We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB). It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirrored by anyone with enough disk space), with 86 million music files, representing around 99.6% of listens.
How so? You are the wiser what artists really wants - not being paid for listening to their music and would like you to listen to it for free. I merely follow what they offer and not trying to listen to it illegally.
I am a small indie artist. I earn nearly no money from streaming services, but I do from Bandcamp, SoundCloud (though fuck Soundcloud, they also suck), actual LPs and CDs sold, etc.
If someone decides to listen to my music over Spotify, or really any streaming service, they are also “stealing” my music. Because I get no money from that, and listening to my music over those platforms strengthens their monopoly (this mostly applies to Spotify).
I need to publish my music on Spotify et al (fuck you discogs) for discoverability, because they have an evil fucking global monopoly, but the moment anyone finds my music there, I would ask them to listen to it elsewhere.
It will literally benefit me, and indie artist, more, if you bootleg my music instead of listening via streaming services, as this weakens their monopoly. Seriously.
I have a different job, I don’t need to live from my music right now, so the stakes are fairly low for me. But it still sucks to see streaming services ruin independent music like this. I would ask everyone to bootleg music, and then support artists like me through Bandcamp (especially CDs and LPs) and donations (or merch, though I don’t have any), if you appreciate the art.
I don’t expect anyone to immediately buy niche music they don’t know, so bootlegging until you become a fan seems reasonable to me. I’ve discovered many of my favorite albums like that, eventually buying LPs online and donating to the artist; that is far more beneficial to those artists than listening over any streaming service (including the slightly better tidal and Amazon music).
/rant over