And the biggest part of the money you pay the streaming platform goes to neither Soundgarden, nor the remaining Beatles, nor to those artists you discovered but to Taylor Swift[1]. This is in stark contrast to how CD economics worked.

As someone who spent a lot of his youth carefully avoiding big label acts and trying to support small artists, this is what bothers me the most: there is no way to do that anymore if you use streaming.

[1] https://mertbulan.com/2025/08/10/why-paying-for-spotify-most...

I don't like how the sausage is made, I just like the sausage, is all I'm saying.

I too, like my meat and not the killing that it requires.

One day, someone will have to face the reckoning of our preferences vs our values.

May I be the one with the courage to meet it; failing which, not be standing around when the bill is due.

The motto of our era.

I think we can have our cake and eat it on this one. The economics line up not entirely unreasonably. Mostly.

If there was a way to support smaller artists outside of spotify, that would be great.

There's Bandcamp. I'm sure it's more difficult the more mainstream music is, but in my areas of interest, I'd estimate that at least 80% is available from Bandcamp. And for those who really want to optimise on where their money goes, you can save you cart for Bandcamp Friday where the store forgoes its cut (if I understood it correctly).