Happy Sunday, y’all! DZ, the resident nerd here. When we put together our first political songs playlist to share with you all, we discussed where we should create it. None of the online streaming services that allow for free listening support artists well, so I ended up choosing Spotify, since it has such a large user base—I figured it might be the most familiar one for folks.
A number of you pointed out in the comments how craptastic Spotify is for artists’ incomes. Weird Al even posted a video about it recently, and Spotify accidentally included it in their year-end Wrapped posts. Hee. To be clear, none of the mainstream streaming services pay artists well. If you like someone’s work, make sure you:
see if they have an independent way to purchase and own their music, like on Bandcamp;
buy their merchandise on their websites;
buy tickets to their shows;
support them with monthly subscriptions on Substack, Patreon and other platforms if they’re there.
That said, a few people also had technical issues listening on Spotify, so I’ve now created Friday’s 1960s playlist on YouTube Music. Yep, we know YouTube is owned by corporate behemoth Google, but hopefully it’ll at least be easier for folks to enjoy.
And here’s the original post from Friday:
Thank you for caring about us musicians and encouraging folks to support us in the ways they can! Steve Eulberg