It’s fate is uncertain because they got sold somewhat recently, but I really like Bandcamp and its model more than Spotify.
Spotify is renting music. You subscribe for two years and at the end of that you have nothing to show for it. The musicians also don’t get much from you, either.
Buying albums for $8 a pop, though? It can be cheaper than Spotify if you’re like me and pick up about one new album a month. Some stuff I listen to and don’t buy. Some months I don’t buy anything and just listen to what’s in my library. And after a couple years of this, I have a large library of drm free music.
I get that Spotify is easier and for some people their taste is really wide, so maybe renting access makes sense for them. And starting from nothing can be daunting. But I am also certain their are Spotify users that pay every month and just listen to the same four albums.
It can be cheaper than Spotify if you’re like me and pick up about one new album a month. Some stuff I listen to and don’t buy. Some months I don’t buy anything and just listen to what’s in my library. And after a couple years of this, I have a large library of drm free music.
The starting from zero and needing a couple of years to build a solid foundation for your library is the biggest hurdle. If you have that foundation, then sure there are probably not more than 12 new albums per year that are worth to buy. But If you don’t it’s just impossible.
Say you are starting from zero and find that you like the rolling Stones? How long or how expensive does it get with your method before you are even done with their catalogue?
Also a lot of people are probably on the family plan. That changes the equation in favor of Spotify by a lot. You might have 6 users with different tastes, but are only paying like $20 per month?
Say you are starting from zero and find that you like the rolling Stones? How long or how expensive does it get with your method before you are even done with their catalogue?
Assuming you plan on living a long time, sometimes the long term investment comes out ahead. If you keep renting, you’ll never make any progress.
Imo unlike movie/TV-streaming music-streaming services at the moment still kind of fulfill their promise to the consumer:
A for the average consumer mostly complete selection of content at a reasonable price (at for the consumer, maybe not for most artists) and a high degree of convenience.
Until you build your own library, which would take quite a while until you drop a lot of money in advance, you’ll have a worse experience.
And even when living alone you could still share with friends, parents/siblings or a partner.
All that said I am very sympathetic to your line of thinking. Because it only works as long as the deal doesn’t change.
And we see all to well how it might not last when looking at the movie/tv streaming market. Prices might increase beyond purely matching inflation, content might fracture into multiple services, sharing might get disallowed, and specific versions of songs or artists might disappear due to censorship (or similar reasons).
That’s very like the normal path of enshittification. Offer a good deal to customers for a while, but once you have a big chunk of the market you can jack up the prices. When you buy drm-free media, no one can take it from you.
Because it only works as long as the deal doesn’t change.
Right. That’s what I was just writing. There’s a little competition now with like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, whatever, and competition can keep things from becoming deeply shitty. But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if in 5 years the big players had merged together, and then things get more expensive. There’s no reason to believe Spotify (or whatever private for-profit org you choose) will continue to offer a good deal indefinitely.
I get why people go with the cheap-at-the-point-of-sale and convenient option, I just would rather they thought further ahead. Especially people I know have money and means.
There’s a little competition now with like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, whatever, and competition can keep things from becoming deeply shitty. But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if in 5 years the big players had merged together, and then things get more expensive.
But the distribution side is only one part of the equasion and tbh the much easier one, which is why there are still so many even smaller players that offer a more or less complete (or at least large) library. Besides the ones you mentioned i can also think of amazon music, youtube music, deezer, and napster. I think there are also plenty more. It’s really not that hard from a technical side to stream audio, certainly easier compared to the high bandwith you need for visual content.
The more interesting part is if anything could happen on the rightsholder side, which unlike with movie/tv-streaming is completely seperate. There you have Disney, WB/Discovery, and so on all doing their own streaming services primarily with their own content (Sony is one of the few to just produce and sell). But on the music side you don’t have the large record labels like Sony, Universal or Warner Music to try and make their own streaming service. And smaller indipendent labels also make up a much larger share, and sometimes the music rights might also lie with the artists themselves or descendants.
That fragmentation of rights combined with the large variance of musics tastes requiring a mostly complete library to make sense imo is what currently holds of enshittification. So i would actually say there is decent competition, although at the same time it is very hard to truly distinguish yourself from the other services.
The question is whether something can break this balance.
Couldn’t agree more. Granted I already had a collection started in the form of high quality mp3s I used to import into iTunes.
Since switching to using only my music library I’ve started to enjoy radio and “shuffle all” much more. I rediscovered a lot of artists that the streaming apps stopped recommending.
I’ve, overtime, started replacing my mp3s with flacs from bandcamp. It eases a lot.of stress knowing I own my copies and bandcamp (and qobuz) keeps backups in case I happen to lose my library.
It’s fate is uncertain because they got sold somewhat recently, but I really like Bandcamp and its model more than Spotify.
Spotify is renting music. You subscribe for two years and at the end of that you have nothing to show for it. The musicians also don’t get much from you, either.
Buying albums for $8 a pop, though? It can be cheaper than Spotify if you’re like me and pick up about one new album a month. Some stuff I listen to and don’t buy. Some months I don’t buy anything and just listen to what’s in my library. And after a couple years of this, I have a large library of drm free music.
I get that Spotify is easier and for some people their taste is really wide, so maybe renting access makes sense for them. And starting from nothing can be daunting. But I am also certain their are Spotify users that pay every month and just listen to the same four albums.
The starting from zero and needing a couple of years to build a solid foundation for your library is the biggest hurdle. If you have that foundation, then sure there are probably not more than 12 new albums per year that are worth to buy. But If you don’t it’s just impossible.
Say you are starting from zero and find that you like the rolling Stones? How long or how expensive does it get with your method before you are even done with their catalogue?
Also a lot of people are probably on the family plan. That changes the equation in favor of Spotify by a lot. You might have 6 users with different tastes, but are only paying like $20 per month?
Assuming you plan on living a long time, sometimes the long term investment comes out ahead. If you keep renting, you’ll never make any progress.
But get why it can seem daunting.
Imo unlike movie/TV-streaming music-streaming services at the moment still kind of fulfill their promise to the consumer:
A for the average consumer mostly complete selection of content at a reasonable price (at for the consumer, maybe not for most artists) and a high degree of convenience.
Until you build your own library, which would take quite a while until you drop a lot of money in advance, you’ll have a worse experience.
And even when living alone you could still share with friends, parents/siblings or a partner.
All that said I am very sympathetic to your line of thinking. Because it only works as long as the deal doesn’t change.
And we see all to well how it might not last when looking at the movie/tv streaming market. Prices might increase beyond purely matching inflation, content might fracture into multiple services, sharing might get disallowed, and specific versions of songs or artists might disappear due to censorship (or similar reasons).
That’s very like the normal path of enshittification. Offer a good deal to customers for a while, but once you have a big chunk of the market you can jack up the prices. When you buy drm-free media, no one can take it from you.
Right. That’s what I was just writing. There’s a little competition now with like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, whatever, and competition can keep things from becoming deeply shitty. But I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if in 5 years the big players had merged together, and then things get more expensive. There’s no reason to believe Spotify (or whatever private for-profit org you choose) will continue to offer a good deal indefinitely.
I get why people go with the cheap-at-the-point-of-sale and convenient option, I just would rather they thought further ahead. Especially people I know have money and means.
But the distribution side is only one part of the equasion and tbh the much easier one, which is why there are still so many even smaller players that offer a more or less complete (or at least large) library. Besides the ones you mentioned i can also think of amazon music, youtube music, deezer, and napster. I think there are also plenty more. It’s really not that hard from a technical side to stream audio, certainly easier compared to the high bandwith you need for visual content.
The more interesting part is if anything could happen on the rightsholder side, which unlike with movie/tv-streaming is completely seperate. There you have Disney, WB/Discovery, and so on all doing their own streaming services primarily with their own content (Sony is one of the few to just produce and sell). But on the music side you don’t have the large record labels like Sony, Universal or Warner Music to try and make their own streaming service. And smaller indipendent labels also make up a much larger share, and sometimes the music rights might also lie with the artists themselves or descendants.
That fragmentation of rights combined with the large variance of musics tastes requiring a mostly complete library to make sense imo is what currently holds of enshittification. So i would actually say there is decent competition, although at the same time it is very hard to truly distinguish yourself from the other services.
The question is whether something can break this balance.
Couldn’t agree more. Granted I already had a collection started in the form of high quality mp3s I used to import into iTunes.
Since switching to using only my music library I’ve started to enjoy radio and “shuffle all” much more. I rediscovered a lot of artists that the streaming apps stopped recommending.
I’ve, overtime, started replacing my mp3s with flacs from bandcamp. It eases a lot.of stress knowing I own my copies and bandcamp (and qobuz) keeps backups in case I happen to lose my library.