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
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.
In my experience albums I listen to today are way better all the way through than when people were buying them in store. Maybe that’s just the artists I follow though. Good artists stay true to their music regardless of the payment model. If you’re listening to artists that are in it to maximise their earnings, maybe you could broaden what you listen to.
Bandcamp is a much better experience for listening to a whole album compare to Spotify.
Piracy enters the chat.
Don’t artists make like no money off streams with the bulk being from tours and merch?
0.01% of artists are performing artists. even less make a profit touring. i can break that down for you if you want.
Fuck the platforms you listed, we are the fediverse
spotify is dumb
i dont use spotify
“Short two minute tracks and repetitive hooks”
Why are you attacking punk rock?
hah, no i love punk and repetitive hooks. the first Beatles album has super short tracks too. i’m just saying that subscription streaming pushes everything else out.
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)
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 deserve a better product.
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.
i dont see how this is spotifys problem, did radio and mtv not have the same exact effect?
the first paragraph:
Streaming has revived the worst trope of the old music industry: the album that is just “two hits and a bunch of crap.”
But the moment after showing LPs had this trope, it suggests album purchases – which had this trope.
I bought Finger Eleven, wanting an album of Paralyzed. I bought Mezzanine, wanting 10 tracks of Dissolved Girl.
In each case I got something else which eventually grew on me for the artistry it was, but in the moment I felt hoodwinked.
You can listen to an album on Bandcamp for free. Who’s buying an album before listening to it?
Never used it.
I guess you talk about rock and pop music?
Geniune question: What about techno music? Many techno songs are eight minutes long (my personal experience, I’m no expert, I could be wrong) and djs usually select a couple of good songs and mix them together. They prepare a list of songs for a gig and decide based upon the crowd and their own perception what sogn they are going to play.
What’s a good and ethical way of consuming techno music? Sets and individual songs
And there are many very good songs that are ai created. And i could not tell the difference between ai and “human” made music. To me, it doesn’t seem like (techno) music creation has any value in the future.
Mixing and selecting good songs or creating playlists (on the fly) sounds like having value in the future.
You might want to learn how techno is made. Analog kitchen has a class on live techno shows where everything is made at the show. They even go into DMX lighting and how to program it along with clip launching.
Once you know more than the surface level of a genre you can easily spot artificial slop. Like most things AI, it’s good enough to sound convincing yet be fundamentally wrong.
I see. I’ll have a look deeper into it. I don’t think it answers the question though.
Ai gets better every month. Even if you can tell a difference today, you might not tomorrow anymore. Also, you can make music assisted with ai. It doesn’t have to be making music without human help
fyi there is no such thing as a good AI song. Spotify is fucking artists at every turn, AI music especially.
I listened to a couple of great songs that were ai generated.
Good and ethical depends on what you want. You should probably abandon both of those qualifiers though.
There was a good article in one of those counter culture handbills in the 90s equating the peripheral or colonial labor required to get expensive raw materials & the core labor required to turn them into carbide blades or microchips or whatever and production & djing.
It was pretty stupid though because once a dj gets a little success or time they start to make their own songs to play out (often before they start to get some success). So it’s not like one type of labor has less value and is engaged in a race to the bottom or pushed to the colonial areas while another type of labor has more value and exists under different conditions in the core.
Their inverse is also true. Electronic musicians who produce music often get invited to dj at venues. How could someone make a song that fits well in a djs set if they themselves didn’t get some hands on time behind decks? It’s like expecting a person to be able to design a car but never drive one.
They’re the same labor. They’re making the same thing.
It’s maybe worth investigating what you mean when you say “having value”.
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