Is It Time to Retire Bandcamp Fridays?
a.k.a. The well-intentioned initiative isn't as helpful as it seems.
Spotify is having a bad week. After Neil Young gave the streaming platform an ultimatum, saying that they could have either his music or Joe Rogan’s mammoth podcast (which has been repeatedly accused of spreading misinformation regarding the pandemic and vaccines), Spotify (not surprisingly) chose the latter, triggering yet another wave of bad press for the company. Over the past few days, Joni Mitchell joined Young in abandoning ship, rumors surged that Foo Fighters (and other high-profile artists) might follow suit, Spotify’s market valuation has dropped by billions of dollars and CEO Daniel Ek, looking to stop the bleeding, put out a statement clarifying (sort of) the company’s policies in regard to COVID-19 and content. (Worth noting: The platform’s new dedicated COVID-19 Hub is literally just a page of pandemic-related podcasts on Spotify, along with a non-clickable URL of the World Health Organization’s coronavirus webpage.)
Given all that, perhaps you’re expecting some sort of anti-Spotify diatribe, or maybe just an “I told you so” victory lap. (After all, I’ve rung the “Spotify is bad” alarm more times than I can count over the past few years.) There’s a media feeding frenzy happening right now, and social media is also rife with Spotify-related chatter. Folks whose public persona basically revolves around bashing the streaming giant have spent the past few days (repeatedly) posting, often with the giddiness of a child tearing into their presents on Christmas morning. For me, however, the idea of gloating or celebrating Spotify’s impending demise strikes me as… premature, to say the least.
Daniel Ek has already proven to be someone who’s rather impervious to public critique (let alone social media “dunks”), and a massive wave of Spotify subscriber cancellations has yet to materialize. It’s true that septuagenarian artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are bonafide big names, but it’s unlikely that their departure will ultimately have much effect on Spotify’s bottom line. If they’re joined by some contemporary pop stars, especially younger ones who aren’t already financially set for life and / or haven’t sold off a huge chunk of their publishing rights (as Young did last year), then perhaps the company will be in genuine trouble. Unfortunately though, even artists who are sympathetic to the cause are likely to find that removing their music from the platform often isn’t possible. Knowing that, Spotify will likely just attempt to ride out the current storm and wait for the requisite outrage cycle to move on to its next target.
Moreover, while I’m certainly not shedding any tears for Spotify in all this, it’s telling that the current wave of critique is so strongly focused on COVID-19 misinformation, as opposed to the company’s low payouts to artists, its collusion with major labels, its CEO’s investments in military technology or even the inherent unfairness of the entire streaming model, regardless of what company is providing the service. Young himself, despite having a long history of battling corporations, literally encouraged fans to sign up for Amazon Music to continue streaming his tunes, while Apple Music attempted to win some brownie points by declaring itself “The home of Neil Young.” Perhaps the streaming narrative will shift over time, but as of now, Spotify is being held up by many people as a uniquely bad actor, when in reality it’s just one (admittedly important) cog in a much larger—and very broken—system.
So yes, let’s hope Spotify’s downward spiral continues, but in the meantime, there’s another music platform out there that screwed up recently, and in a way that has so far garnered very little pushback: Bandcamp.
Bandcamp? Really? Yes, really.
To be clear, I like Bandcamp. A lot. I like it so much that I literally help run Buy Music Club, a platform where people can make and share lists of their favorite songs and releases from Bandcamp. Here in the newsletter, Bandcamp is the default platform whenever I link to new music, and if a release isn’t on there, there’s honestly very little chance that it’ll be featured in First Floor’s ‘New This Week’ round-up. I’d go so far to say that I am a full-blown Bandcamp booster.
So what’s the problem? What could I possibly be upset about? Bandcamp Fridays. A little more than a week ago, CEO Ethan Diamond announced that the initiative, in which the company foregoes its usual 10-15% cut of sales on the first Friday of the month, would once again resume in February (i.e. this week) and continue through at least June 2022. I wish he hadn’t.