bevedog

Buy something on Bandcamp today!

I have a bunch of year-end wrap-up/best-of posts in the works including one on music. But this is a little time-sensitive, so it’s jumping the queue.

It’s that time of year when the music streaming service Spotify sends its users our year-end stats: your most-listened songs, bands, genres, etc. And I have used Spotify a lot this year to find new music and dig up old music I’ve loved for decades. I find it incredibly useful.

The problem is, Spotify is a terrible deal for artists. They see no revenue at all from all the streaming we do on Spotify.

In a more hypothetical way, Spotify is a bad deal for listeners, too. If Spotify goes under or if I choose to stop subscribing or am forced by circumstances to stop subscribing, I don’t actually own any of the music that I listened to there.

The solution, such as it is, is to realize that Spotify is basically radio. Spotify lets me hear lots of music, explore new stuff that I’m not sure I actually like or listen to golden oldies. But as in the old days of radio, when I hear stuff that I really like, I need to actually go to the record store and buy the album.

And that’s where Bandcamp comes in. When I buy stuff on Bandcamp I can stream it from the site or download it as an MP3 (or other audiophile formats). It’s mine, and the artists and labels who actually make the music actually get paid.

And—and this is why this is time-sensitive—today, Deember 4, is one of the Fridays where Bandcamp isn’t even taking a cut of the revenue from purchases. All the money we spend on Bandcamp today goes to the artists and labels.

So take a look at that Spotify list you got and use it as a shopping list. Or if you need some suggestions, here’s what I’m buying on the site today:

Better Oblivion Community Center was my top-streamed album of 2020 on Spotify. Now I’m actually paying Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst for the music that has helped me survive 2020.

The Mountain Goats were my top-streamed band of 2020. I already own their two 2020 studio releases, but they knew today was coming and released The Jordan Lake Sessions: Volume 1 and 2, recorded live earlier in the pandemic (more about it on the Merge Records site). I haven’t heard the recording yet, but the setlist is everything a boy could want. It’s also “pay what you want” so if you could pick it up for free and the band would get all zero dollars you paid (not recommended).

I woke up humming Waxahatchee’s “Can’t Do Much,” so that put the album Saint Cloud on the shopping list.

I have been listening to more metal and metal-adjacent music lately. Neptunian Maximalism’s Eons features really heavy saxophones and the tracks I have heard from Boris’s No just rock incredibly hard.

And I can’t write a whole thing about Bandcamp without acknowledging Steve Lawson (the other one, the one from the UK who plays bass). I have been a subscriber to his entire Bandcamp output for a few years now. He plays bass as a lead instrument, often solo, sometimes with collaborators, always with lots of pedals and effects. His music is hard to describe, but sometimes it’s more like free jazz, more recently it’s closer to ambient soundscapes. If you aren’t ready to subscribe, he’s got a best-of compilation, or you can go with The Root of it All from earlier this year.

As I encourage to you make some Bandcamp Friday purchases, I’m reminded of a speedmetal concert that I went to with my friend Russ in probably the summer of 1988. Between acts, someone was on the PA saying “All three bands have merchandise for sale in the lobby. Buy something! AND LIKE IT!”