We are in a golden era for buying and selling digital LPs. While I’ll use Bandcamp, sleek alternatives like Ampwall, Subvert, and Mirlo are equally great options. These online markets inherently incentivize artists to avoid filler or risk losing a sale, while the subscription streaming model requires artists to pad their catalog for pay per play. Streaming has revived the worst trope of the old music industry: the album that is just “two hits and a bunch of crap.”
Spotify’s business model demands album filler because the platform pays out royalties based on “stream share” which trigger a payout the second a track hits the 30 second mark, incentivizing artists to maximize volume over value. This has fundamentally warped modern songwriting: albums are aggressively padded with short, two minute tracks and repetitive hooks designed specifically to feed the algorithm and inflate stream counts. On Spotify, a deep, cohesive artistic statement takes a back seat to sheer data output, turning what should be a focused LP into a bloated playlist of algorithmic bait.
Accidental hits happen way more often than you’d think. As it turns out, artists are notoriously bad at predicting their own success. When you buy a digital LP on a platform like Bandcamp, you are investing in a complete and curated piece of art where even the tracks the artist never expected to blow up exist naturally as part of a cohesive story. On subscription services like Spotify, those same happy accidents are treated like lottery tickets while surrounded by cynical, algorithm optimized filler designed just to farm streams. Buying the album ensures you are experiencing those unexpected gems as genuine creative discoveries, rather than digging through algorithmic bloat to find them.
Bandcamp serves the genre; streaming serves the algorithm. When producers target platforms like Spotify, artistic nuances like tempo variations and volume dynamics are sacrificed to strict LUFS loudness standards and predictable, club friendly danceability. This algorithmic pressure strips electronic and club music of its experimental edge, forcing tracks into a uniform, compressed sonic mold just to survive on a playlist. On Bandcamp, however, the music is freed from these rigid streaming constraints, allowing producers to prioritize raw genre authenticity and dynamic storytelling over sanitized, playlist ready optimization. Soundtrack and orchestral music have become major casualties of this shift, as their essential cinematic highs and quiet, emotional lows are flattened into a lifeless wall of sound just to meet streaming’s volume requirements.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not here to sell you my album. Go ahead and enjoy the whole thing ad free on my website. https://thejoyo.com/#more
Can’t abandon something I never joined in the first place! 🙂
So, all posts are from the perspective of people that are really into music. Enthusiasts that care deeply about individual albums and artists.
Whereas streaming services are most likely designed to cater to casual listeners like me. I can’t remember the last time I listened to an entire album. I haven’t liked any individual artist enough to attend a live concert. I generally listen to music while I’m doing stuff as background noise.
I used to listen to the radio for that. But streaming services algorithms were a strict upgrade to that due to lack of ads and talk show hosts.
Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to determine whether a given piece of music is AI generated or not by listening to it.
So I don’t think direct purchase of digital LPs could ever be viable for people like me. And I’m guessing (based on the success of streaming services) that there are a lot more people like me than there are enthusiasts. Yes, I can switch to the least bad streaming service according to Lemmy, out of solidarity (and no other reason). Remember 99% of people won’t do that.
Just adding a perspective that might be missing from this community
Relavent XKCD. The average layperson is unaware of so much nuance in topics others specialise in.
If you are referring to my original post, I have received a similar reaction from the producer and artist communities where I shared it: most people feel I am preaching to the choir. I have no doubt most people just read the headline.
Bandcamp does not permit the sale of AI generated music, “wholly or in substantial part”. https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/
We’ll see if they’ll stick with that policy but Bandcamp hasn’t really changed in the last 15 years. They could have easily increased their cut to match Spotify and Apple Music but they haven’t.
If you’re looking for casual consumption, https://bandcamp.com/radio offers human curated radio where the DJ puts songs into context.
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This, the main thing I want from music software is an infinite stream of background music with a personalization algorithm to select new songs I’ll probably like. Most of the suggestions people are giving don’t really work as a substitute for that.
there’s a massive backlog of bandcamp radio sessions that I know you’ve never heard.
I looked at it, it’s a handful of channels representing broad genres, an hour or two in length, with commentary. That is not a substitute for a personalized music stream. It still wouldn’t be with a wider selection; I tried mixcloud for a while, it doesn’t work for me, there are no channels that give me just the music I want to hear in a wide enough variety, it’s too much work searching through them, I’d rather skip the commentary and not have to find something new every hour.
Not that I use spotify, what I ended up doing is writing my own script to scrape bandcamp and use its recommendation features to get associations between albums and assign probability weights to them for what to play next based on what I have liked and disliked. Aside from being buggy and against tos so probably can’t publish, I’m pretty happy with it. Algorithmic streaming is a much more convenient way of listening to and discovering music, and I don’t expect many people to switch away from it.
This sounds like the optimal solution. Would you mind sharing your script? If you don’t want to actually publish it, I wouldn’t mind a DM with the source code!
This is like something I’ve always wanted, but haven’t made. The Spotify algorithm is pretty good at the statistical comparisons of music, and I don’t know another service that does it.
Well how about this, here’s the core part of the script if you want to see how it works, without the scraping utility parts (webstuff.py etc. which is pretty trivial anyway). Main dependencies are python, curses, mpv and selenium.
Thanks! I’ll look into it!
I never stopped buying my albums. For all the reasons you list. Fuck streaming.
Spotify (and Pandora before that) served my purposes once upon a time to discover genres and artists I enjoy. But when I did the math, I realized I’d spent quite the pretty penny with nothing to show for it, and none of the artists I listened to were benefitting. And of course, Spotify has been happily selling my data during the interim.
Since deleting my account, I’ve switched to buying albums on Bandcamp, particularly on Bandcamp Fridays. I prefer listening to albums straight through anyway. I like to buy CDs when they’re available, but unfortunately a lot of artists stick to vinyl if they do physical media at all. CDs don’t degrade with listening, I can play them in my car, and they are compact - I simply don’t have the space for vinyl.
I love vinyls, but some of my most listened to artist don’t offer them. And as you say, it’s not doable to listen on the go.
I have already left Spotify, but joined tidal because of the HiFi streaming quality and because they pay their artists more per stream. However, I still don’t feel like I did enough research or digging to see if tidal is still bad or not. Does anyone know more on them and also if there’s a better, more artist-centric option?
I’ve been enjoying Qobuz recently. They have streaming and an option to buy. I’ve been told they’re a fairly ethical option in terms of payment to artists, but haven’t researched myself.
There’s also Subvert.fm with a lot of smaller artists and some real gems if you dig for them.
Subscription streaming will never pay an artist the same amount of money per person as an album sale.
You miss the consumption pattern behind streaming though: I don’t want (and literally can’t afford to) …
- buy 1000 child song albums but still want to have kids around to enjoy their flavor of the month music
- Explore music on the side: I can’t buy every new album to listen to it on my own terms and I’m not music head enough to hunt and research music, instead I use streaming as a discovery mechanism on the side, sometimes just jumping into stuff ice never even seen.
- Afford the integration time: a single streaming service can easily be used for everyone in my household and customized without any overhead. A five year should be able to choose their music and I can’t so that id they need an app (no phones) or get accustomed to different interfaces.
This is not intended to take away from your core point: (direct) purchase is a better way of giving money to artists, second only to direct donations (i can’t talk about concerts because of the whole venue discussions I’ve heard on the side).
Now comes the tough part:
On paper it’s straight forward for me: just donate like 10 or 20 bucks a month to your personal flavor of the month - but … To whom? I just checked, today alone were 20 artists played.
The shitty thing is, and I’m sharing this to perhaps shame me into acting: this is quite easily solvable, but I just don’t invest the energy needed to figure it out for me.
Sorry for the long rant style, tldr is:
I have no use for owning albums, streaming provide a true value for me and I’m (realizing after writing this) obviously too cheap, stupid and lazy to give bak.
To whom? I just checked, today alone were 20 artists played.
You don’t have to be perfect with this. Just pick someone who made a new album you loved; ideally someone who actually needs the money. And you can always buy vinyl, merch, or a digital album instead of just donating.
give https://bandcamp.com/radio a try for discovery. human curated and the DJs give songs some context so it’s not just someone’s playlist.
you can also listen to a whole album on bandcamp for free. VLC and IINA both open bandcamp URLs as playlists and can be listened to as many times as you’d like.
Torrent albums to try them out, then buy legal copies of the ones you like.
Or a concert ticket
Tidal is owned by Jay-Z so it’s not a ton better, though the hi-fi and paying artists better was enough reason for me for now. With easy migration too, it made the most sense to also quickly get my family off of the Spotify family plan. I’m also trying to grow my offline music library again, and Tidal being hi-fi “allows” for some interesting usability to that end. Ripping CDs and buying on Bandcamp has also been a good shift!
The most artist centric option would probably be that final one. Buying CD or digital albums directly from artists and growing your offline library. Toss Jellyfin on something and you have your own personal streaming platform!
Even worse than Jay Z. The majority stake holder of Tidal is Block Inc and they are owned by BlackRock.
Tidal is really bad with their content managing. They tend to not distinguish between same named artists and they stuff all their albums together. Sending feedback on this is needlessly annoying, though most of the times they correct mistakes but when a new album is released is the same again. Also no official Linux app and questionable ownership. Said that I’m still on tidal unless there is a better option.
tidal is shit
I recommend waiting for Band camp Fridays so the artists get 100% of the sale too
Does bandcamp have lossless high bitrate files ? I’m not 100% convinced it’s always a big difference, but I’d rather always get the highest quality master I can !
They do.
Edit: To be clear, they offer downloads in multiple formats - including a lossless FLAC option, and the ability to stream from your phone/browser. So, it’s a pretty good replacement for Spotify if you want to actually pay the people whose music you listen to.
Bonus points if you make purchases on Bandcamp Fridays: a unique event wherein 100% of proceeds go directly to the artist (bypassing Bandcamp’s usual cut).
I upload as FLAC and they convert it to lossy for smaller files and compatibility. https://faircamp.org/ will also do the conversion for my static website.
And Qobuz does as well.
At least in my case you’re wrong about algorithms on streaming platforms. I listen to the bands I like, not ones from some algorithm. Also streaming
moneymusic fits better my needs, though I’d really like artists being paid more, specially smaller ones.PS I left Spotify long ago.
Subscription streaming will never pay an artist the same amount of money per person as an album sale.
Did you read the comment you replied to?
Did they read the OP?
With platforms like bandcamp and qobuz you can purchase albums/tracks and then download them or you can stream your purchased library - so the artists get paid better and you still get to stream your music
In my experience albums I listen to today are way better all the way through than when people were buying them in store. Maybe that’s just the artists I follow though. Good artists stay true to their music regardless of the payment model. If you’re listening to artists that are in it to maximise their earnings, maybe you could broaden what you listen to.
Bandcamp is a much better experience for listening to a whole album compare to Spotify.
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I turned to purchasing albums digitally, so that I actually own it.
At first I have been skeptical. But meanwhile I do appreciate it, as I really listen to a full record than Just the Most loved songs.
Streaming Made me just listen to “banger”, when other tracks in that record are nice as well. That doesn’t count for every musician or band ofc. But I get a bigger value from actually listening
Piracy enters the chat.
Don’t artists make like no money off streams with the bulk being from tours and merch?
0.01% of artists are performing artists. even less make a profit touring. i can break that down for you if you want.
Fuck the platforms you listed, we are the fediverse
