aratakareign

Piracy isn't the problem, it's how the ethical attacks on piracy are leveraged to justify big, powerful, unaccountable bodies like Spotify or Youtube music taking dominance in a way that gives individual musicians and bands far less power than they had originally (and that was never much), and consolidates power for these platforms.

Sign and share the demands; pirate yr music and find a way to get that same financial support directly to artists - be that concert attendance, buying merch directly from them, or in some cases, ensuring you're buying their music in a format and from a platform which is artist-centric - I understand bandcamp is quite good, and artists I follow frequently use boomkat.

If none of those are possible, being a vocal advocate for their work can help. Once in my home town I accentally booked my favourite band to headline our big-for-the-area festival. All it took was emailing both them and the festival organisers to say we thought it would be cool. I was stunned. But there's other options - using their lyrics in fic or fandom posts, creating art inspired by their music, blogging or reviewing them, including their tracks on mix tapes or end-of-year lists...

The key takeaway here is "don't pirate music, buy it legally instead to support the artist" is only a real moral argument if that money really does go towards the artist, or makes a meaningful impact on their chart position/algorithmic rating. As it stands, paying for a Spotify account truly does not do this: the artists get a pittance or nothing, and the algorithm is arbitrary and beyond scrutiny.

Brazil, the 20th of November. A Holiday - Feriado da Consciência Negra - Black Conscience day.

A 40 year old black man, João Alberto Silveira Freitas, was beaten to death by two security guards at a Carrefour supermarket after a discussion. 

I think something very important is happening and it’s deeply connected to my purpose.