Greetings. Happy Sunday (or insert the day on which you are reading this).
Lately, I’ve been evaluating how I consume music and that evaluation strongly goes past that as a regular listener, but a musician/artist-creator/producer and my current age. This may be TL;DR but, be that as it may, I’m not gonna summarize 🙂
I started consuming/listening music as a child when there was really only vinyl and cassette (I skipped over that mess called 8-track, but I digress), so I won’t go into the subsequent ways/technology that followed it – iTunes/mp3, Napster and the like, all the streaming platforms available today. Instead, I’ll share the ways I best enjoy consuming music and why.
Spotify (yes/no: no). I remember what Spotify was like when it first hit the US shores. It was a much different entity than it is today. I pretty much despise what it has become regarding everything from its incessant algorithms, digital DJs, its every growing offerings of AI generated tunes, resurrecting songs via AI of dead artists and circulating them (read more here). and what its CEO is using the money gained to invest into. I’ve used Spotify as a platform used by Distrokid, a music distributor, to stream songs I’ve released as an artist and the only thing that serves any benefit for me is listener reach. Additionally, I’ll just mention (as tons of others have) the FRACTIONS of a cent an artist gets paid for the stream of one song (provided the listener streams it for more than 30 seconds). I’ve never made a playlist because I don’t find it that useful. The only two things of benefit are discovering other artists I like and streaming music in the background while driving or other tasks where I’m not in the position to really enjoy the listening experience. Lastly, because of its inherent design (similar to other streaming platforms), it has made musical disposable and weakened the more valuable aspects of the better listening experience. I’ve lost track of how many times unes of major artists, particularly those from decades ago, sound degraded in audio quality compared to other artists. This is 2025, what’s up with that? Then there is the whole contractual thing with record labels where some songs you can find elsewhere aren’t even on Spotify.
YouTube (yes/no: no). Similar to Spotify, there are tons of artists uploading their music to YouTube. What trumps Spotify here is now you get video content (maybe that’s the case with Spotify now, but again, see above – not into it anymore). The downside with YouTube, unless you pay for YouTube music is pretty much the same with Spotify (also unless you pay for Spotify) – ads. The ads I see on YouTube turn my stomach, for some reason, I find them worse than any ads I’ve seen on TV throughout my entire life.
Bandcamp (yes/no). Even though Bandcamp is also considered a streaming platform, the general features far outweigh Spotify and YouTube. For one, YouTube comments are nice, as they can provide more insight into the artist and/or the tracks being streamed, but I rarely bother with comments. Yes, there are alternatives to Bandcamp but what I love about Bandcamp is the following:
- As an artist, one can set the price of your music for download, from zero upwards and get paid immediately (once BC takes a small cut). There is no better way I can think of to support an artist when this kind of mechanism is used. I’ve made more money on Bandcamp over the last 10 years than I ever would via Spotify.
- Merchandise sales, if you choose, are another way for fans to support you, whether by purchasing physical media or otherwise.
- The artist discography is immediately accessible so listening to it is very easy.
- Additional details can be added that you can’t via Spotify or similar. You can go beyond song artwork visuals and add lyrical content and the like. If you have followers/supporters, they’ll show at the bottom of your page, and more.
- Downloads of your music comes in different formats: ogg/vorbis, FLAC, mp3, .wav, etc.
Soundcloud (yes/no: no). I used to house tracks there back in the day, and while I pretty like its organizational approach, it seems you have to now have an account and log in to listen to songs. I don’t know when they changed to that, but I pretty much don’t use it for general music listening BUT it is a good mechanism for sharing tracks with others, especially sync licensing library houses, but I think there are other approaches that have come along that serve that purpose better.
Generally, when I want to enhance my music listening experience, I like to do so via listening via physical media. The biggest two reasons: I own it and I don’t have to rely on the internet to do so. In addition, though it is far less convenient and requires more work – I oftentimes like making my own minidisc labels of artwork. I don’t mind using my deck to label tracks on the MD, or using something like WebMinidisc to simplify track labeling when using netMD (or even HiMD, if that is your thing). Similarly, I like reading liner notes in my hands, my journey has been long enough that I like (especially being a musician who has done tons of studio work as well) getting as much history as I can about the musicians, songwriters, arrangers, producers, studios, etc behind the music -something you don’t get streaming services.
That’s about it, (as I stream music from my favorite and monetarily supported site, SomaFM). I hope you enjoy the rest of your day, evening, night. Oceans of rhythm…
Fresh.
PS: My latest enjoyable genre is ambient – I may blog about that in the future
