

Streaming Music is Ripping You Off; Fight back with this simple hack - dimmuborgir
https://medium.com/cuepoint/streaming-music-is-ripping-you-off-61dc501e7f94

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strangecasts
The band Vulfpeck [1] tried this a year ago, releasing a completely silent EP
and telling their fans to loop it. They did get some cash from it, but Spotify
ended up taking their album down [2].

If you want to support artists, this honestly seems like a really roundabout
and ineffective way of doing it. Buy a CD or something.

[1]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/spotify-silent-
albu...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/spotify-silent-
album_n_5275679.html)

[2]: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-
sil...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album-
that-earned-indie-band-20000)

~~~
norea-armozel
I always try to buy as direct from the artist as possible. In the case of many
synthwave artists like Droid Bishop it seems Bandcamp is the most direct way
and they get a good chunk of the money from the purchase as opposed to other
avenues like iTunes. So, I always suggest to people to see if the artist in
question has a Bandcamp or equivalent account on a site where they can get the
majority of the money from the purchase. Otherwise, buy a CD as you state or
even some merchandise when they're on tour since they get quite a bit of the
money from that as well.

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lsiunsuex
I always thought it was (roughly) general knowledge that artists make their
money from going on tour, with the label taking most of the money from cd /
record sales from the beginning of time.

I remember some tv show / documentary (years ago) of a rapper who had millions
in cd sales but was still broke and living with mom because media sales don't
generate money for the artist - tours do.

~~~
rawTruthHurts
"I always thought it was (roughly) general knowledge that artists make their
money from going on tour"

It's roughly not because that's not how it used to be. Money from tours is
something that started to become the trend since (I'd say) mid eighties.

~~~
DanBC
...and the vast majority of bands (especially small bands) lose money on live
performance.

That leaves merch as the only way to make money. I prefer to listen to music
by people who want to make music, not people who are good at selling t-shirts.

------
startuphacker
I have been working on an alternative streaming service that uses the
Subscriber Share method. We are mostly targeting independent musicians,
youtube musicians, and anyone without a label. I feel label are dead weight
these days and just eat up a large piece of the pie for hardly any work.

My goal is to cut them out starting with independent artist of today, and
maybe in a few years more artist will relies you don't need a label to get
popular any more and can do it on your own.

------
rem7
If you want to support your artists, go see them live. Not only you will be
more happy about it, they will too, and they'll make money that way.

