How best to support your favourite musicians
Lorde only knows when her third album is coming out but it’ll be this year at some point, surely. In music, for every release we know in advance there are dozens simply sprung on us withoutwarning. Taylor Swift delivered not one but two surprise records last year, so anything can happen.
What we do know is it’s increasingly hard for most musicians to survive. I’m not talking about Taylor Swift of course; she frequently tops the world’s highestpaid performers.
Not Bob Dylan, who recently sold the royalties to his entire catalogue for a cool $200 million. Not Elton John or Ed Sheeran, who make that same amount of money in a single year of stadium tours. I mean everyone else.
More and more of us have switched to music streaming services because of their incredible convenience and inexhaustible
repertoire. There was a time not so long ago where, if you wanted to hear music, you had to part ways with $34 for a CD and then physically carry it around with you. How archaic.
Those of uswho pay our annual fee to Spotify or Apple or whoever like to think our money is going to the people who make the music we listen to, but it’s not quite that clear cut.
Money is paid out to ‘‘rightsholders’’ according to their streams as a fraction of total streams on the platform for any given period. It stacks the deck against
smaller artists in away that’s seemingly futile.
Since the pandemic largely killed off the touring industry, artists in the UK and America in particular have been pushing to increase the available revenue from streaming services.
At the same time, Spotify has been offering independent artists extra promotion on its playlists and homepages if the musicians agree to reduced revenues.
In another unpopular move, it’s also been investing huge amounts of money into podcasts from the likes of Joe
Rogan – money many people think should have gone back to the artists who helped create it.
The best way to support smaller, local acts is book a spot at a live show.
Like Uber, Spotify seems to be a model that works for the consumerwhile taking advantage of those who drive the business.
I’m not advocatingwe forgo our streaming subscriptions. I love mine too much (plus I’ve long given away all my CDs) but ethical consumption is something we all have to think about whether it’s clothes, journalism, food or rock’n’roll.
We’re often happy to pay a little extra to buy local or support a business we believe in, but often forget to do so for our favourite artists.
To that effect, making a donation to an artist whose work you enjoy is a laudable and greatly appreciated act.
Bandcamp is often cited by musicians as the best avenue to buy an album or merchandise, or simply chuck them $10 for all the music you’ve enjoyed. Bandcamp takes only a small percentage and regularly run special days where they take nothing at all.
Or better yet, head to a show. One silver lining of the global pandemic has been all-local line-ups across the festival circuit and more diversity than ever.
Not just at festivals either, it’s a particularly good summer for live music with lots of artists out to make the most of it. See you on the dancefloor!