Spotify's ghost musicians

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machine-liz-pelly-spotify-musicians/

In short: don't support Spotify. Buy music.

I've been given a couple of months of Apple Music here and there whenever I've bought a new phone, airpods, or computer, and each time I forget to use it. Something about clicking play on "Your Station" and then getting endless bland music served to you just kills me. It probably has more to do with me than with the service, but listening to random music that some algorithm thinks you're going to love seems wrong. I can be super picky, so listening to "whatever" kills my enjoyment of listening to music. Sure, sometimes a track would come on that I'd like but since I didn't have any actual involvement in finding it myself, it just doesn't stick and I'll forget about it the second the track is done playing.

Yeah I've had the same experience. You'd think having access to all the music in the world at your fingertips would be a great thing but I found I just wound up caring about it all a lot less. And the knowledge that the musicians were getting paid basically nothing made me feel guilty about it at the same time.

I also received Apple Music free for 3 months, ended up using it and discovered how much I like burial, but I also like to own music so I find it useful for finding stuff to buy

Yeah I think using streaming services for discovery isn't entirely a negative thing. Preferably not Spotify in particular though.

I don't have any idea how you encourage people to want to own music rather than just stream it

  On 12/20/2024 at 11:43 AM, bluelechg6 said:

I don't have any idea how you encourage people to want to own music rather than just stream it

Me too. Literally none of my non music nerd friends even understand why they'd bother when they can just stream.

Still though bandcamp does reasonably decent sales so I guess there are still a few of us.

Like I've written elsewhere, I don't rent music. I buy everything I listen and/or play, mostly Bandcamp, but others too, including still a considered amount of vinyl and CDs about monthly.

Spotify can go fuck itself.

Maybe something about having a catalog of the things you like, but yea I'm stumped

... maybe supporting the musicians more... means better music in the future...

idk... I do like vinyl as a medium for owning things, and usually that entails buying the digital files too for djing at home

You realise why Warp love Spotify because all their older artists (and them) are getting double bubble. Everyone on here (or most of us) all bought and still buy the physical albums and now also get paid for streaming. So their back catalogues are bringing in royalties which didn't exist before Spotify. Quite handy. I personally love Spotify but still buy stuff that is worth buying. Best of both worlds. And I love curating playlists, some of which I've been curating and have been evolving for years.

I use Spotify in combination with Bandcamp and bleep/Boomkat etc. Spotify kind of acts like the radio would in the old days, it sends me stuff out, if I like it a lot then I buy (and I do spend a fair old whack on music every month, my poor old postman can attest to). The stuff I like and end up not buying is I guess in some moral grey area cause I would most likely have not bought or even discovered without streaming services and maybe in the future I will buy something from the artist. Knowing how much of a cunt that Daniel Ek seems to be and how much it cripples artists does give me a few pangs of guilt, but so does about half of all my participation in capitalism. I suppose I could just stick to listening to NTS Radio or something.

I agree, that in a way it sort of demystified the universe of music to me. Before it I would keep a logbook of all the artists, albums and EPs I wanted to discover and it was nice having that book, adding and subtracting, each year on my journey. When I got Spotify I was like 'holy fucking wow it's all here' at the touch of a button, which initially was pretty mind blowing, but perhaps in the long run I see that my interest in discovering music faded maybe a year or so after that point. I can't tell you if it was definitely Spotify or an age thing though. Could of been either, or a combination.

I just listened to brand new Brian Eno music thanks to Apple Music, but as far as demystified the universe of music you could be right