Since we're all still talking about streaming...

let's be honest about what it is.

For the new readers, hello! Thank you for being here. This whole Substack is an experiment for me, and a challenge to share writing with people more often. Between hosting a radio show every weekday, love and family life, occasionally working on my own music and everything else that comes my way, I’ve been averaging about one post a month. So here we are.

Last month I wrote a post here and on social media in response to Spotify Wrapped, and it struck a chord with a lot of people. I really didn’t expect that post to reach beyond my personal network, but within a week KEXP’s Sound & Vision turned it into a podcast episode, The Seattle Times did a big feature on it, Mandy Patinkin (you know, Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride) made a post about it, and then the bigger national magazines and newspapers started reaching out. Not every story got published, but last week as Neil Young and then Joni Mitchell pulled their entire catalogs from Spotify to protest what hundreds of physicians and scientists are saying is dangerous misinformation that Spotify presents front and center with The Joe Rogan Podcast… people have started pointing back to my Substack from December, as another reason to leave Spotify. Shoutout to The Washington Post.

I get it, and I applaud both Neil Young and Joni Mitchell for taking a stand in the name of science, public safety and the truth. I hope this moment in time gets the public to start thinking critically about what these streaming platforms actually are, but let’s really talk about it.

My intention here is not to get anyone to subscribe or unsubscribe to any platform, but I want all of us to be honest about what it is. If you want to unsubscribe from Spotify to protest their main podcast, go for it, but if your reason for switching services has to do with Spotify’s artist payouts, let’s really talk about it.

Spotify is not alone.

There is no streaming platform who pays artists enough to make what they would’ve made from sales before. Different services like Tidal may claim to be artist-owned and have better payouts, but as an independent artist I can tell you that difference in payout isn’t noticeable, and as an artist on Tidal you have less control over how you are presented than you would on Spotify. The top 1% of artists on Tidal have control of how they are presented on there, and the rest of us have none.

Spotify has done some things well.

If we’re being honest, Spotify has done a better job at several things than every other subscription-based streaming service: Every artist can edit things on their own page, including a bio, pictures, links to their website, concert information, and custom playlists. The listener-created playlists are an amazing feature as well. As an independent musician, I think your music has a better chance at being discovered from how playlists are shared on Spotify alone.

Spotify also has terrible audio quality, and isn’t compatible with DJ software.

I use Tidal for those 2 reasons alone, but I also use Spotify for listening in the car and searching for new music.

You are paying a tech company to access music that artists are giving away for free.

This is what I really want us to be honest about. No subscription-based streaming platform is exempt.

As an artist I see value in reaching an audience via all of these streaming platforms, even though that value is not monetary.

We spend money to make music that we give away for free, and that’s just what the industry has become. There is still a value in music, that honestly was always worth more than the price tag on a record store shelf.

If as a listener, you want to support the music you love, there’s so many ways you can still do it. Go to their concerts when it’s safe. Purchase the music on Bandcamp or at a show. Buy their official merchandise. Share the music. You can even stream and share those playlists. It all means something, but let’s be honest about what it is. There’s no money in streaming, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.

How Bandcamp empowers artists in a different way.

When I talk about subscription-based streaming services, I’m not including Bandcamp in that conversation, even though you can download a Bandcamp app, stream music, and it allows you to subscribe to an artist. From the artist’s perspective, it seems like everything about Bandcamp is designed to empower musicians. I hope you all know about Bandcamp Friday which started in response to everyone’s lost income in the wake of COVID-19. But Bandcamp also allows musicians to set the price on all of their music, including an option to allow listeners to pay more if they want. Bandcamp also does one thing that no streaming platform does, and something that we even lose with social media: a direct connection to every listener. If you buy something on Bandcamp, you also can give the artist your e-mail address. You can also just click “follow” on their page to get updates e-mailed your way. Placing that direct connection in the artist’s hands means if Bandcamp itself no longer exists one day, you and that artist can still be connected through an email.

If anyone remembers Myspace: I was an early adopter to Myspace Music. Since I was so early on that site, I ended up in everyone’s “Top 8” before you could customize it. A lot of people also discovered that they liked my music, and before you knew it I had an international following without ever sending a blind friend request or spamming people. I think a lot of my early successes in music were connected to that website, and people who I met through it. But when Myspace crashed, I lost a connection to over 50,000 people with it.

The email address is so important. When your primary connection with your audience isn’t controlled by you, it can disappear overnight. I’ve seen it happen. Or as we’ve seen with Facebook, they can start charging you just to reach people who are already following you.

Hope this little post helps!

Now I’m gonna get back to making rap songs about what’s happening in Palestine… more on that soon.