I've had something on my wind for weeks and I'm finally ready to share it today.

Throughout 2025, the winds of change blew hard on the music industry.

From venues closing the tours cancelled to AI artists on the charts and low payouts for real ones, we artists are just trying to brace ourselves against the chill.

Personally, I cancelled my Spotify subscription in the fall and haven’t looked back.

For me, this was a decision about ethics and equity but also about the way we consume and value music itself.

Here are my reasons for ditching “Big Green” last year.

• Artist payouts are abysmal. Spotify has one of the lowest royalty rates in the industry. It has become increasingly hard to make a living from recorded music, one of the main ‘products’ of my career. If you streamed my new song “The Silver Year” 1000 times, for instance, I’d receive about 12 cents. If that song gets fewer than 1000 streams in a year, I actually get nothing (thanks to their recently added 1000 stream threshold for payouts).
• Spotify profits have funded terrible things. Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder, invested 600 million euros in a company making AI-powered war drones. I have a lot of feelings about AI, but there’s no question in my mind that it shouldn’t be killing people. It sucks to know that any portion of my monthly subscription fees have ended up building AI-powered killing machines. This news was my ethical tipping point.
• I read Mood Machine by Liz Pelly. To be honest I can’t say I ‘enjoyed’ the book, but it taught me a few key things. First, that big labels have invested enough in Spotify to be co-owners and heavily influence its course. Has it ever been a level playing field for independent artists? Second, Spotify has trained us to listen “passively” rather than be engaged listeners. And third, that passive listening has paved the way for a glut of music made AI. The chance that I’ve streamed an AI song in one of my listening sessions and not noticed is pretty high.

This whole idea of “passive listening” is not just a problem for Spotify, but all streaming services.

I think back to recent times our kids had control of the car bluetooth. I’d hear a song I liked and ask them who it was. They had no idea. It was on a playlist someone else made. Or an algorithm made. They had no connection to the human making the music. If there was one.

I want to be connected to my listeners.

I want us to take deep dives together into music and meaning.

Streaming wasn’t built for this. In fact, it actively works against deep listening.

I’ve increasingly come to believe that “the streaming game” is not a game I want to win. It’s a distraction.

Around the same time I cancelled Spotify Premium, I stopped looking at my stats on the platform. I rarely check them now. It’s freeing.

The past several years I’ve spent so much time trying to play Spotify’s game. I’ve even made writing and production decision based on possible playlist placements. Shorter intros. Chorus first. Get to the hook fast! I’ve spent hours tracking data and hundreds of dollars to get more listeners on a track or album.

I’ve been trying to win a game with a prize I shouldn’t even want. My music is not about broad but shallow appeal to a disconnected global audience. It’s about stories told between friends. It’s about feeling something. It’s a conversation with real people like you.

So why am I even there?

My next step would be removing all of my music from the platform, but I’m wrestling with that. That decision affects you, the listener, more than it affects me. I want you to be able to find my music where you prefer to listen – and the fact is streaming is so simple for so many people, compared to the alternatives.

What are your thoughts on this?

Where do I go from here?

As an indie performer, my income has always come mostly from directly from fan support, music sales, show tickets and merch. I’ve made less than a thousand dollars in nearly 10 years from tens of thousands of streams. No one can build a career on a hundred - or even a thousand dollars a year.

Aside from streaming numbers being a metric that festivals and booking agents use to judge my value (which does matter for now unfortunately) I can’t say streaming has had much of an impact on my career trajectory anyways.

As a listener, I’ve enjoyed streaming. I like finding songs immediately, and I used to enjoy being introduced to new artists through “Discover Weekly” algorithmic playlists. I get some of that over on Apple Music now, but that doesn’t solve the bigger problems of funding artists (all streaming platforms pay relatively poorly to varying degrees) and encouraging deeper listening.

Compare that to the albums I’ve bought on vinyl have become favourites because of the intention required to listen. I have to start the player up, pull a large record from its sleeve, set the needle just right and then come back and flip it over 20 minutes later. This is a hassle, and that friction leads to active listening. But vinyl is expensive so I don’t buy a lot of records. It is also confined to one room in my house.

I’ve actually started buying digital music again.

Did you know that the iTunes store still exists? Apple doesn’t seem to want you to find it, but it’s there.

Bandcamp is a better option for buying music online, so I’ve started building up a little library there this year (I recently bought Tim Baker’s fabulous Christmas album “Full Rainbow of Light” on Bandcamp).

Bandcamp’s biggest selling feature is it’s high artist payout. They take 15% of sales (except on periodic Bandcamp Fridays, where they take nothing). Paired with payment processing fees, an artist gets about 82 cents for every dollar you spend on their music at Bandcamp. That’s compared to about 70% on the iTunes store, which is still pretty fair, but could add up to a lot less over time.

The other cool thing about Bandcamp is that you can pay more of if like.

Many fans choose to support artists this way. Some kind soul bought my album DUMB HOPE for $25 this past Bandcamp Friday (a promotion they run where they take NO cut) when they could have paid just $10. That was a lovely surprise.

Now, I won’t lie to you. Downloading and maintaining a library of MP3 music files is a pain. In fact, it’s oddly harder than it used to be.

I remember how easy it was in 2010 to buy songs on iTunes, build a playlist, plug in my iPod and take those tunes with me anywhere. No longer. It’s still possible, but it’s a more fractured and complicated experience.

It seems we’ve lost some of our collective knowledge and skillset around digital music.

Spotify and streaming platforms have spoiled us with simplicity and instant access to all the songs in the world. I’m not sure we can top that with any alternative, but that convenience comes with big costs for the creators making the music we consume.

Our predicament makes me think of Marshall McLuhan’s thoughts on “extensions and amputations”. His idea was that every technology extends our human capabilities in some way – but over time it also replaces or amputates some part of us. There’s a lot to digest in that idea, but here I simply mean to say our full embrace of streaming services has meant we’ve given up the knowledge and skills involved in owning our own media as well as our easy ways of enjoying it.

You may have a library of CDs but no CD player. Even cares haven’t had them for years.

You may have a folder full of music files but can’t figure out how to play them in the car.

There will likely be a learning curve and friction involved in owning music again – and in playing that music.

That said, I told myself this for months if not years and now that I’m figuring it out it’s not nearly so bad as I feared.

Today’s online infrastructure actually makes music ownership easier than ever in some ways.

Current internet speeds mean very fast downloads of music files (I remember waiting many long minutes to play something I’d bought on iTunes ten years ago).

Hard drives are so big now that you don’t really need to worry about storing your music collection.

Cloud storage services mean you can access that music from anywhere.

There are even services now that combine the best of music ownership AND streaming, like Bandcamp or Apple’s own iTunes Match. I’ll tell you more about those services and how I use them in another email.

So what are the best ways we can support artists in 2026?

1. Use your streaming money to buy digital albums.

If you pay $10 a month for a streaming service like Spotify right now, you could spend that money on a new record every month.

You could take that month to engage with that one record and build a deeper connection with an artist and their work. Most of your $10 will have gone straight to that artist. You can do this a dozen times every year and own 12 new albums.

Heck, you might choose to stay subscribed to a streaming service for music discovery or one-off listens (kind of like the way we use radio), then add a new $10 a month budget item for buying the best music you discover.

2. Attend local live shows

This really is the best way to support musicians. Attend their small, local shows. Pay for your ticket. Buy merch or leave a tip. Talk with the artist after the show. Encourage them. These are all benefits to a small, local music economy that you don’t get at a stadium show and these magic little moments are happening all around you all of the time.

3. Invest in artists directly through fan support platforms

Many indie artists provide a way for you to invest in their career by becoming a member of a fan community, like on Patreon or Substack. I offer the opportunity to become a paid subscriber here on Backstage.

You can’t do this for every artist, but a few dollars a month invested in artists you feel a connection to goes a long way. I have a small stable of artists I support this way each month. You often get their digital music included free (like I offer paid Backstage members) and you will hear music ideas in process before anyone else.

My Backstage community is small but means so much to me – and I’m including every free member in that statement. Connecting this way reminds me why I do what I do, so thank you.

Those are the main three ways I’ll be working to support artists directly this year, weaning myself off of the streaming ecosystem that had dictated my relationship with recored music for the past decade.

I’d love to hear about the ways that you value music in your own life and your thoughts on streaming.

You may love it - and that’s fine too! No shame here at all. But I’d love to hear what you love about it.

Thanks as always for being part of my community,

In hope,

(Dave) Von Bieker

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