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One very small thing I wish more people understood was how hard independent touring musicians work, and how dedicated and passionate they have to be about what they're doing to get to the point where anybody besides their pre-existing friends knows they exist.
If you've ever enjoyed a live performance or an album by a band that isn't on a major label and isn't from your city, it's almost guaranteed that the people in that band were more committed to their music than you could possibly guess! Touring is wicked hard!
And even besides touring itself, a band staying together as a creative musical entity at all involves so much collaboration and interpersonal dynamics management. I know it's intense and I've barely done it myself - certainly never on the road for long periods of time!
And definitely not with the financial, organizational, emotional, professional etc. pressures that such a life brings.
Basically what I'm saying is: recording/performing musicians work really hard, most of them are no longer (if ever) making much money at all from recordings (thanks to pitiful streaming royalty rates) and now they're not making any live revenue either.
If you are spending any time during this quarantine listening to music, consider sending your favorite artists some $! Some of them have Patreon, some have music on sites like @Bandcamp that have fair revenue splits (Bandcamp is even waiving its share 1x month in June+July!).
You can use sites like this to give your favorite artists money even if you use streaming services! You don't even have to bother downloading the files; you can keep using Spotify or whatever. But you'll be supporting musicians you love.
Here's an idea: open up your streaming app and check your 5 most listened to artists during the last 2 months. Then figure out how to give each of them a little money. Especially if you would typically be going to shows.
Maybe, if you're still financially stable despite this economic hell world of virus-afflicted late capitalism, you could figure out what your typical show-going budget is and figure out some other way to send it to your fave artists.
Anyway these are just some ideas. The next @Bandcamp revenue-share-waiving days are June 5 and July 3, those would be great days to pay for some music whether you really need to download those files or not.
(Also, lest this all seem self-promotional - don't buy my stuff, I'm not a touring or professional musician for my livelihood.)
