For the record, I am steelmanning a position in which abject piracy is a social negative, which I do not actually believe, but if we take that at face value my arguments still hold.
For the record, I am steelmanning a position in which abject piracy is a social negative, which I do not actually believe, but if we take that at face value my arguments still hold.
2. If you just listen to the occasional song, listen to them on Spotify. Artist gets _some_ money, but nowhere near as much as #1.
3. If you don't care about the artist getting anything at all, then use workarounds like this tool, or download on torrents.
Most people used to do #3, and are now doing #2. #1 is just not going to happen, because there's too much friction.
Why do we keep insisting on having middlemen?
Not that I believe it's good or bad either way, it's just cumbersome. People want easy solutions. A few of my long distance friends are artists, and it makes them happy to see that I have bought their new cassette or vinyl on Bandcamp above the regular price, and send nice notes with it.
I can do this for more people more easily thru Bandcamp than figuring it all out myself.
Fair enough. Then don't pay anything?
> it makes them happy to see that I have bought their new cassette or vinyl
On the other hand, I do not want to buy merch, I don't care about physical media and I flat out refuse to buy something with DRM and/or through exploitative middlemen.