The problem isn’t streaming. It’s how much an artist is compensated for their work and how apps for streaming music are designed poorly for independent musicians that exist outside of commercial retail. For a decade, there has been discourse about Spotify and how the extremely profitable app pays artists next to nothing per stream. It’s well known that the previous model of purchasing music from iTunes had its own issues with paying artists.
The discourse around the ethics of streaming when it doesn’t value or pay the artists is always changing, and new discussions are brought forward when specific instances are observed. Recently the conversation has been about algorithms and how they favor popular artists and the result is isolating small artists and communities.
The solution to this problem is not to abandon all hope for the artists you care about or to try breaking free of the algorithms. This does not mean you have to get rid of your Spotify account. In fact, the convenience that comes from streaming allows you to find an abundance of music, if you can find the artist. The solution is not to find new artists on Spotify and then repeatedly stream their songs muted all night while you sleep to generate money for the artists. There have been a few situations where this has benefited artists, but it is not a solution to problem.
Finding a solution to the problem is finding ways to engage with the artists you enjoy. You can do this by purchasing merchandise, though most small bands that are just getting started usually cannot afford to produce merchandise. Regardless, there are ways to support small bands that are beyond sharing them or streaming their music. There’s always been a general interest in physical media and collecting physical media. There was some panic in the early 2000s that the introduction of streaming would get rid of vinyl, cassettes and CDs. That is evidently not the case, as record shops are still successful. Both popular artists and small artists still have incentives to press and release vinyls.
COVID brought the concentration of the problem to venues because many small artists’ source of income are the smaller and independent venues, such as bars or low-capacity theaters. Those spaces were affordable and accessible venues for the artists. Typically, smaller venues are able to pay the artists for their performances, but also keep it affordable for the audience to see a relatively small artist with either a low listener base or no actual listener base, the tickets have to be priced low. This means that venues at times aren’t using profits for advertising because they allocate that to paying and booking artists — this means you should take the time to seek them out and support them by showing up and creating these spaces for artists.
Spotify does not encourage its users to find new artists. It is possible to search for new music using Spotify but it isn’t as effective as the site Bandcamp, which I will be discussing in my next article about the process of finding new music and supporting emerging artists. The piece will be live on Monday, Nov. 11.
