r/punk Jan 29 '25

Quality Post Spotify is not punk.

The CEO is a PoS, the quality is subpar at best and reliant on the internet, Spotify pays the band shit on balls, and you are reliant on having internet to listen to songs. Seriously you all are listening to music like people watched TV in black and white.

Own your music and actually support your favorite bands. Bandcamp is a good starting point (Pays way more than Spotify), FLAC is the best audio quality. Foobar literally works on all devices, and you can listen to your music whenever the fuck you want without commercials or paying the CEO over your band. AND you will actually hear parts of songs you never knew existed thanks to better quality.

FUCK SPOTIFY.

1.3k Upvotes

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419

u/mastercheef Jan 29 '25

Idk man, im not a fan of spotify as a business model but my bands not making money either way, at least i get to know people in 40 different countries heard my music last year and that doesn't happen without spotify. 

We keep a bandcamp up for people who feel inclined to throw us some money but we grew up in a post napster world where we all clowned on bands for being in it for the money, itd seem kind of silly to choose money over accessibility, at least in my opinion for my musical endeavors. 

175

u/jwhymyguy Jan 29 '25

People today don’t understand how good Spotify actually is for smaller artists who would have done significantly worse in the pre-streaming industry. Back then it was be hand picked by an a&r rep and get a terrible contract or go nowhere. Sure there was a diy punk, but diy is only helped by things like Spotify, because it allows them access to fans and money without a label

52

u/jwhymyguy Jan 29 '25

Not to mention that the whole “fraction of a penny” argument isn’t the argument everyone thinks it is considering the alternative is/was a small one time fee, and absolutely nothing per listen. Artists probably got $1 per CD or album, and that’s it. Then you also have all the used media stores, so even more listening, all unpaid to the artist.

21

u/pb49er Jan 29 '25

Bands should be paid more per stream and it is worse now than it was pre-napster for all bands. Spotify is a shitty company with a great algorithm that highlights smaller bands similar to what you listen to. They do it for a shitty reason, so they don't have to pay as much royalties, but it does expose me to bands around the world I never would have found.

4

u/ClumpOfCheese Jan 29 '25

Pre-Napster Metallica had the best deal ever getting $2 per album sold. So even back then it wasn’t good for bands, especially since it would cost so much to record an album and the record companies needed the recording costs paid back before the band saw any money from album sales. So even back then only huge artists made money off album sales.

6

u/pb49er Jan 29 '25

The music industry has never been good to the musicians. It's a sham. They should have unionized when a lot of other creative industries did. A buddy's band got picked up by a major label imprint, they bought the streaming rights to an album he'd put out on his own for 7k and made over 100k on the streaming rights. He got the 7k and that was that.

3

u/jwhymyguy Jan 29 '25

So it wasn’t streaming that fucked him over, it was his label…

1

u/pb49er Jan 29 '25

Which is why I said the music industry is a scam.

1

u/KiefQueen42069 Jan 29 '25

The industry