We are in a golden era for buying and selling digital LPs. While I’ll use Bandcamp, sleek alternatives like Ampwall, Subvert, and Mirlo are equally great options. These online markets inherently incentivize artists to avoid filler or risk losing a sale, while the subscription streaming model requires artists to pad their catalog for pay per play. Streaming has revived the worst trope of the old music industry: the album that is just “two hits and a bunch of crap.”
Spotify’s business model demands album filler because the platform pays out royalties based on “stream share” which trigger a payout the second a track hits the 30 second mark, incentivizing artists to maximize volume over value. This has fundamentally warped modern songwriting: albums are aggressively padded with short, two minute tracks and repetitive hooks designed specifically to feed the algorithm and inflate stream counts. On Spotify, a deep, cohesive artistic statement takes a back seat to sheer data output, turning what should be a focused LP into a bloated playlist of algorithmic bait.
Accidental hits happen way more often than you’d think. As it turns out, artists are notoriously bad at predicting their own success. When you buy a digital LP on a platform like Bandcamp, you are investing in a complete and curated piece of art where even the tracks the artist never expected to blow up exist naturally as part of a cohesive story. On subscription services like Spotify, those same happy accidents are treated like lottery tickets while surrounded by cynical, algorithm optimized filler designed just to farm streams. Buying the album ensures you are experiencing those unexpected gems as genuine creative discoveries, rather than digging through algorithmic bloat to find them.
Bandcamp serves the genre; streaming serves the algorithm. When producers target platforms like Spotify, artistic nuances like tempo variations and volume dynamics are sacrificed to strict LUFS loudness standards and predictable, club friendly danceability. This algorithmic pressure strips electronic and club music of its experimental edge, forcing tracks into a uniform, compressed sonic mold just to survive on a playlist. On Bandcamp, however, the music is freed from these rigid streaming constraints, allowing producers to prioritize raw genre authenticity and dynamic storytelling over sanitized, playlist ready optimization. Soundtrack and orchestral music have become major casualties of this shift, as their essential cinematic highs and quiet, emotional lows are flattened into a lifeless wall of sound just to meet streaming’s volume requirements.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not here to sell you my album. Go ahead and enjoy the whole thing ad free on my website. https://thejoyo.com/#more
Just call it an album dude. An LP is vinyl. Digital LP, while I get it refers to a specific length… Aaaaa it feels like you’re pedanting where you don’t have to pedant. We get you, you’re among friends and well wishers and Satan’s maggoty cumfart is probably here and probably likes you too
Sorry, I only listen on shellac.
Wax cylinders or nothing dude. The quality can’t be beat
Where is the image from?
Kansas.
How have you not seen the wizard of Oz dude go watch a movie. That’s like the most famous movie.
I met a Gen Z that never heard of or watched Ghostbuters. The kids aren’t watching classics
In my experience albums I listen to today are way better all the way through than when people were buying them in store. Maybe that’s just the artists I follow though. Good artists stay true to their music regardless of the payment model. If you’re listening to artists that are in it to maximise their earnings, maybe you could broaden what you listen to.
Bandcamp is a much better experience for listening to a whole album compare to Spotify.
i dont see how this is spotifys problem, did radio and mtv not have the same exact effect?
the first paragraph:
Streaming has revived the worst trope of the old music industry: the album that is just “two hits and a bunch of crap.”
But the moment after showing LPs had this trope, it suggests album purchases – which had this trope.
I bought Finger Eleven, wanting an album of Paralyzed. I bought Mezzanine, wanting 10 tracks of Dissolved Girl.
In each case I got something else which eventually grew on me for the artistry it was, but in the moment I felt hoodwinked.
Does bandcamp have lossless high bitrate files ? I’m not 100% convinced it’s always a big difference, but I’d rather always get the highest quality master I can !
Most people cannot discern at bitrates higher than 128kbps. Most people don’t own equipment where the difference would even be noticed.
If all you’re doing is listening to music on airpods using AAC, getting all wound up about Losless is silly.
See how well you do: https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/02/411473508/how-well-can-you-hear-audio-quality
They do.
Edit: To be clear, they offer downloads in multiple formats - including a lossless FLAC option, and the ability to stream from your phone/browser. So, it’s a pretty good replacement for Spotify if you want to actually pay the people whose music you listen to.
Bonus points if you make purchases on Bandcamp Fridays: a unique event wherein 100% of proceeds go directly to the artist (bypassing Bandcamp’s usual cut).
I upload as FLAC and they convert it to lossy for smaller files and compatibility. https://faircamp.org/ will also do the conversion for my static website.
And Qobuz does as well.
For anyone considering switching to using mp3s on android I’ve found the Phocid music player best. Plus the app icon is a little weasel which is a plus. You can typically store 150 or so songs per gb depending on the length and quality. I just use syncthing to keep my phone and laptop music library synced up.
I’ve been using musicolet for the last I don’t know and been pretty happy with it. It integrates with the cat audio pretty well
Spotify (and Pandora before that) served my purposes once upon a time to discover genres and artists I enjoy. But when I did the math, I realized I’d spent quite the pretty penny with nothing to show for it, and none of the artists I listened to were benefitting. And of course, Spotify has been happily selling my data during the interim.
Since deleting my account, I’ve switched to buying albums on Bandcamp, particularly on Bandcamp Fridays. I prefer listening to albums straight through anyway. I like to buy CDs when they’re available, but unfortunately a lot of artists stick to vinyl if they do physical media at all. CDs don’t degrade with listening, I can play them in my car, and they are compact - I simply don’t have the space for vinyl.
I love vinyls, but some of my most listened to artist don’t offer them. And as you say, it’s not doable to listen on the go.
So, all posts are from the perspective of people that are really into music. Enthusiasts that care deeply about individual albums and artists.
Whereas streaming services are most likely designed to cater to casual listeners like me. I can’t remember the last time I listened to an entire album. I haven’t liked any individual artist enough to attend a live concert. I generally listen to music while I’m doing stuff as background noise.
I used to listen to the radio for that. But streaming services algorithms were a strict upgrade to that due to lack of ads and talk show hosts.
Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to determine whether a given piece of music is AI generated or not by listening to it.
So I don’t think direct purchase of digital LPs could ever be viable for people like me. And I’m guessing (based on the success of streaming services) that there are a lot more people like me than there are enthusiasts. Yes, I can switch to the least bad streaming service according to Lemmy, out of solidarity (and no other reason). Remember 99% of people won’t do that.
Just adding a perspective that might be missing from this community
This is how I listen to music too. What I did is I made a bunch of massive playlists inside the services of 80s, 90s, 70s, etc music seperated by decade. Like you’d have on a radio station. Then I plugged them into Parabolic and ripped mp3s of them from youtube. Shoved them in a folder and just listen to those on shuffle. As for supporting artists, half the people I listen to are dead first of all, and for the ones who aren’t I do also have a physical media collection. A single purchase of a cd or vinyl gives them more money than 1000 streams would.
Your plan takes 4-5 steps and more time than it takes people to just ignore ethics and open an app.
I would not count you amongst the casual audience of Spotify users. I hope that is a compliment.
Bandcamp does not permit the sale of AI generated music, “wholly or in substantial part”. https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/
We’ll see if they’ll stick with that policy but Bandcamp hasn’t really changed in the last 15 years. They could have easily increased their cut to match Spotify and Apple Music but they haven’t.
If you’re looking for casual consumption, https://bandcamp.com/radio offers human curated radio where the DJ puts songs into context.
Relavent XKCD. The average layperson is unaware of so much nuance in topics others specialise in.
If you are referring to my original post, I have received a similar reaction from the producer and artist communities where I shared it: most people feel I am preaching to the choir. I have no doubt most people just read the headline.
This, the main thing I want from music software is an infinite stream of background music with a personalization algorithm to select new songs I’ll probably like. Most of the suggestions people are giving don’t really work as a substitute for that.
there’s a massive backlog of bandcamp radio sessions that I know you’ve never heard.
I looked at it, it’s a handful of channels representing broad genres, an hour or two in length, with commentary. That is not a substitute for a personalized music stream. It still wouldn’t be with a wider selection; I tried mixcloud for a while, it doesn’t work for me, there are no channels that give me just the music I want to hear in a wide enough variety, it’s too much work searching through them, I’d rather skip the commentary and not have to find something new every hour.
Not that I use spotify, what I ended up doing is writing my own script to scrape bandcamp and use its recommendation features to get associations between albums and assign probability weights to them for what to play next based on what I have liked and disliked. Aside from being buggy and against tos so probably can’t publish, I’m pretty happy with it. Algorithmic streaming is a much more convenient way of listening to and discovering music, and I don’t expect many people to switch away from it.
Radio Garden may be an app that you may find useful to replace Spotify. It’s free, and it allows you to listen to traditional radio stations anywhere in the world. I was listening to some random German radio station last time I opened the app. Might switch to Africa or the MENA area next time, who knows?
I guess you talk about rock and pop music?
Geniune question: What about techno music? Many techno songs are eight minutes long (my personal experience, I’m no expert, I could be wrong) and djs usually select a couple of good songs and mix them together. They prepare a list of songs for a gig and decide based upon the crowd and their own perception what sogn they are going to play.
What’s a good and ethical way of consuming techno music? Sets and individual songs
And there are many very good songs that are ai created. And i could not tell the difference between ai and “human” made music. To me, it doesn’t seem like (techno) music creation has any value in the future.
Mixing and selecting good songs or creating playlists (on the fly) sounds like having value in the future.
You might want to learn how techno is made. Analog kitchen has a class on live techno shows where everything is made at the show. They even go into DMX lighting and how to program it along with clip launching.
Once you know more than the surface level of a genre you can easily spot artificial slop. Like most things AI, it’s good enough to sound convincing yet be fundamentally wrong.
I see. I’ll have a look deeper into it. I don’t think it answers the question though.
Ai gets better every month. Even if you can tell a difference today, you might not tomorrow anymore. Also, you can make music assisted with ai. It doesn’t have to be making music without human help
fyi there is no such thing as a good AI song. Spotify is fucking artists at every turn, AI music especially.
I listened to a couple of great songs that were ai generated.
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lol good post, you got me listening to your album. reminds me of aphex/autechre. and thanks for those other sites, i’m always looking to discover new music as a DJ. currently i just use youtube recs (heavy tracker blocking in a container), soundcloud, and shazam in public. i never had spotify but i had apple music for a couple years after it came out and I just found that it put blinders on music taste. these days I have all my MP3s in a cloud in a MEGA server which I can play on my phone or computer. qobuz does look pretty good though.
It’s a shame though the price of vinyl has gone through the roof, I miss my employee discount from back in the day
thank you for listening; that’s high praise as I absolutely love both aphex twin and autechre. i try to avoid the vinyl toxicity but i have a few CDs and cassettes without a player. most of my collection is on steam with bandcamp growing.
https://bandcamp.com/radio has been my goto for finding new music lately.
I abandoned Spotify when they started to push podcasts above music, right in the landing page of the app. How many years is that? anyway I moved on to bandcamp and qobuz
Same but I went with Tidal. Mostly just because I don’t want to deal with organizing a music library. I used to have a huge library from ripped CDs until a family member installed iTunes on my computer and it destroyed it all by reorganizing everything wrong.
I cancelled my subscription the first month they signed Blow Rogan. I’m not supporting any manosphere related company if I can help it.
The earth is the manosphere.
Can’t abandon something I never joined in the first place! 🙂
I never stopped buying my albums. For all the reasons you list. Fuck streaming.
Left spotify more then a year ago. I always buy vinyl, via bandcamp or directly from artists. Especially on bandcamp fridays. And for streaming i use Qobuz
