Hello there 👋
I am following the path of decreasing dependency on US products myself, and I was wondering if there is any real alternative for bandcamp? Meaning, the one that would be a proper marketplace for niche music creators, that would allow DRM-free downloads and streaming at the same time.
Bottom line: I do want to pay for music I like to support musicians, though I want to do it in a way that would allow me to listen to their work in a way I like the most.
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The qobuz store has DRM free downloads.
I’ve been using the free trial of Qobuz for a streaming service the last few days (boycot spotify!), and after some initial struggles setting up the account, I’m pretty happy with it!
Does anyone know anything about the ethics of the company?
They pay the highest in the streaming industry apparently. 1¢-4¢ per stream depending on region and other factors. For comparison, spotify pays 0.3¢ with very exploitative thresholds to avoid playing small artists.
Bandwagon is an attempt to make a federated social media for artists. Who knows if it’ll succeed, but checking out the artists on the platform would be a first step. :)
The artists link whatever services they like, which in a way I think is nice. Personally I don’t like paying for digital files, so my music expenses are mostly spent on vinyl records. The artists are probably not left with much after all the shipping, the vinyl, the cellophane lining, the high gloss, the tape, and the gear, but at least I end up with something that’s mine.
As others have mentioned, Qobuz is a French company running a DRM-free music store.
Someone mentioned funkwhale on a different thread - full disclosure, I’ve not actually used it. It seems to also be federated, although it looks more like a way for artists to publish their music without the need for record companies?
Yeah, Funkwhale is more of a defederated music/audio publishing platform. It’s good, but I find it somewhat challenging to discover music there.
For those who remember Grooveshark, Funkwhale is a bit of a spiritual successor.
Totally with you on vinyl, though some music is not available in vinyl at all. So, I’d prefer to have an alternative if possible :)
i like ampwall but it is US based
It is and I totally get why this community can’t support it but if the aim is to avoid big US brands, Ampwall is not that. It is created and developed by musicians in a DIY environment. If you’re familiar with the Black Metal band Woe then you might be reassured to know that the founder of Woe is that developer. It is owned under a license that is not profit driven and has civic and environmental issues built in.
As I say, I’m aware that this is still technically a US brand but it is not some huge multinational. It is fairer to artists than Bandcamp and many of the artists on Ampwall are European.
Yeah, I edited my comment after realizing which community I was in and reading up on Ampwell. Oops. :)
Bandwagon looks cool, but do they have a feature to pay artists like bandcamp? Or even a “name your price (aka quasi free)”?
Under the “coming soon” section, they state the following:
We’re deep into building the Bandwagon Roadmap, including even better music discovery and publishing tools And online album sales are close behind.
So it seems the idea is to provide a way for artists to sell their albums. I’m curious what it’ll look like in practice - I guess they’re still trying to work that out themselves as well. :)
Oh i missed that. thanks. So it’s planned. kinda. Great :-)
You could also buy cds if the songs are not available on Qobuz.
Here to vouch for Qobuz. They’ve had quite a few artists that Bandcamp has not had, and they pay artists well. DRM-free too. The only hassle is bulk downloading (I use a tampermonkey script to help with this). Its not possible with the website(unless you use a script) and requires their proprietary downloader app which doesn’t support Linux yet.
Adding a link to a thread with the same question awhile back, might also contain helpful info: https://feddit.uk/post/25034087. sadly it was a short thread.
Bandcamp did nothing wrong
