Comment on Ethical alternatives to Spotify
ober@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours agoPersonally I do this by buying merch. If I buy a shirt from a band than not only do I get a cool shirt but the band also gets paid more in that single transaction than if I listened to their music 5000 times on spotify.
Mihies@programming.dev 6 hours ago
Sure, but that doesn’t give you rights to pirate their music, does it? There is also the problem who gets paid what when you buy their merch.
ubergeek@lemmy.today 56 minutes ago
Ask any artist: they make most of their money from merch and ticket sales (depending on venue).
Mihies@programming.dev 14 minutes ago
I assume that depends on the contract they have with their label, but usually it’s a way for them to earn more.
ubergeek@lemmy.today 6 minutes ago
Its standard across the industry. Artists get paid very little in per unit sales of media.
The bulk of money they earn comes from tours (which they cover the bill for, and cut some of the profits from), and merch (which they take the largest cut from).
ober@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 hours ago
I’m not really worried about whether a label or corporation deems me to have the “right” to listen to their music. The only thing I’m concerned with outside of consuming the art is the artist who made it. I highly doubt any artist would genuinely care if someone pirated their music but still payed them through other means (like buying merch, tickets, etc).
I think the argument of who gets paid what when you buy merch is irrelevant when you consider the alternative being the artist gets virtually nothing. I would have to listen to an artist 200 times for them to maybe get a singular dollar from spotify. If whoever is handling their merch store is giving them less than that for each sale of a shirt then it’s the artists fault at that point for still working with them.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 54 minutes ago
That’s literally what happened with Napster. Metallica were rather pissed, and Napster shut down, leading the the fun P2P days of Whac-a-Mole.