I always liked the stream2own model in principle more than practice. I’ve not looked around for a while and whilst logged in spotted that I ‘own’ a couple of tracks. I remember mostly buying these outright, just to see how it works.
First, it’s a shame that tracks feel very divorced from albums. I own tracks, there’s no simple way to own an album without going track by track.
Second, I can’t download so do I actually own? I do in the sense that further streams will be free but that doesn’t feel the same as ‘ownership’.
Third, pricing ends up being super inflated in some cases e.g. AGF’s latest release (arachneshound) costs €9 on Bandcamp and would work out as ~€45 on Resonate (see https://agf-poemproducer.bandcamp.com/album/arachnesound and Resonate) as it’s 36 tracks at €1.25 each (to own outright).
In some cases, this pricing might work out the complete opposite e.g., an album consisting of one 45min song. I’m not sure how I feel about that either. I do know that, as an artist, I don’t want to start worrying about how to divide an album up to make pricing fair (to either myself or listeners).
I know I’m comparing apples to oranges to some extent. I’ve read the old deep dive on stream2own and there’s a pricing model around how many listens for an average monthly price considering the number of new and repeat listens etc. That I could listen to ~900 songs for ~€5 per month.
I’m comparing buying music on an online marketplace to streaming. But there’s a part of me that wants to accumulate and collect music.
I’m not approaching Resonate in the same way as I used major streaming platforms. I’m not going back and listening to the music of my youth. Or the bands I never actually got into at the time as it was harder to come by pre-internet. I’m not making driving playlists or using playlists by others for music discovery.
I know there’s a desire for human curation at Resonate which is great but it’s not there yet so doesn’t really help me yet. Resonate is only really populated by a small niche of music. Also, it’s hard to find things without genre tags, relationships to other artists, recommendations (human-curated or otherwise).
I know it seems like I’ve gone off track from stream2own but… it feels like I’d be streaming e.g. AGF’s new album on Resonate just for the sake of it when I could just buy it for €9 on Bandcamp, still know that most of the money goes direct to the artists, stream from the Bandcamp app, and download and load into a media server, or on my phone, or do any number of other things.
Why doing that on Resonate doesn’t feel like a good use of my money is tied in to everything else (lack of catalogue, lack of discovery, lack of playlists, lack of curation etc.) but ultimately leads to me feeling unconvinced by stream2own. Why then would I listen to a niche indie record on Resonate rather than buy it on Bandcamp?
Sorry that’s all negative but I’m not complaining, I just wanted to share my experiences and see if anyone shared my views or had a different take etc.