Yeah, or maybe a tip jar? Perhaps some PG at Spotify can copy the stripe tip screen and when before playing a song you get asked the infamous 18%,20%,25%,NO TIP question?

No thank you.

No thanks. E-tip jars belong on Twitch and Youtube Live. Something about that feels very "off", it feeds that parasocial interaction thing in ways that a band selling merch does not.

All music/sports/etc fandom has a similar parasocial element. Same thing, only different manifestations.

but... I generally don't want their 'merch'. I don't need another t-shirt, hat, keyring, whatever. It literally just adds to more waste that I don't want to contribute to. We'd all be better off if I had an easier way to just send $4 to a band/artist I like. I do that for some via patreon. I've known people overpay on bandcamp to get a few more $ to someone. There are artists that will never come to my area. There are artists that simply can't travel/perform due to any number of factors. "Sell merch via Shopify or Spotify" just feels like pushing people in the wrong direction.

It seems the 'fan support' feature is not available on the Spotify website, only the native app. Explains why I haven't noticed it.

So they finally added a way to directly support artists. That's nice, but disappointing they excluded the web app from this feature. Its omission hurts potential donations. Spotify also lowers audio quality on the web app, gee it's almost like they don't want me to use the web app.