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
I’d rather give an artist $14 for an LP than stream it for ten years and gove them 10¢
$14 for a good album + a good beverage makes a good ~45 minutes.
I always used Bandcamp as mainsource to listen music of my favorite bands (if present). For general background music mostly https://www.internet-radio.com/ or https://www.radio.net/genre (genre specific channels, 24/7)
Piracy enters the chat.
Fuck the platforms you listed, we are the fediverse
I have a spotify subscription, but I don’t personally use it. It’s for my parents. It solves too many problems for me
Sure, I also have a similar subscription for my wife as I’d rather pay than subject her to more ads. We’re all surviving under capitalism. I just ask that you throw a little cash at the independent artists. Thanks for considering. You’ll get a better product.
spotify is dumb
i dont use spotify
Songs have been filler and short from the radio era. To blame streaming for that is wild. Blame capitalism.
Which also occurs in albums as well. There are plenty of filler music in almost every album ever made. If anything, streaming disincentivizes filler tracks - each track has to compete for attention. Though, in practice this is going to depend on recommendation and discovery algorithms.
I blame both capitalism and the capitalist subscription streaming service.
Never used it.
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
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 !
And Qobuz does as well.
Yes, in FLAC or ALAC if you want lossless compressed with metadata.
They also have PCM WAV and AIFF.
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.
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.
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.
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
I met a Gen Z that never heard of or watched Ghostbuters. The kids aren’t watching classics
Gen Z’s brains are too roasted by shorts to sit through an entire 90 minute movie.
