I am trying to settle on a fair and useful online music service at the moment. The problem is in trying to find a service that is subscription-based, has a big catalogue, but is not unfairly skewed to shoveling all of the money at the handful of acts that get big numbers of plays.
When I used to play in bands, my main concern was that people could hear us. I used to annoy my bandmates by giving our demos away for free and encouraging people to tape them from teach other. I didn't really care if we made money as long as we broke even and people listened to us, I was happy. I still feel like this, and I like to think most of the bands that I really want to listen to feel the same. If you're in it primarily to make money then you are a business person, not an artist, and I'm only interested in people who consider what they're doing to be art rather than product. If you can manage to make money and keep integrity then that's awesome, but that's a pretty exclusive club.
My main concern is that where money is being made, I want it to go to the artists with as little taken out as possible. I don't mind paying for music and try to buy as much as my budget will allow, but I also think its detrimental to bands if you can only hear them when you've paid for an album. The author Cory Doctorow once said his biggest enemy was obscurity, not piracy and I think that holds equally well for music as books. The problem is that the best catalogues are in the hands of the worst players, so how do you square getting bands to have the exposure they want while not lining the pockets of people who don't care about the art?
The list below is not (in the slightest) exhaustive, but is my take on where things stand for me at the moment. In decreasing order of acceptability (and with a gulf a mile wide between numbers 2 and 3):
Buy direct
The best route for me if I'm buying to keep – try and find the place I can buy direct from the band so they get to keep all the money. I tend to download in the highest quality I can and then convert to .ogg format to store on all my devices. Best of all, go and see them live and buy CDs direct from them there. This relies on me having much deeper pockets than I've got if I want to try lots of new music though...Bandcamp
An excellent site that has a very broad and deep range of music. Has the feel of an indie record store where you might stumble across some real gems among the racks, and has a very good model for purchasing music. Main sticking point is that there are not that many 'successful' commercial acts on there.Apple Music
A tricky call for me, given the terrible business practise, software freedom and tax payment track record of Apple. They do get a couple of things right – privacy of their users and the sheer usability of their devices/OS – but it's hard to give them money knowing that they're still, at heart, a big and greedy corporation who Just Don't Care.Google Play
I've been an on-off subscriber to this for a while and I do like the size of their catalogue, but I'm cutting my Google account in the new year so will be leaving this behind for good. Their recommendations are patchy – if you follow the 'related artists' lists you do tend to end up in a fairly tightly ring-fenced group after a while – but they do put some really good playlists in front of me that help me to find new music outside of my library. I also like the fact that you have to pay to access as there's no taint of advertising and its clearer how the revenue and re-attribution work. I think I would love it were it not in the hands of an exploitative and relentless advertising machine.Spotify
Not a bad service and, in general, a pretty good recommendation engine for finding new stuff. They do seem to have a pretty shitty payment scheme for artists though and I don't like the free tier model at all. When I last looked most people used the free tier and, given that this brings in money to Spotify via advertising, I struggle to see how any of that money ends up with the artists.Amazon
No. Amazon is a blight on society that is abusing its near-monopoly in so many markets. They don't pay their tax, they treat their workers like shit and they use their size to terrorise providers into giving them even more power.YouTube
A very popular place to get music, but an absolute shit-show in terms of fairness, control and attribution. Not to mention the humanity-offending comments.