buying digital music
i buy almost all of my music through bandcamp, but there are a lot of artists (mostly those signed with big name labels) that don't have their music on it. for the other music i want, i have to use qobuz.
qobuz, for those who don't know, is a streaming service and digital music store that sells FLAC/etc versions of music from big labels. It's quite comprehensive and boasts the best per-track streaming payout for artists ($0.04 per track listened).
Alongside that, it's significantly more expensive than bandcamp. For example, At the Walls by Enforced is $8 on Bandcamp. Kill Grid (released by Century Media) is $15 for mp3, $18 for FLAC. (I know that At the Walls is cheaper on Qobuz, I'm talking about big label releases rn.)
This plays out across every major release I've looked at. Taylor Swift's Speak Now (Taylor's Version) is $21 for mp3, $25 for FLAC. Twenty five dollars!!!!!! Both prices are more than MSRP for the 2-disc cd! Just so they can make me download every track individually (they don't provide zips lol) or use their shitty electron app to download the whole album at once.
They have a streaming service like Spotify. The base price is $179, roughly $15 per month but paid up front. If you have a subscription, you get discounts when buying the FLAC versions of the songs. The Enforced album goes from $18 to $12, and the Taylor Swift from $25 to $12. That's pretty significant imo. Is it significant enough to make it worthwhile to subscribe tho?
To "break even", I would need to buy enough music through qobuz each month that I "save" the equivalent of the subscription. Buying a taylor swift album plus anything else would do that. (Do I need to own all of the taylor swift albums? No. Do I want to own all of them? ...........maybe lol) But that's only because they've inflated the price of the FLAC version far beyond what it should actually cost. So from the standpoint of "what's this worth?" instead of "what's the price they set?", it doesn't feel like I'm saving money, it just feels like it's now the cost it should be.
buying music sucks ass, why do these fucking greedy ass companies do this shit.
*Norm Mcdonald voice* this may be harsh but I hope everyone involved dies.