In case your attention’s been elsewhere, Spotify has been at the center of another uproar lately: last week Neil Young pulled his music from the streaming service to protest the COVID misinformation it was spreading via Joe Rogan’s podcast. Young’s attempt to call out Rogan’s bullshit has precipitated other artist withdrawals and a wave of subscriber cancellations, which on balance is probably a good thing, but this brouhaha has ironically diverted attention from vital ongoing campaigns protesting Spotify’s long-term problem with pitifully tiny royalty payouts.
For those of you who need to get caught up on that subject, I recommend Jack Riedy’s 2020 Reader story on the streaming economy, which explains why so many independent musicians feel they have no choice but to leave their music on Spotify. Riedy also pointed out that musicians who can generate sales on Bandcamp get to keep a vastly larger share of that money, which is another reason I bring his story up now. On Friday, February 4, Bandcamp Friday returns, which means that for 24 hours the platform will pass along to artists and labels its usual share of sales revenue.
Bandcamp Fridays, which usually fall on the first Friday of the month, recently took another short break, but this installment will nonetheless be the 19th since the pandemic started. If you’ve somehow managed not to hear about Bandcamp Friday until now, you’ve stumbled across the right post: As usual, I’ve put together a list of music you can buy on Bandcamp that the Reader has covered since the previous Bandcamp Friday in December 2021. And via the roundup I published for that one, you can access every other Bandcamp Friday list of Reader-recommended albums, EPs, and singles—hundreds upon hundreds of releases. Click on the titles below to see what Reader writers had to say about the music in question. Happy hunting!
