I used to be heavily involved in supporting and advocating for independent music. I would go to gigs and buy physical media. For years I wrote about local bands and ran an online radio station championing local music scenes across Asia. When I moved to Sweden a couple of years ago though, I stopped being as involved in local music. Instead I began to lean heavily into Spotify (ironically, a local company) for music consumption. When it comes down to it it's basically about ease of use - I can stream to my speakers, there's a desktop app, and while it doesn't have everything, it certainly has enough to keep me going for a long while.

But when it comes down to it, I know that streaming a track on Spotify is not supporting the musician. For 10000 streams an artist might get $40¹. I've happily paid that much for vinyl LPs before and only listened to the record a few dozen times. There's clearly some disconnect in my mind between digital and physical media.

All of this is to say that I'm going to try and start purchasing more directly from artists. Probably via Bandcamp, a service that has been impecabbly supporting independent music for a long time now.