I've taken to buying CDs again. I still stream, but for artists I like I at least own the CD and might pick up some merch too because the reality is that only the big artists make a ton of money, or even any money at all.
But if we are being realistic, if your stuff is truly great and unique, it will blow up. You just need to realize when you are not part of the great that you can do this just for your own pleasure, with no intention of success or anything like that, a hobby like any other...
But you are right if you want it to succeed then you need to chip in. We sell an album for £7 digitally, or £30 for vinyl + digital, but it’s basically just donating to us to say “please keep recording stuff”. We’ve made more off selling a single vinyl than all our combined streaming income
i've taken to terrestrial radio for true discovery and bandcamp for digging into a genre.
I don't know the answer, considering I don't want to find room to store CDs or carry around a discman, but that's the problem.
Honestly, I would rather listen on Spotify and Venmo the band $5 towards their next track. Not sure what that looks like in a scaleable way.
Went to see Pete Doherty not long ago, and bought some hand typed (and signed) lyrics sheets/art from him - felt like buying something quite personal.
Agree about the principle though, I try to buy merch at every gig I go to. Makes me feel slightly less bad about using Spotify.
And I understand about the movement to digital - I typically rip the CDs as FLAC files and put them on a hard drive.
I'm in my own weird state of mind where I prioritize collecting physical over digital to the point of neglecting digital-only releases - digital is always going to have a copy somewhere I can listen to or purchase, but physical is limited and there's no guarantee I'll be able to get a copy later. This is probably an overly materialistic view, though.
Something like an NFC-equipped greeting card (maybe more than just a cover; pages can be inside for fun stuff that used to be in the CD inserts/jackets/etc), that I could set on a stand which would then interface with the card and start playing music. Pull the card, playback stops. You get the idea. I just think something like that would serve both purposes - look and display nicely, while giving a conversation piece and more content from the creators; but not prone to damage causing issues with playback and as durable as you want them to be (could be more like HID Prox cards; plastic instead of cardboard. Or even more "exotic" materials. Lots of room for creativity).