I think it's mostly orthogonal. Pirating music only takes money away from artists in the case that you were going to buy their music, and don't now because you downloaded a file, which is probably the vast minority of downloads, I would guess.
On the other hand, there are a ton of ways to support artists if you have the means, whether it's attending shows, buying merch, or what have you, none of which can be properly "pirated" in this sense.
Oh sure. It even gets more nuanced than that, which can make figuring out how to support them a bit of a challenge. Some artists will release music streaming-only and then tour and make their cash that way, others (looking at you, Bibio) never tour and rely on sales of their music.
while this is adorable and maybe even is "giving more to the artist" if ever true,
do artists only deserve to be paid only when someone "decides to pony up for an album"? that's a nice $10+ hurdle that will ensure it happens as rarely as possible. even $1 for a single song is apparently enough of a hurdle.
do artists not deserve to be paid if their song is just being played? it's just stiffing artists, whose music continues to play for free, for even that way of getting paid.
I never said they didn't deserve to be paid if their song is played - I haven't argued anywhere in this thread for not paying artists. In point of fact, I said I'm OK with Spotify.
To expand on that, I have a Spotify subscription. If I love the music and find myself listening to it regularly, I go and buy it so that they can have more than the pennies they get from my Spotify streams.
I also never said the phrase "decides to pony up for an album", so I'm not sure what those quotes are for. I said, "a piece of music", which could very well be a single song.
But thank you kindly for putting words into my mouth and then snarkily calling them "adorable". I greatly appreciate it. :)
not everything that's "in quotes" is from someone in particular or a quote at all really. it's not personal. i'm more interested in how those things get mixed up with all other 'rationales' for not paying, not streaming, not participating in that economy.
'buying an album/merch/etc would pay more anyway' sometimes gets used as a reason to pirate. along with 'artists get a pittance from spotify/streaming and aren't really satisfied with it', casting some kind of shade on that whole streaming thing - is it bad? is it not good? if it's not good, why even use it? - and also getting tangled with 'that's why...if it's pennies, whatever, just pirate it'. or sure, 'buy it later instead', if that ever happens. all that amasses to people skipping streaming, stiffing already unfavored artists (that won't get their merch bought later).
it may be a slight difference, but streaming is not just about 'convenience', it is about artists getting paid regardless of whether they'll get their album or whatever bought later or not. even if it's contentious for artists, it's not just "OK", but the sole acceptable solution at the very bottom of 'how much are you willing to pay (nothing) while still compensating artists in literally any way (that's not nothing)'
i'd go as far as to say that 'buy merch' (specifically in context of piracy and streaming workarounds) is kind of bad advice cause it gets taken as 'oh so I can skip streaming/continue pirating then? great' and taken up as excuse for piracy.
especially when combined with pointing out how artists are dissatisfied with streaming. 'oh, they don't really like it anyway? how about i just don't do that at all then.'
and of course, leaves the rest of artists that won't get favored like that in the dust. what solution do they get? where's the "stream the rest, even if you don't buy it, cause that's still something"? so the 'do they not deserve to be paid' thing actually still kinda arises here huh.
here being, in a comment section about piracy, about an app that's kinda like 'i can't believe it's not piracy!' (just doing it two-fold, circumventing both spotify and youtube at the same time. so actually, twice the piracy, perhaps.)
it's kinda like, 'streaming doesn't pay much and artists don't like it'. well great. that surely would leave an impression that'd incentivize streaming (and paying). it doesn't actually follow from it that 'you should still stream anyway'.
