I love Bandcamp. It’s SOOOO much better than any other platform for artists. Spotify gives us nothing. I don’t even make a penny if I don’t have 1000 listeners a month. The ridiculousness of this makes me crazy. The small income from limited listeners in the west is exactly what the lesser-known artists need. But, when they don’t pay us,… …read more.
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Before 1910, with the production of the first vinyl record, music was a live experience, not a physical product sold as a commodity. But then, everything changed. Music became something that could be bought and sold.
Over a century, fans who formerly were pure supporters of the artist whose visits to their towns brought them an experience of joy, slowly began to value the songs and the albums more so than the people who made them. To possess the object—the record, cassette, CD, mp3—was the main goal, not to support the making of that magic in the first place.
So, it makes sense that when music first became free via online downloads, most people didn’t think twice about downloading it; it had long ceased to be about the people who made the art. Free stuff is fun! We had become consumers of music, not patrons of its production.
But what is music really worth? To me, besides family, it’s worth more than anything else in the world. I would give up on almost everything else in my life before I would give up music. Music is magic. It’s priceless. Money is just money.
And as a fan, if I love an artist, I can’t assign a price either. Their songs are worth so much more to me than $0.99 or $1.29. Their songs are inside of me, rattling my spirit. Music keeps my cells awake.
The question is, what’s it worth to *YOU*?
