Let's Change Course

You’ve probably been thinking for a while now that Spotify just isn’t a good thing, that you’re basically paying money on a monthly basis to people who hate music and think of musicians as a laughable drain on society, basically a waste of food. You’ve been paying your Netflix subscription and thinking “Wow, Netflix make a lot of expensive TV shows and films with the tenner I give them!” Then you’ve been looking at your Spotify subscription and thinking, “These guys don’t do anything with my tenner,” and you’re right. Not quite right actually, sometimes they like to throw massive amounts of money at podcasters. They threw 200 million dollars of money made out of music fans’ subscription fees at Joe Rogan, an already incredibly rich and successful podcaster with a product that doesn’t even get a moment’s thought or consideration in advance of pressing record. Spotify thought that product was more important than the Beatles back catalogue. They must’ve thought it was more important than Stevie Wonder, or the Beach Boys. You name it, whatever music you think is important, they think it deserves a fraction of a pence per stream, whereas a guy who presses record and shoots the shit with people could do with 200 million to spend on his red curtains and coffee. Okay sometimes he’s buying weed too I suppose. It’s hardly like recording Dark Side Of The Moon though.

I link to Spotify on here fairly frequently because their embed function seems to work better than everybody else’s but it hurts me to do it. It kills me to think that Daniel Ek is richer than Paul McCartney, or indeed any musician that ever lived. He always presents himself as the saviour of the music industry, saying that Napster meant that people were downloading music illegally, costing the music industry millions and so Spotify saved us all. Really all they did was create the society wide expectation that you can have all the music that’s been recorded anywhere ever for a tenner a month and that any price in excess of that is a bit steep. That’s like having your house robbed and then the police telling you to prevent further robberies by simply having a jumble sale where you sell off all your possessions for a penny each. It leaves nothing to be stolen, problem solved.

They’ve also become like a reverse Robin Hood of the business. Major labels in the good old days ripped everyone off but they did allow the profits from the their megastars to fund the development of lesser artists who were finding their feet. Spotify actually take everyone’s loose change and give it to Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift. They even decided to stop paying people who have less than a 1000 streams, small amounts aren’t worth having so they’ve just decided to take all your piddling little amounts and throw them on the Sheeran pile. Imagine doing that in any other business! Taking a walk round Clitheroe market and telling anybody who made less than £50 a day that they wouldn’t be getting any money, and that we’d decided to give it to Tesco’s. Or Amazon.

They also reward people who make shit music to fill their anodyne playlists. Some of the biggest earners are Swedish nobodies making aural wallpaper for playlists to “chill out” to, or study to. Or playlists for babies to sleep to. Or playlists to calm cats down. They call everything “content” which is a prick move that doesn’t need expanding on. Content? Fuck off.

And the sound quality is shit.

Why on earth are we all on there? We’re better than this, we deserve better.

Bandcamp is Better

It’s been around a while but I feel if we don’t all use Bandcamp it’ll be gone one day. They clearly aren’t driven by the kind of bloody-minded cutthroat expansionism that the true internet behemoths thrive on, it’ll doubtless cost them sooner or later. They started doing “Bandcamp Fridays” during Covid as a way to let artists keep all the money the public was firing their way during a difficult time. Then they just carried on doing it and they do it a few times a year, it’s an unheard of level of decency in this decade. There’s hardly a better way of supporting artists than following them on Bandcamp and buying their releases. You probably think it’d be nicer to show up when they’re touring and visit the merch stand but touring is so cripplingly expensive that your money just gets thrown on the raging bonfire of expenses. It’s nice to buy vinyl off bands if that’s your thing but if you really want to cheer a band up buy the digital download. Nothing cheers you up more than someone sending you seven or eight quid for some files they’ll probably never download. If five or ten people do it they’ll dwarf a year’s earnings on Spotify. The files are flac too, and even if you just listen on the app the sound quality is infinitely better.

Follow Them, Follow Me

I’ve found it really useful to follow a few people who I respect on there so if you’re jumping on you should go for the same ones. Don’t worry, this isn’t social in the slightest. You just see what they bought and then maybe buy it yourself. Like following them round the record shop peering over their shoulder but never talking to them.

One person I follow is out of the Earlies, he’s called JM. You can follow him here.

Following JM keeps me aware of mutual friends of ours releasing stuff, like Robin Allender and DM Stith. Actually, come to think of it they’re not just mutual friends. JM, Robin, DM Stith and me all toured together. Back in the good old days, pre-instagram, Obama in power etc.

I also bought this fantastic album of library music thanks to JM’s collection.

You should also follow Jimi while you’re at it. That’d be Jimi Goodwin the reluctant, brilliant frontman and bassist of Doves.

Jimi first got me onto Bandcamp, via an album I’ll talk about in a minute. He buys stuff fairly regularly and it’s usually in the neighbourhood of hip hop like this recent Homeboy Sandman release:

Other times he makes complete sidesteps, like with this wonderful album of Irish pipe music from Galway:

The other week I ended up checking out this album, a soundtrack performance by Spiritualized’s J Spaceman and John Coxon.

I obviously went down the rabbit hole of watching clips from the film the soundtrack had accompanied, William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton, a seemingly disparate collection lurking on Youtube:

It’s set in Memphis in 1974 and everybody who appears in the clips I’ve seen seems completely bananas. It’s like a trip to an edgier Wetherspoon’s, where everyone has firearms. I’ll obviously need to see the whole thing.

Anyway there’s one other person you ought to follow and that’s me. I’m not as prolific a purchaser as some but I really do care for some of the things I’ve found on there.

Madden’s Favourite Bandcamp Albums

I’ve bought a lot of albums from friends and cherished musical associates over the years so I won’t mention them here, they come up often enough in my ramblings though. That’d be people like Brian Acton, Liz Hanks, Frida Touray, Seaming To, Liam Frost, The Pictish Trail, Little Barrie and many more. They’re all brilliant but they’ll all get a mention at other times, trust me.

These are five albums from strangers that I’ve listened to a lot since throwing money their way on Bandcamp.

Bastien Keb- Dinking In the Shadows of Zizou

This was my first purchase on Bandcamp, under the instruction of Jimi who recommended it and then told me how to use the website. It’s bizarre, cluttered funk oozing with feel that sounds like it must be based on a crafty sample or two. It isn’t though, it’s largely the layered work of one prodigously talented multi-instrumentalist from Leamington Spa of all places. It’s ten years old now bizarrely enough, I’ve bought a few more Bastien Keb albums since too.

Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio- Close But No Cigar

Delvon Lamarr is now a firm favourite with me, and indeed with many people I know, but I first discovered his trio on Bandcamp. This is Soul Jazz organ with a heavy lean towards the soul, it often sounds deceptively simple and it’s always groovy. It doesn’t sound like anybody is showing off particularly but such solid organ bass playing really does set you apart from the pretenders. I’ve bought several more Delvon Lamarr albums and even watched him live last year, dragging Dan and Kamille along for the ride.

Khadhja Bonnet- The Visitor

This might be the album I’ve listened to most of all in my Bandcamp collection, epic sounding progressive soul topped with a gorgeous voice of sultry warmth singing exquisite lyrics over rich melodies. I bought her follow up Childqueen and it was every bit as good so I’ve just decided to shell out for a later one called California Holiday failing to realise it was a Christmas album. I’ll have to sit on that till mid-November at least so be sure to remind me. I hope she’s making a go of it.

Once and Future Band- Once and Future Band

This is one of the only prog records made outside of the 70s that I fully endorse and, dare I say it, even love. It makes all the right sonic references (a bit of Yes, a bit of ELO, maybe even a bit of Todd Rundgren’s Utopia) but more than anything it’s driven by phenomenal songwriting. Oh, and they can really fucking play too. It doesn’t really seem like they’re a going concern anymore but then I suppose it’s fine, progressive rock bands never knew when to knock it on the head so if these lads have cracked the code fair play to them.

The Heliocentrics- Infinity Of Now

I’ve broke my own rule here, I did a gig with Malcolm Catto the other week, but when I bought this album I didn’t know anything about anybody in the band, okay? I was just instantly reeled in by their universe of sound and impeccable references, often reminding me of my favourite parts of the Can catalogue. I’ve listened to this one a hell of a lot over the years too, now would be a good time for me to shell out on Barrie and Malcolm’s latest offering so that’ll be a good job to do today.

Maybe you don’t need to do away with Spotify completely, I don’t know, but think about the collection you could curate with the same amount of money and the countless artists you could make a difference to. You can also narrow your focus again, enjoy less things with more passion and attention. Take your music collection and your attention back from a cabal of Swedish venture capitalists who think a podcast and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band are both simply ‘content’ and of equal creative merit. You know better, even if they never will.