Pardon my schadenfreude, but here we go. (Watching the music industry eat itself.)

It’s a gift article so can read it without bumping into the firewall.

https://www.facebook.com/100003556179660/posts/pfbid02Xv43d4koES2J4H78U5d83t56avFcRr735cmsR4iEkLdZpCFJvhfp5AoBLP7JhWCDl/

I’m so damned happy I didn't buy into the licensing thing, even with JLicense.

Because all their dreams are about to come true, but not at my expense.

Yeah, I’m snorting into my sleeve about this, it’s true. I fully expect that ASCAP will eventually follow suit. Why? Because making money is never enough when you can make more money. Sooner or later, someone always wants to make more money. It’s a carnival ride that can’t be stopped until it goes completely off the rails. And I don't really care when it goes off the rails, because I’m not on the ride.

One day, Bandcamp will falter or close down. It’s now been owned by three different companies in a year’s time, and the only thing I can be completely sure of is that whatever changes are eventually made to the platform will benefit the shareholders first, and the artists like fifth or seventh or something.

(I predict that the same thing will likely happen with  as well, if for no other reason than the great unchurching of America. There just won’t be enough synagogues with real music resources to support the model in the future.)

In order to get one of my songs from a previous album included on iTunes with the rest of the album — back before I knew better and still thought that was a good idea — I had to sign up for something called SounDrop. That was back in 2018. Five years ago. In that time, I’ve earned about twenty bucks from SounDrop in digital sales. 

Twenty bucks in five years.

However, I had neglected to give them my tax info so that they could release those funds to me AND simultaneously report it to the IRS on my behalf. Because sure, I dream of sitting around collecting those royalties, all twenty bucks worth, just so I can get taxed on them.

I think the idea of getting taxed on so little is offensive, especially since the Tech Bros are getting zillions of dollars’ worth of tax breaks. So I am content to let that money sit right where it is, and not share my info with SounDrop so they can rat on me. If they’ve made their cut (which presumably is at least as much as I’ve made, if not more), they can do whatever they want with mine, since they’ve cared so little about promoting my release when it was brand new. Because I’m one of a zillion very small, independent artists who will never make them enough money to care about me or my music. Because why? Say it with me kids, you know how this goes: because in the digital world, music is mere content, one’s and zeros — and not actual art. So yeah, the Tech Bros can bite me.

Forgive me for not caring what happens to these bloated juggernauts.

When it all comes crashing down in a decade or two, they’ll be holding the bag and I’ll still be picking through local “free” boxes for my next button-down shirt. Nothing will have changed all that much for me, and I am fine with that. I know all about impermanence, and I am largely okay with mine.

Bandcamp just got sold. Again.

 ANOTHER IMPORTANT MESSAGE for my followers here.

Please read to the end.

Bandcamp has been the sole distributor of my downloads for some time now. They got picked up by Epic about a year ago, and I’ve just learned that they are being sold to Songtrader, an online music licensing and distro company.

How does this change things for me and my music?

Nothing is clear yet. The sale is in process and some details have yet to become clear. But here are some differences.

Bandcamp is all about indie artists and distributing their music.

Artist who use Bandcamp get a higher percentage of download sale proceeds than on any other music platform. Membership is free. Using the platform is so simply that even I, a digital non-native, can figure it out. My time using Bandcamp has been fuss-free, and for someone like me that’s saying a lot.

Songtrader charges an annual fee for artists to use the platform.

They also charge a monthly fee for anyone wanting to download music from the platform (I.e., you need to be a subscriber). So far, I’m not thrilled about that. 

Nothing has been done about Bandcamp artists and their status as yet. Right now, the focus is on streamlining the workplace. To that end, Songtrader has just laid off about half of Bandcamp’s paid workers — with a decided focus on letting go of recently-unionized workers. That tells me that Soundtrader isn’t stoked about unions and would rather not deal with them.

The speed with which this has happened is worrisome.

And I don’t know what I will do if Bandcamp artists are summarily folded into the Songtrader platform.

So I want to ask YOU:

How many of you:

— Buy my music online?

— would be willing to do so if you had to pay to access the platform?

— Buy my music in physical CD form?

— would be willing to pay additionally for postag and handling (as much as $5-10 more) to get future CDs?

I’ve remained devoted to direct access as much as possible. I want to keep my music easy to obtain and enjoy, with as few middlemen as possible. 

I HATE middlemen in the age of “content,” because they make money from what someone else has created, and because music has been reduced to mere “content” in this model. I firmly believe that when the recorded product is finished, the artist should get the proceeds for what they’ve made. 

I’ve been willing to work with Bandcamp because they take the smallest cut for every download. But if Bandcamp goes away — and it sure looks like it might — then I will have few other viable options that don’t reduce my artistic work to a few bytes of online content. That’s a totally different vision of the artist’s creation than I like. And it reduces the amount of paid performance opportunities that will be available going forward, because why pay to hire a musician live when you can just punch up the recording for your listening pleasure?

THIS is what the preponderance of online streaming platforms has done to musicians trying to earn a living by their hard-won craft.

This all comes at a time when I am considering how much I will tour in the future, and how many more albums I might have still in me. So I am following these events closely, and I think you should too.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Thanks for supporting Jewish Music Made by Hand.