#15permonth — Month #2
I wanted to find a way of balancing out my monthly Spotify subscription (£14.99 Family Plan) with money that went direct (or as direct as possible) to the musicians who make music I like. So I made myself a promise that I would spend at least £15 per month on Bandcamp. Here’s what I found — by Ian Dowling.
N.B. for many of these I opted to round up to the nearest £, and sometimes paid a £ over the odds if I particularly enjoyed the music. I found my psychology around this quite interesting. I got pleasure from paying the extra, and enjoyed writing the artist a note thanking them. It felt like a connection. A very small connection but nevertheless…
Client 03 — User Viewport
Love this! From their obvious suspicion of ‘the machines’ and the effect they’re having on our daily lives I’m guessing they, like me, grow weary of the computification of absolutely everything, while remaining glued to my desktop/laptop/phone. As their blurb and the lyrics of the first track say:
“Machines on your doorstep, and you invite them in.
Machines living in your mind, and you invite them in.
Machines watch you while you sleep, and you invite them in.
Machines caring for your young, and you invite them in.”
Love the synth sounds, really nice aggressive high mids, and the kicks are pleasingly BOOOM. Reminds me of Plump DJs back in the day. Electro seems to be making a bit of a comeback. I’m down with that. The EP cost £4.80 inc VAT. Pleasing to know that a third of what I spend on Spotify has gone to these guys.
Emeka Ogboh — Beyond The Yellow Haze
I indulged myself with this one, and bought the vinyl. Very beautiful it is too. I’m a massive fan of A-TON, which is part of Ostgut Ton, Berghain’s in-house record label. It’s also distributed by Kompakt. It doesn’t get any more hifalutin’ German electronica than this, people.
However the music itself has barely a trace of what you might expect given all that. As the blurb says:
“Beyond The Yellow Haze is the debut release by Nigerian sound and installation artist Emeka Ogboh on Ostgut Ton sublabel A-TON. Combining subtle layers of ambient electronics, dance music and field recordings from the city of Lagos, Ogboh’s compositions reflect both the Nigerian city’s soundscapes as well as the artist’s increasing immersion in electronic music since moving to Berlin six years ago.”
I have a real soft spot for found sound mixed with electronics. There’s something about the juxtaposition of the very real and the blatantly synthetic that really grounds the music in a time and place, which is something that can be missing in a lot of electronic music. I’m all for global music scenes, but I like people to bring something from home, rather than all coalescing on the same ‘global’ sound, which of course isn’t really global. It’s culture removed from the physical world, which is a different thing entirely. Anyway, the vinyl and digital combined cost €21.60 (£18.49 at the time of writing). The vinyl is a beautiful gatefold 2xLP affair, really nice quality and sounds GREAT (as you’d expect given the provenance). The shipping was another €11 on top (£9.42), so you’d struggle to call it ‘cheap’, but I don’t care. I already know I’m going to be playing this at home and in sets for many years to come, and from having an insight into the profit margin on these things, I know that by getting the vinyl I’ve put even more money into Emeka’s music. So it’s a worthwhile investment, for now and the future.
That’s it for this month. Yet again, I’ve rather overshot the proposed budget of £15, but I wouldn’t expect others to fork out as much as I have. Remember, it’s not about the amount you spend. You could spend £5 per month on Bandcamp and still be putting FAR more money into musician’s pockets than listening via any streaming platform or other digital download service. As an illustration, I was doing one of our artist’s accounts last week and I worked out that in order to recoup they needed either 500 digital purchases from Bandcamp, or 300,000 streams. So if you like someone’s music then pay £2 for their track on Bandcamp. The difference you will make is really quite staggering.
See you back here next month, where I’m going to really spread my £15 around….(psst, Bandcamp Friday is 2nd April).
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