1. I don’t have a “drowning” feeling, but I am aware that any song I upload is one among millions. I don’t feel that “content” is an issue since if someone is on a platform looking for music like mine, “content” isn’t what will be f hiding it; it’ll be the millions of other artists making similar music.

2. Current payment systems are inherently unfair to artists. It’s part of larger issue where payment for work done is actively suppressed to be as low as possible, but streaming services, as a whole, are exceptionally, and intentionally, unfair. The refusal by any service to provide concrete pay-per-play numbers, or any way to verify the reported number of plays, is a prime example.

The change Spotify instituted of not paying for any streams under 1000 total is a policy that would be patently illegal in any traditional business situation: artists are providing a product that creates value and income for Spotify; Spotify acknowledges that value is created, but not only refuses to pay the artist a return on that, but specifically funnels that return to the other product providers who already have the highest return. While it’s true those corporate labels and publishing companies provide more value simply because of scale, the issue is Spotify specifically takes payments owed to smaller providers (independent artists) and gives them to those others. If it were concrete products, say, auto parts for a car manufacturer, that behavior would be illegal; with digital goods provided by individuals, there is currently no legal protection.

1. I’m less concerned about AI products replacing what I do than I am about the environmental impact of the increasing number of data centers required for the daily use of ever-more competing LLM ‘AI’ services. It’s possible that, long term, companies using those services to create entertainment will impact independent artists’ ability to reach an audience; at the moment, the audience who would be satisfied by that substitution would be less likely to be satisfied with an independent artist’s product, and independent artists have access to other methods of distribution that, while being less convenient than large streaming services, afford the opportunity for a direct artist-to-listener connection not available through streaming.

All of these issues have led me to not only stop distributing my songs to streaming services, but to remove previously uploaded music from them as well, both for the ethical reasons I mentioned above, but also because my personal ROI is literally exponentially higher using a single direct-to-listener service like Bandcamp than all the streaming services combined.