Problem with buying a digital album is the same one as buying anything digitally rather than subscribing - since it's digital how do I know it'll stand the test of time? Does it have resale value?

I don't know the answer, considering I don't want to find room to store CDs or carry around a discman, but that's the problem.

Honestly, I would rather listen on Spotify and Venmo the band $5 towards their next track. Not sure what that looks like in a scaleable way.

That's good to know. Yeah, I think Spotify is great for discovering new bands, but if you want them to keep going you gotta chip in. We need more than just the same top 40 artists in our world.

I don’t mind the homogenisation- I work in video games and benefit from it in that side.

But you are right if you want it to succeed then you need to chip in. We sell an album for £7 digitally, or £30 for vinyl + digital, but it’s basically just donating to us to say “please keep recording stuff”. We’ve made more off selling a single vinyl than all our combined streaming income

i don't think spotify is good for discovery, unless "discovery" means "more of the same."

i've taken to terrestrial radio for true discovery and bandcamp for digging into a genre.

Honestly, I've found Youtube Music great for discovery. There's a lot of metal bands that are small enough that you can't find their album preorders on Amazon that I found only by following the musical recommendations down the rabbit hole. In my city smaller bands from Europe don't tend to get a lot of playtime on the radio.

Interesting, especially since I really enjoy death/speed metal. I'll give this a try; thank you!

Great to hear some people are buying - I discover a lot of music through spotify (more through instagram to be honest) just wish more of the bands I like would play near me!

Assuming you have a Bandcamp store, have their zero fees Friday events been helpful to your band?

I had a look and it doesn’t seem to. There’s basically no tail on our last release so what we actually need is more eyeballs, which means making more content. The marketplace is saturated, like the App Store, so really our audience is coming from organic growth - playing gigs, and trying to get radio play or playlisted on Spotify

That's the thing with music, there is so much supply that even if your stuff is good, you are up against plenty of other good stuff that there is no logic to something becoming more popular than the other.

But if we are being realistic, if your stuff is truly great and unique, it will blow up. You just need to realize when you are not part of the great that you can do this just for your own pleasure, with no intention of success or anything like that, a hobby like any other...

Good luck and do keep reminding your fans to follow you on there, maybe you have a demo/live recording that could be released on the day if nothing new? I get a lot of emails from followed artists doing a temporary discount code but even just a "hey this is a great day to buy our music!" + reminding me of past releases makes it more likely I'll visit and buy something.

I'm trying to think of a non-tacky/doxxing(if you care) way you could drop your band here so those interested could have a listen.