I don't really make music, and I certainly don't distribute it.

But as a serious consumer of music, I don't see how you (or anyone else, really) can do much better than Bandcamp.

I'm not interested in streaming music, and as a musician I can't really see why you would be either, given the absurdly tiny revenue it generates.

On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 1:45 PM Andrew A. Grathwohl <andrew@grathwohl.me> wrote:
Hello Linux Audio folks!

I wanted to see if I could get a conversation going about the future of music distribution. Given that we are people who make creative works with free software, I figured this is as decent a place as any to discuss what is out there, what is possible, and what should be avoided. My own personal approach to distribution is detailed below, but I invite others on this list to share their own methods and ideas.

By now, most of us are probably resigned to the fact that the music world will look quite a bit different going forward, compared with prior eras. Many musicians feel that today's points of engagement with music fail to provide adequate revenues, and are taking to social media to criticize Spotify and the ilk for not being better "stewards" of music.

I largely agree with those sentiments, which is why I have been taking the opportunity to construct a solid home base for my music project, which is fully operated on my own physical hardware and some AWS cloud services at a cost of $7/month. It's just a simple jekyll template hosted on GitHub Pages. However, by publishing my music releases to my own jekyll page one time, I get the added benefit of also publishing to all desired locations on the web simultaneously, including to a podcast feed compatible with Apple's podcast network.

It's weird to me that we are still trying to unit-price music in a world where it's cheaper and easier than ever to record, produce, and distribute it. I am not necessarily interested in profiting from my own musical endeavors, but a friend of mine is a rather popular independent electronic artist, who has pointed out to me that despite millions of annual streams, streaming services alone don't provide him anywhere near a livable income. In  my opinion, this shouldn't be so. There's also the issue of being beholden to the whims of private firms who run various online music services. Anyone here miss SoundCloud Groups, for example?

I've begun to wonder if solutions like mine could be the foundation for a new kind of music distribution approach - perhaps one where musicians maintain podcast feeds, where monetization vectors are much more profitable and much more flexible for individuals to exercise without betraying their own values.
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