Stop renting music.

I do a lot of thinking about the net worth of the CEO of Spotify. It's $7,900,000,000.00 (7.9B) (As of 3/12/25 per Forbes.com)

I also do a lot of thinking about the net worth of my favorite musicians. How they remain on tour nearly year-round and hope you buy their silly shirts at their shows.

While Spotify doesn't make the data widely available, reports are they currently pay on average $0.003/stream for song plays on their platform (Revenue per stream varies depending on geographical location of listener, other factors)

In order to reach the Spotify CEO's networth via their own platform, you'd simply need to create a song that receives 2,633,333,333,333 (2.63T) plays.
(You can easily achieve this by getting every living person on earth (8.2B) to stream the song 321 times)

For additional context, the artist with the most Spotify streams (all time) is Taylor Swift with a humble 99,782,624,581 (99B) streams. A mere 1/26th of the CEO's greatness.

So bringing this all together: The artists create the art, spotify charges you to access it, they provide a fraction of a penny to the artist, and pocket the rest. We're happy with this arrangement. The CEO deserves that money because they're just providing so much damn value! They've earned it.

They're simply working 26 times as hard as the most streamed artist of all time on their platform. This is a skill issue. /s

This arrangement isn't exclusive to Spotify. You can substitute them for Tidal, Apple Music, Youtube Music, Amazon Music, etc. CEO makes a fortune and your favorite band cancels tour when their gear gets stolen and they can't afford to replace it.

Let's change things.

Offline music and you.

Cancel your subscription. Delete the app.
Here's a revolutionary idea: Own something instead of renting it.

Head over to bandcamp.com and search your favorite artist. There's a good chance their music is available to download for a small fee or even 'name your price.' Whatever you're paying, the artist gets the majority.

When a fan buys something on Bandcamp, an average of 82% of the money goes to the artist or their label — typically in 24-48 hours
- bandcamp.com

You were using the free version of spotify and have no money to spare for music?
Go get your goddamn library card and sign up for Freegalmusic.com (iOS and android app available). Your weekly download limit will be determined by their agreement with your local library.

Offering over 18 million songs belonging to 200+ genres— including Sony Music’s catalog of legendary artists— Freegal Music+ is one of the most popular library services in the world, and with 200,000 songs added monthly, there’s always something new for listeners to discover. So what are you waiting for? All you need is your library card

Can't find the music on either service? Buy their CD and rip it like it's 2006.
You found their CD on the side of the road and feel guilty about acquiring art for free? Buy tickets to their live show. Buy their merch. Hunt them down in person and hand them cash. There's no reason for some tech billionaire to get involved in the transaction.

You've got files. Okay, now what?

Digital Audio Players (DAPs) and you.

Virtually every cell phone manufactured within the last 25 years has some sort of built in music player software. iPhone, Android, Windows phone, Blackberry OS, Palm whatever, blah blah. Put the music files on your phone and there is an app to play them.

If you're a true weirdo like we pride ourselves on being, that's not quite good enough. When I'm listening to music (or a podcast) I don't want to be distracted by notifications, phone calls, etc. I'm spending my life trying to avoid all of that unnecessary bullshit. I want peace. I want to listen to Deep Space 9mm and lift weights. Why should I have to see my work emails.

Hop on ebay and buy an old iPod from a real human being. Pop it open, replace the HDD with an SD card and a new battery, and enjoy the clickwheel life. Buy an old Microsoft Zune and save it from the next 1000 years in a landfill. Like touch screens? One of our writers is quite fond of their Fiio JM21. I've had enough of touch screens and love my HiFi Walker H2 (running custom firmware).

You know what, just buy a CD player and put a CD in it. Go to a thrift store and get a cassette tape player. I don't care. Give money to real artists. Real people. Actual human beings. Just stop giving money to these rich CEO freaks.

- The Writers

Written without AI, not even spell check.