funbil

it's the absolute best way to support artists, periodically has 'bandcamp friday's where artists get 100% of the cut on album sales, and is a great way of getting a line out to artists you love. you can follow their releases, get newsletter updates if they happen to post, tag your favorite track & leave a kind word on their album page. there's live-streamed shows & listening parties. it's great! please use it if you have the means to do so. make an account & keep all your music in the highest quality possible. it's yours! you don't need to forfeit it ever.

there's been a lot of awful mismanagement by their corporate overlords, but the core team is still there trying their best for artists & they deserve the support to keep the service going and persevere in the face of awful union busting & asset sales

using another service!

not all of them are great, but i will put in my two cents for qobuz. wtf is qobuz you ask? yeah i hadn't heard of it either, but after looking into them this year, i am very enthusiastic about the platform. specifically: artists reportedly get 4 CENTS (whole-ass cents) per stream, so it only takes like... 25 streams to make that artist a dollar. if you're listening to an OST that has, say, 60 tracks (like the chicory OST, which is on there), streaming the whole thing will generate ~$2.40. that's wild!!

another plus is that qobuz actually lets you purchase music in FLAC and even mp3s are at the highest quality provided by the distributor. in an age where very few services let you actually purchase music anymore (and itunes users having to do ridiculous contortions to get the files in the format that you actually want) this alone is a big selling point. you also don't have to subscribe to their streaming service to buy music, but you do get a discount if you do.

the main negative i've noticed is that literally every soundtrack on the platform is labeled 'film soundtrack' despite being for, say, tv, or games, or anything that isn't a film. hopefully they add more genre diversity to their categorization system.

anyway, this is not sponsored in any way, but with spotify on track to make their payouts even WORSE for small artists soon, i really would love everyone to look into ways to migrate off their service.

#stop paying for spotify #bandcamp #Qobuz #spotify wrapped

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in reply to @kuraine's post:

curious quail @curiousquail11/29/2023, 6:11 PM

this is wild - I'd never heard of qobuz until your post and I went to check if my distributor supports them; turns out, they do and my stuff was already submitted to them along with other stores when they were released - but it's hard for me to tell if that's actually true lmao.

According to soundrop I have 3 records on there, but internet searching is telling me none; I wonder if there's a curation or criteria process for allowing stuff on the platform.

nini @filenine11/29/2023, 6:27 PM

qobuz even supports hi-res audio! it doesn't really affect perceived audio quality, but there are some very nice hi-res versions of albums that aren't available on other streaming services. a good example is green day's american idiot, where the hi-res version of the album has less dynamic range compression (which means better-sounding drums!)

and, for anyone else who's reading, lena raine's music is on there.

here's a link to her artist page
the chicory soundtrack, which she mentioned in her post
and some albums, like the celeste piano collections, even include digital booklets!

Vulpes Absurda @Vulpes11/29/2023, 6:36 PM

Huh not heard of Qobuz but it does have some older stuff that I've never been able to find outside of Amazon and Itunes which I don't use. Finally a way to get Strapping Young Lad's City

nini @filenine11/29/2023, 6:55 PM

city? good taste!

Vulpes Absurda @Vulpes11/29/2023, 6:58 PM

Thanks! Not a metal guy per say but for whatever reason that album really clicked with me. Also I have a strong preference for the remaster which I don't normally and for some reason that's made it harder to find

nini @filenine11/30/2023, 6:46 AM

yeah, city isn't like most metal. it's this weird industrial/death/thrash/groove/nu-metal thing that manages to be its own sound and genre.

i think you're the first person i've ever seen who had a preference between the original and the remaster. what do you like about the remaster?

Vulpes Absurda @Vulpes11/30/2023, 2:22 PM

The Original sounds really compressed to me. And also really quiet? Which is weird as I normally associate that kind of compression with the loudness wars, but in order to get much detail out of City I have to crank it really loud and then it still sounds compressed and I risk being killed by a heart attack when a Discord notification comes in at 800db. Just an all around weird edge case.

I should look into it more as I actually find Devin Townsend producers in the metal field and find his mixes really good more often than not so I kind of suspect he's the one that redid City.

Also somewhat unrelated but Devin Townsend did production on an album called CLASSICS by the band Four Stroke Baron (Metal bands I swear) that I think is really underrated. Though it's very much a cis dudes album in lyrical content, but its issues are less outright misogyny and more eye roll worthy lines like "You will find the effect of well endowed women make money" that have me thinking "is this supposed to be insightful? Ironic? Some sort of critique about the bands life in Reno Nevada?". Could be off putting so just a heads up on that is all

noah @noahtheduke11/29/2023, 6:43 PM

Qobuz is cool! It’s how I buy all of the music that isn’t on Bandcamp, which is primarily artists or bands that have signed to big labels. It’s still significantly more expensive in general than Bandcamp which is both good and bad, and being forced to download track by track or use their shitty download app sucks, which are my two main complaints.

null potential @nullpotential11/29/2023, 7:06 PM

Can confirm Bandcamp is best for us. This has made me realize, though, that there's no good decentralized alternative (except audius but they only use crypto). Maybe I can make one.

HVB @hvb11/29/2023, 7:52 PM

with a name like qobuz i was not optimistic, but it's great to hear that one has more potential for fair returns, quality and purchases. i guess i should add that one to my list of platforms on my distributor...

Metalchip @Metalchip8911/29/2023, 10:39 PM

I don't like bandcamp because they (were) owned by (Epic Games/Tencent) (I'm not sure how the new owners will deal with stuff at Bandcamp)

kuraine @kuraine11/29/2023, 11:00 PM

i understand that corporate ownership sucks but is there literally any better option that allows artists to make the majority of sales on their music?

shane @marks11/29/2023, 11:49 PM

Thanks for sharing qobuz, I hadn't heard of it! If people are looking for some other places where you can get high res and support artists:

https://bleep.com/
https://prestomusic.com/
https://ototoy.jp/ (use a vpn set to japan to purchase everything)
https://anjunabeats.com/eu/music

Some of them also offer streaming services. But I've no idea about how they distribute money to the artist for those.

Froey @froey12/1/2023, 9:46 PM

+1 on bleep and ototoy.

aster @pieartsy11/30/2023, 3:12 PM

holy shit qobuz is great, and with https://www.extreamsd.com/index.php/products/usb-audio-player-pro (which is suggested on their site) i can also play my local music from my android that i've had for like a decade 😭💖

Froey @froey12/1/2023, 9:45 PM

I've been rebuying some of my favorite classic albums, new stuff from big artists, and a little bit of Classical and Jazz through Qobuz. Not a bad service at all as I build up my FLAC library~

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