On Monday, the company announced that free users globally will now be able to search and play any song they want or play a song shared by a friend or an artist they follow on social media.
Sure, that’s true, though if you allow streams on Bandcamp, those pay $0, so in terms of “try before you buy”, any streaming service is better. It’s only if you actually sell an album on band camp (or AmpWall, a smaller indie service that does a lot of the same stuff) that you’d get paid, as an artist.
I say this as a musician who has put out several albums both independently and with a label.
Who is any better? Literally all are paying pennies to the artist per stream.
Tidal doesn’t host far-right mouthpieces, offers much higher quality streams, and pays the artists far, far more per play.
Edit: Here’s a chart from 2022:
Tidal, Deezer and qobuz pay better and don’t fund Slow Joe
Tidal pays more than 3x what Spotify pays. Qobuz pays like 5-6x.
Although better, still very little in comparison to bandcamp
Sure, that’s true, though if you allow streams on Bandcamp, those pay $0, so in terms of “try before you buy”, any streaming service is better. It’s only if you actually sell an album on band camp (or AmpWall, a smaller indie service that does a lot of the same stuff) that you’d get paid, as an artist.
I say this as a musician who has put out several albums both independently and with a label.
Some people buy albums
Buying albums is great because you can host them on your own Plex server and use Plexamp.
(or something like Jellyfin, but IMO Plexamp is still the best app available for streaming your own music collection)