In the month of March, I added at the very least 12 NEW releases to my digital library. I only bought one of these projects (Nourished By Time, don't sleep). That doesn't even include all the music that wasn't a new release that I added to my library.

Back in the time of CDs or even iTunes days this would've cost me over $100. That's not crazy to y'all? for 10.99 a month, I get access to as many albums as my heart and ears desire. I know I'm not saying anything new here but it's crazy how whiny some people get about the cost of music. Giving us this amount access and we didn't expect the public's value of music to steadily decrease? fans look at albums as just another new free toy to play with for a few weeks. there's no invested interest unless you make that active choice to purchase a project out of the "kindness" of your heart. the ONLY thing I think is overpriced when it comes to music these days is concert tickets and I don't put the onus of that on artists, that's these venue companies and distributors.

We often complain about the state of music today, s*** if I was an artist, I wouldn't y'all ungrateful kids s***. Asking for a project every year, every two years for what?? y'all don't buy my s*** anyway. Those little streams ain't doing s***. JID had a viral tik tok hit this past summer, half a billion streams, probably made chump change.

I don't have a solution here, James Blake has already talked about. I just was having thoughts this week about it. we're damn lucky as fans today but boy are we spoiled and ENTITLED too. Selfish, greedy and quick to complain. You know music still costs a lot of money to make right? you know producers, engineers, session musicians, and artists gotta still get paid right? you know the photographers and graphic artists who make these album covers are paid to do it? that's the artists money they putting forward. whether it's an advance from the label or straight out the pocket, it's on their dime.

I guess all I'm sayin is, I want to make a more concerted effort to buy albums and show appreciation for the artists i like in a monetary way going forward.

Back in time of CDs we just pirated that s*** bruh

same but that still took effort. niggas won't even do that today!

uh oh, that one user's about to come in here and tell you that all musicians are rich and therefore are fine without us buying they stuff @op

either this or goin back to pirating

soooo musicians lose either way.

let him come. i'll get out on the ledge and say that even some of the highest paid musicians might not be getting what their TRUE worth is.

but even past that. the highest paid artists represent a small minority.

most these artists today aren't making what they SHOULD be making

part of the reason this discussion historically never get nowhere on here is because a vast minority of this forum's userbase are actually musicians compared to those that aren't.

I even respect piracy to a degree because as a former pirate myself, there was still a passion for the music and a strong desire to hear it. like strong enough to go to these sites that may potential give my computer a virus and download an album in 192kps. kids today have to get a tutorial on how to add a local file to spotify.

everything regarding music is too easy and its too cheap and there is no effort coming from fans. just type the album into the search bar.

man all these niggas is not getting paid like they should.

When Monte said on stream that 70% of his income in music came from Kolors and a drumkit that s*** spoke VOLUMES lol

this is what i'm saying. and you think smino is making THAT much more than him?? if he is, it's because of touring and merch, it ain't because of the music

What were your options for purchasing physical copies of the other 11 albums? Serious question

somebody on this forum told me chrisean rock was a millionaire and at that point I realized niggas really stupid.

If every rapper/artists had they income number on top of they head, 95% of people would be so goddamn surprised and stunned by how not "super rich" some of you favorite artists are.

It's really bad fam lol

Smino a prime example artists gotta do other s*** to get paid. Them hoodies of his made a MILLI (and I have seen some people with them s***s irl) according to him

I expect even with the merch and tours, the music don't even cover half that.

and I love Smino...but if I'm making millions off of hoodies yeah, I'ma take my damn time dropping albums too

I don’t think its really that crazy to pay $11 a month for access to a large library of music that isn’t super high fidelity and you can’t own any of it, especially when CD drives and tape decks aren’t easily available for purchase. I buy a lot of peoples cassettes, can’t do a f***ing thing with em. Same for CDs, nobody I know has a car with a CD player

Edit: and you’re capped at 10k songs in your personal library, which is a lot but when you hit the limit you realize “oh f***, a lot is not all”

you can get a cd adapter for a macbook for like $25 tho

its high fidelity if u got apple musc

@op is my dawg. sometimes ya gotta vent

most of the albums i added this month were big releases (ariana, justin timberlake, beyonce, tyla, sir... etc) so they had physical releases. I will say there are artists who do drop and don't have a physical release option and i get why they wouldn't even spend the money trying to print discs or vinyl because their fanbase doesn't have an interest in that

link? I need that

i'm sorry but it is.

even in the transitional period when we were all switching to digital and streaming wasn't a thing yet (early '10s), people were fine paying $9.99 for a new album.

Yup at least this way the artist/label still get money off us streaming instead of nothing even if it is cents

amazon.com/External-Optical-MacBook-Windows-ROOFULL/dp/B07T1HKXQG/ref=sr_1_6?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cTCVpSy91g-nHdvCljCDq_GzbocAwZpDD45Xbz-hHpLGxr9QylGUM9oLVw1-XeryZc8xE5IwKDqPZ1ZPuibsWpOOSqVPujJBzIxaO1ki8o_IH-cY8O75z96txU65Jd5GkiSI8WzZ6aKTesct1vydg-nlTl6dL21FFTwd40XTKsEomrDr51x0WSGeUWhXMTFf20qk8Sphc8YO4v6nazMPNqgrsXfEZrx3s_MztMYxlQ4.noF6tqxQVkav3r7Ol8pHaq6ZboRZEvZumXCPWKMjIWo&dib_tag=se&hvadid=604461172293&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9004080&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=1057812305585005171&hvtargid=kwd-3687038883&hydadcr=18034_13447342&keywords=external+cd+rom+for+mac&qid=1712151853&sr=8-6

sooooo nothing changes lmfao