If you're buying 1 - 2 albums per month, at a price of about $10 per album and with artists/composers on average being paid a flat 20% of album sales[0], then you'd be giving an artist $2-4 USD for that album. If that artist is a smaller artist and is releasing their album relatively independently (very common these days), then their percentage earned can be 50% - 80% instead, leading to you paying the artist more like $5-10 USD for those album(s).

For streaming music, let's say you're listening to the artists music in the USA (meaning your streams are worth the most). Let's also assume an average song length of 4 minutes and an average per-stream payment to the artist of $0.003526648542 dollars since you're in the USA[1]. In this world, if you listen to that artist for 3 hours a day, every day, for all 30 days in a month, then you will listen to 1350 songs from that artist and earn them ~$4.76 with all your listening.

So while it is possible that you could listen to an artist so much on a streaming platform that you give them more than if you buy an album, I wouldn't call it super likely.

[0] - https://www.recordingconnection.com/reference-library/record...

[1] - https://www.igroovemusic.com/blog/wie-viel-erhalte-ich-pro-s...

Beautiful calculation. Let's say that if you listen to music for 3 hours a day then it is as if every month you spend 5$ which goes to divide for all the artists you listen to, every month. So you have to listen to an artist 100 hours to compensate for the purchase of an album, it's not something you do with every artist you know.

This does assume you're not decreasing any revenue by using Funkwhale's sharing functionality.

Royalties is probably the wrong word. What i mean is that i can buy an album for $5 on bandcamp and the artist will get more money than if i stream the album 1000 times on spotify. Album sales (especially in no-tour lockdown times) are an important part of funding musicians. Streams dont cover bills. Neither does merch.

You have described precisely the reason I support artists on Bandcamp - my single €5 purchase is worth 1000s of streams. Although I'd argue artists are promoting merch because selling albums/EPs doesn't pay the bills. It's fascinating what merch people will buy too - tapes, signet rings, €30 caps, bags...

> artists are promoting merch because selling albums/EPs doesn't pay the bills. It's fascinating what merch people will buy too - tapes, signet rings, €30 caps, bags...

Pretty much this. The music is basically promotion for the merch, which actually makes money.

Cassette and vinyl sales are also important because in addition to the nostalgic (hissy/scratchy but also warm and saturated) "analog" sound the physical recording is a fun collector's item and something you can show off.

Hopefully live shows will return at some point as well.