hot take: if an artist is already popular, then they dont need your support anywhere near as much as a bandcamp artist does. i believe it is ethical to enjoy "popular" music without paying for every megabyte. just go see them when they come to town and buy a t-shirt if the spirit moves you.
this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
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+1 for Bandcamp. they often run a "bandcamp friday" event where they waive their cut of all music sold that day, so almost everything (payment processors still take a cut) goes to the artist. there are also self-hosted alternatives to bandcamp like faircamp
Wow, that says a lot for Bandcamp
Especially given that they're owned by Epic Games
Epic Games is long gone as a owner, they've since been owned by Songtradr, which isn't any better, as they basically are anti-union and only gave 60 out of previously 118 workers a contract to keep working there. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp
Huh, I missed that.
i'll have to check those out!!
You could also buy CDs and rip them
This is definitely a decent starting point but not a complete solution, unfortunately. It's not always cost-effective if you only want a few tracks from an album or need to import it to get it at all (or if it was a limited release it can be hard to find at all).
CDs take quite some space once you have more than like 50. Selling them after ripping in large quantities is a lot of work. I wouldn't buy CDs unless I'm really into the physical medium (nothing wrong with that - sadly, most downloads lack high res artworks, booklets etc).
I just donate them when I'm done. Often you can buy the physical CD cheaper from places like discogs than you can a digital version. So I don't feel bad giving them away afterwards. Someone might even discover the bands I love.
the hero we deserve.
my physical collection is mostly thrift store finds
Unrelated but did you know that Libraries oftentimes have cd's, dvd's, and even audiobooks available to borrow?
Yes, and while borrowing contributes to their "we're needed, please fund us" justification, it doesn't directly support the artists.
If there's demand, the library will need more copies to borrow 👀
Legal, yes. Supports the artist? No.
The artists don't make money on CD sales?
Not if you're buying them 2nd hand on eBay, which would represent the bulk of building a collection.
To be clear, im not trying to detract from the effort, it's just op mentioned artists not getting paid what they deserve.
Bit of a stretch, but second-hand sales do influence the value of the CD and therefore increase its initial sale price (ie. CDs have extra value because they can be resold).
So buying used does indirectly increase profits, though of course the lion's share of that is likely not going to the artist anyway.
Sure, I can accept that.
I don't particularly have an opinion on artist compensation vs listener freedom when it comes to this. Obviously, I would prefer artists were paid what they deserve, but I don't like participating in the fallacy that the end user is ethically responsible for the bullshit music industry infrastructure not paying artists properly.
I give where I can, but I'm just some person.
It highly depends on their contract and if they are a big name or not. There is a reason a lot of bands tour though as they make a lot of more money from it than CD sales.
Deezer, Qobuz, and Bandcamp. Between those three you should have everything.
Frequent buyer on Qobuz, I can recommend.
Can somebody make deezer give regional prices? 15usd it's a lot of money in some places
I didn't say it was cheap, lol. I said it's where you can buy music.
I personally used 7digital to rebuild my music collection. They sell good licensed mp3s.
I have absolutely nothing negative to say about them. The prices were decent, the files are boring DRM free MP3s, and they had a really good selection of music.
Honestly it looks almost exactly the same as when I used it for the first time like 15 years ago.
I buy vinyls and merch. It doesn't entirely cut out the middleman but it's less morally bankrupt than giving it to record labels
Exactly. I go to concerts and buy their merch.
I just set up Navidrome in my lunch break and am looking into exactly this. I hadn't downloaded/organized my last Bandcamp purchases and now I have 32 zip files on my laptop and am wondering how to get them properly tagged and sorted in the existing library.
I'm rereading this article by @nfreak@lemmy.ml and it seems like beets could be an answer, but I don't fully understand what exactly it does yet.
Beets can organize your music library. It uses musicbrainz IDs to identify songs and albums, it can move/copy the files into folders. You can also convert files right away. I created additional mp3 files and moved Thema into a separate folder for use on my phone to save space.
There are plugins to normalize the volume. Loads of dstuff. You just have to set up a config file to your needs and you are good to go.
I've just started using beets for organizing my collection. It's relatively easy once you get the hang of it. Ease I suppose differs based on how organised/tagged your collection is currently.
Beets is one solution, and I also recommend taking a look at Musicbrainz Picard. It's a more graphical and user friendly way (though more manual) to identify, organize, tag, and sort music into a preferred format. It's what I use on all my Bandcamp purchases to clean up metadata and add things like lyrics before it automatically throws it into the right folder
I think I’ve bought from 7digital a time or two in the past and had no problems. Obviously there are issues with Amazon as a company, but I think they were the first big name to offer DRM-free MP3 purchases and I used it a lot back when it first launched, especially since they offered a selection of albums each month for just $5. They should have most mainstream music available for purchase, depending on which country you’re in. According to this Wikipedia page listing music stores they only offer 256 kbps MP3 but I was sure most if not all were upgraded to 320 kbps now, although of course you would have to re-download anything if you had downloaded the lower-quality version previously. That Wikipedia page is a good link to other stores as well, with a number I’d never heard of including specialty stores.
Also, along with someone else’s comment mentioning ripping CDs like the old days, check to see if you have a local record store. It’s been a mantra since at least the Gen-X days to “support your local scene.” I know in Raleigh the longtime staple Schoolkids Records is still alive and kicking, although their Chapel Hill store closed last year. It might take some digging but it can be worth seeing if there’s a local store in your area.
I have been using mp3va.com for some time, the price per track is mad cheap. Im not saying its fully legal (https://www.mp3va.com/help#q42_0) but if pay someone for my music then I feel a bit better about it.
If what you want is on bandcamp then get it from there, as has already been said its the little guys that need your money. The big artists already have millions.
You feel better if you just give some change to whomever, even if your favorite artists get didly squat... 🙄
mp3va.com has been listed in U.S. Trade Representative annual reports as being unauthorized to sell music. Legal experts have explicitly stated that while MP3VA claims to operate legally under Ukrainian copyright laws, "it is not legal for them to sell this music in the United States".
The site operates from Ukraine with Russian IP addresses, and security analysis tools give it an "extremely low" trust score. One security review describes it as "a pirate website from Russia engaged in the selling of digital downloads without licensing or distribution agreements from record labels.
Yeah, I did think that.
not much I can do now
mp3va.com has been listed in U.S. Trade Representative annual reports as being unauthorized to sell music. Legal experts have explicitly stated that while MP3VA claims to operate legally under Ukrainian copyright laws, "it is not legal for them to sell this music in the United States".
I've never used the site, but there seems to be an argument here regarding moral law and legalities within the United States.
But the site claims that:
Service www.Mp3va.com pays full-scale author's royalties to owners of pieces of music, trademarks, names, slogans and other copyright objects used on the site.
If that's the case, I think the OP should feel good about it.
Buying off a site like them likely pays out more per user than listening to the same songs on a streaming platform.
I used to buy from Beatport when I was actively djing. Nice because the tracks are available in 320kbps or lossless. No idea how much Beatport's cut is though
Buy vinyl with download card, sell vinyl without download card. It's..... an option....
I think Amazon and Qobuz both offer some music for purchase.
Everyone gave good alternatives for where to buy music. As for the pipeline for getting them into your music server, I have Picard running in a container (a couple projects do this, search docker picard) and I have the settings all configured so that when I drop in files to my NAS (though samba or whatever), then I just double click the folder in Picard and hit save and it moves it into my music server’s directories, all properly and nicely tagged (I have the container volumes all set up properly as well)
You can look into beets or wrtag for more automation friendly tagging services.
I borrow CDs from library, buy from bandcamp and 7digital. I keep audio files on my laptop in a organized folder structure by genre/album and rsync to my Jellyfin. To listen, i play from my laptop to bluetooth speakers and I use the FinAmp app on my iPhone to listen on the road because it has a sweet Offfline mode. Also, i have a nice usb DAC to direct connect (RCA) my laptop to my HiFi system in the basement. I support a local indie radio station which helps with music discovery.