Comment by piva00
12 days ago
These long tail artists almost didn't sell their albums before streaming though. I've always been into obscure music since I was a teenager, to find it I'd have to dig through many record stores' bins, and get lucky enough to get my hands on second hand stuff. There was never a place they were stocked (perhaps except for some local store around where the artists' themselves were located).
When piracy came along I had access to a lot more music I had only heard about, or heard from a friend's bootleg recording that was a copy of a copy of a cassette tape someone had. Streaming happened and I felt much better than having to pirate some poor souls hard work.
Bandcamp is still there for selling albums digitally which is much better for not popular artists to reach their fans than the old ways.
Music was never compensated enough for the work done, it's always been tough, the culprit is not streaming.
Independent music and independent publishing was, in my opinion, thriving even just 25 years ago in a rhizome of record shops and small venues which are getting stomped on by streaming culture and ecommerce platforms. It was certainly always hard, but also certainly doable if you put the work in to make the economics of it possible. It seems like now the same energy is going into carving out a following on ad-driven social media and streaming platforms, plus a dozen small side-hustles.
What I'm hopeful about though is that things like patreon are making the idea of supporting artists you appreciate directly somewhat more normal, but streaming platforms are not doing any favors for musicians in my opinion.