Feb 23

Feb 23 Another Way To Think About Buying Music…


** I first posted this back in 2014 — BUT — I think the thought still thinks today, so give it a gander in whatever year it is now (also, I sometimes make tweaks with fresh eyes before bumping back to the top of the HI54.BLOG homepage… reduce, reuse, recycle, innit? **

The traditional reasoning for buying music used to be “if you want to hear something you like, whenever you want, you need to buy it”. Well, that reasoning doesn't really exist anymore — especially when talking about digital music. We can now hear whatever we want, whenever we want, for the low cost of usually nothing (if we want).

Of course, if you want something to spin on your record player or pop into the tape deck, you're going to have to shell out some money for the physical artifact. But what if you just want to listen to music on the computer camera you carry around in your pocket? What if you already pay a monthly fee for a streaming service and have mostly blocked from your mind the fact that most artists only get a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the $9.99 you're giving to the Spotifys® of the world? What if late stage capitalism has its foot on your neck and a dollar saved truly is like a dollar earned?

Well, here's the little thought experiment I often ask myself when cruising the streets of Bandcamp and thinking those same thoughts…

If I were in a pub or coffee shop with the person/people responsible for the excellent music currently filling my headphones, would I offer to buy them a pint or coffee? If they asked me if I could spot them a couple bucks, would I do that? (if I genuinely could)

I don't know about you, but if I'm out drinking with a buddy (beer or coffee), it's a very common practice to say “this one is on me”. And some of my buddies don't even know what a G-chord looks like. Of course, I do this noble gesture of buying the round partly because my buddy has done or will do the same for me, BUT, mostly… what's a couple of bucks between pals, especially in a world filled with exploitive labour & unpaid value?

So, with that in mind, and with the distance between an artist and a fan being closer than ever, what better way to figuratively say “this one is on me” than by sending over a round of financial support to someone making some of the art you use to help improve your day? It doesn't matter if the artist is not actually your friend, because this hypothetical human has taken the time to share their thoughts and feelings and stories via the magic of art, and, if they've done it in a way that resonates with your heart and mind and gets your toes tapping & soul buzzing — if they’ve got your neurons firing in one of those ways your brain sent you looking for—well, that exchange is at least on the same level of having one of those rare deep conversations or memorable nights out with one of your IRL friends that can often lead to a celebratory friendship pint/coffee or two (a “this one’s on me” sort of exchange).

When you add in the fact that buying music on a site like Bandcamp will see most of the money going directly to the artist —and you could consider the % Bandcamp takes as the tip you'd leave the friendly barkeep + let’s also not forget about Bandcamp Fridays (being “artist friendly” is a low bar out there, but Bandcamp is definitely well above where the minimum expectations are at) — opening your digital wallet to make an "appreciated gesture" rather than a "personal purchase" feels like a healthier way to think about these things in the digital age where everything can be pulled from the clouds. You don’t even have to buy full albums, you can just buy a track for a buck or so or whatever is realistically in your monthly ‘spend money supporting humans doing things I enjoy but often don’t think about how the creators are making money because I’m mostly occupied with trying to figure out how I will continue paying for my ability to stay alive’ budget, whatever that might be for your current situation (fyi - you can often buy all kinds of things for ‘pay what you choose’ on Bandcamp, even $0, as all pricing options are set by the artist/label themselves… so even a monthly budget of $5 or less can go along way in the acquisition of music you don’t rent from artists you have shown support to directly). Because anything beyond passive consumption counts as a big ol’ checkmark in the Good column of our collective lives (and we could all do with feeling more notches on the positive post, especially these days, amirite).

So, the next time you find yourself genuinely enjoying something that you know has a 'Buy' button somewhere that you're trying not to make eye contact with, ask yourself the question:

“Would I buy the person/people involved in making this art I’m enjoying a pint/coffee if they were here in person? If I could?
And can I?”

Because, when you look past the music you're enjoying and realize that there are people on the other side of the digital curtains making that music out in the real world—and they're going about their day-to-day just like you, struggling with the same day-to-day struggles you do—doesn't sharing a metaphorical pint/coffee sound nice?

And, artists (this applies to not just musicians, but anyone who creates art — aka: anyone who feels compelled to do work that no one agreed to pay you for), consider the same analogy when someone pays you directly for your art. The fact that they've decided to pay for your art, when it'd be so easy not to, especially these days, that means something. They’re not just buying a product, a lot of them are saying different variations of: “I hope this helps cover your rent a bit… I’d give more but I also gotta make my rent” — and it’s important that people like that are still out there doing stuff like that in the world. So take a minute and say thanks when possible (and make sure that you’re also being that person with other people’s “art”, if/when it’s possible, because infinite people fighting over the same finite spots of success is no recipe for ever getting to hold onto that lasting feeling of contentment — and that’s the kind of “content” that everybody should be after).

Because it's always a good thing when somebody metaphorically buys an artist a pint for the trouble of filling their head with a beautifully soundtracked internal dialogue — BUT — there still needs to be a “cheers!” involved for the circle to feel truly complete. Music is a mutual aid industry after all, and we need to try and humanize the transaction feeling out of the experience as much as possible. Otherwise the “value” gets set by an exploitive market, and, if you look around, the market is basically saying the value for music is less than $0… and a lot of people are too worried about their own worries to give art exploitation an extra thought, especially since most people’s value is being undervalued & exploited in whatever industry they’re more involved in (and therefore think about more than whatever the situation is in the industry you work in).

We need to be more open about the full & interconnected pictures we’re all looking at from different angles. And then maybe we can all start doing a better job of making sure we’re putting more of our money into the appreciative pockets of those who are doing work that we appreciate? And hopefully we can all start finding ourselves on both sides of the appreciator/appreciated coin more & more often until we eventually dismantle all these exploitive hierarchical systems, one-by-one, then all at once (related-ish 2020 article on ‘making streaming fairer’ OVER HERE if interested).

And since I keep available-on-Bandcamp archives on Buy Music Club going for the ongoing mix cd playlists that make up the diy radio rotation over at MOUN.TOWN/FM — how about we end this post with an embed of a bunch of great tracks released this year that are available on Bandcamp (each track is linked to the artists/labels Bandcamp page, but you can also explore/listen like a track-by-track mix cd, with new stuff tacked on to the bottom throughout the year):

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