shiroiushi 4 hours ago

Companies are going to continue to enshittify as long as customers refuse to leave them. There's no incentive not to.

People who want to do stuff like making custom apps or scripts that use these APIs should instead be building their own music servers.

2
sham1 2 hours ago

And when one is building this kind of a music server, please support your favourite artists!

Ideally, if they have a Bandcamp or something similar, where you can directly buy their tracks and albums from them, do that. Usually this means that you can get access to high-quality FLACs and whatnot, but it will also mean that more money will go directly to the artists (usually money going to the record label and whatnot is unavoidable even with this, but there will still be fewer people in the middle).

And well, if that's not a thing, then at least try to buy the tracks from somewhere, so that they at least see some return on their efforts. Maybe physical CDs and the like. The point is just to be able to support your favourite artists!

shiroiushi 1 hour ago

Your suggestions are fine, but if you really want to support your favorite musicians, you should attend their concerts and buy merchandise there. They personally get far more profit from ticket sales and merch sales than from selling music directly. And of course, the concert experience is something way beyond just listening to a track from Bandcamp or a CD.

yurishimo 29 minutes ago

Uhm, is that actually true? How is the $10 I spend on a digital album on Bandcamp not 90%+ profit for the band? Sure, maybe the overpriced T-shirt has a bit more profit as a raw number, but realistically, I'm going to buy a band's merch the one time I see them every 3-5 years (assuming they stay together and tour for that long). If they release music more frequently, I would suspect buying a digital album is more sustainable long term.

I think this is also why you see bands like Weezer releasing more niche EPs/LPs. Heck, look at jam bands like Phish or Dave Matthews who release every single live show online as a separate album for fans to also buy to relive the experience they had at a particular show. The hardcore fans will buy the music, so it's in the band's best interest to "keep shipping" and record as much as possible.

bpye 1 hour ago

Of course that depends somewhat on the venue and the cut they take of ticket and merch sales too.

thejazzman 4 hours ago

PlexAMP is awesome