheme of things.

Yep. Last I checked, it still pays 90% royalties to artists, all with a sane interface that is pleasant and just works, and no dark patterns.

Thanks for supporting your local artist : )

I'm intrigued. What's your bandcamp page? :)

Warning — we are probably pretty niche with our noisy music, but here ya go: https://maschinkaput.bandcamp.com/

Listening on Bandcamp right now - the song 'drop'. I like some pretty out there stuff, and this is right at the outer limits, and I mean that as a compliment.

I might not "enjoy" it as one would traditionally enjoy listening to music, but I enjoy that it exists and the uniqueness of the experience it provides.

If you can handle LAMC by Tool, you can handle this.

'kabelbrand' is giving me flashbacks to Providence by King Crimson, just a bit more raw and industrial. All build-up without the instruments actually synchronising together for the payoff as per Providence.

The band name is great; apt.

i second that. i would not go to a concert, but it does have a certain quality. i can see this used in games or exhibits of industrial art.

We are an improvisational band, so no concert is alike ; )

Nee, ich mag's. Danke für den Link, und Grüße nach Hamburg!

Nice! Reminds me of Nazoranai.

I buy my music at bandcamp and other sites. I always feel a bit angry if an artists doesn't offer a proper download for their music.

Whether or not you buy Only The Shit You Love by Damian Cowell's Disco Machine on bandcamp:

https://damiancowell.bandcamp.com/album/only-the-shit-you-lo...

you can get the "free" synced multi episode animated web comic from youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkRxIMJ3GpPH_NurdvJLL...

Wow, that's really Only the Shit I Love. It's now on my wishlist until my bank account allows to buy it.

Talking of Aussie bands: https://drunkmums.bandcamp.com/album/beer-baby and https://3pod.bandcamp.com/album/middleborough-rd

lots of commercial endeavors rely on investment, capital or otherwise, to increase exposure and growth. sucks to be feeling like you're working or 'spending' for nothing in any context. but hopefully you guys ultimately see the return you deserve.

How many Spotify plays was that?

Not sure, and I am too lazy to ask our drummer for that ; )

I wonder if is there a monetary reason to be on youtube (music)?

I listen to most music on yt music (although their client sucks) and buy stuff on bandcamp whenever i love some band and it's available there. I've never seen a value in spotify - limited library with no ability to fill the gaps with custom files (like you can do on YT music), client is meh, additional cost or ads are meh too.

do you have listener numbers for spotify and bandcamp?

Yeah, no cash in it but I figure it's mainly to gain exposure to hopefully later on get those into the "playing gigs" / merch audience, because reach is on the other hand massive on Spotify.

real heads buy music from bandcamp

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