Comment by toomuchtodo
5 hours ago
I am one of these people. I buy to support the artist (usually $40-$50 for an album), but listen to the digital versions via Jellyfin and Plex (to avoid Spotify). I’ll also donate directly to artists, or buy tickets to their shows even if I cannot attend. Great analysis.
IMO, please continue buying records, but don’t buy tickets to shows you can’t attend. I can’t speak for live music, but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”. This is a problem because it screws up venues planning for bar sales as a revenue source and deterring last minute buyers/door sales (who may either be heads or punters) who see a sold out show online.
I gift the tickets to those seeking them. Someone is still attending, it’s just not me. Good call out regardless to not mess with venue ops.
> but in SF there is/was an issue of club nights selling out, but having low attendance due to people buying tickets as an “option”.
As a bar/restaurant owner who sometimes host electronic parties, that sucks and does mess up a lot. But as a dance party attender, that sounds like a good thing, the parties tend to have way too high attendance, and if there is no space for people to actually move around and dance, I don't really know what the point of it even is anymore.
Affording tickets is already a first-world problem; I have no idea what level this is when not attending has some knock-on impact or attendance hurts another person's experience. Maybe y'all should plan to stay home and make a donation to the food bank...
I don’t disagree. Parties are often oversold and I may be overstating the under attendance problem.
Tbh I would like to have a donation button on a artist website so I can donate and than download the album I like where I like.
Bandcamp is pretty close to this experience if they set it as "pay what you want" (which a lot of artists do)
> (which a lot of artists do)
And those who don’t almost always only set a minimum price, so you can still pay more if you want. And if you buy on BC Friday [0] (next is February 6th), Bandcamp doesn’t even take a cut of the revenue.
[0]: https://isitbandcampfriday.com/
1 reply →
Spotify has this as an option for artists.
https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/fan-support/
https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/getting-a-fan...
Wouldn’t the artist offering you to buy the album from them, DRM free, accomplish the same thing while clarifying the transaction that’s happening?
Same. Let me just pay you to be an artist, and keep putting art into the world (while avoiding middlemen and platforms whenever possible).
In my band, we sell digital lossless albums on bandcamp for just that reason.
I’ve wanted something like this ever since the early Napster days. Patreon is the closest thing but that puts an onus on the artists to produce content all of the time. If some of my favorite less popular artists had their Venmo in their Instagram profile I would probably use that.
Ask them to! I’ve had good luck with this. “I want to give you money, pls put Venmo, Zelle, Cash App, Patreon, etc handles in your linktree thx”
I bought the vinyl release which also came with the digital download of an album last year. When the vinyl arrived, there was a handwritten personalized thank you note from the artist. Best of all worlds
I sometimes see how artists who I follow on Bandcamp write about their struggle with ordering the production of vinyls, shipping delays and troubles, etc.
I'd rather them spend this time on doing their art, or going on with their lives. If you want to give an artist a token of appreciation, send them money. I always increase the suggested price of an album or track on Bandcamp to some interesting-looking number.
To produce, ship, and store an otherwise unused complex artifact just as a token of appreciation which is not otherwise enjoyed by the parties looks wasteful for me.
I struggle to figure out how you came to the conclusion that a soulless money transaction is somehow comparable to buying a custom made vinyl album someone spent time on.
I’m in a similar boat. Many artists I listen to on Bandcamp offer cassettes(!) at a fair price and will charge a comparable price for the digital. However, I’ve seen some artists charge thousands for digital only but $10 for a tape that includes the digital version.
I don’t know why they do this, but I do know I have an ever growing stack of tapes I can’t listen to…
> However, I’ve seen some artists charge thousands for digital
What? Do you have an example?
I've also done it once... it was a track that was vinyl only. I sent it to a guy who digitizes vinyl as a service.
I should offer this to people as well ha. I love doing it and love having all my records on my server.