> But I am under no impressions that I have some kind of personal relationship with this artist.

What has that to do with anything? You don't pay because you want them to like you, you pay because you want to give them the chance to keep making music in the future.

For that reason, on free support platforms like Patreon, I'm pretty tough about not "gilding the lily". If someone is clearly well-funded enough to have artistic freedom, with a good margin of safety, I look for someone else to support, even if I love them.

What does that have to do with Spotify? If Spotify isn't fair to them they should pull their catalog. I can't be an arbiter to every economic transaction I participate in. Just sell me something I want at a price I find reasonable. I don't need a story about how it's so hard for you to pursue your passion or how you can't continue in the future.

> If Spotify isn't fair to them they should pull their catalog. I can't be an arbiter to every economic transaction I participate in.

To me this reads the same as "I can't be bothered to consider ethics for every economic transaction I participate in".

I'm not sure its possible to do it 100% of the time, but I try to constantly consider it.

Again, it's about voluntary exchange. Imagine if someone did that to you? I worked low wage jobs before. If some do gooder started lecturing me about how I'm being exploited I would rightly tell them to f off. If they wanted to throw me some money I may or may not be appreciative but I have autonomy about my choices and I extend that same belief to others

"artists deserve to be exploited because they chose it." Thats a very childish assessment of the music industry and how artists are taken advantage of. It has absolutely nothing to do with "being lectured by 'do-gooders'" either, you're injecting an emotional story as an argument where there is none.

Yea, a lot of the "it's a contract" and "it's voluntary" arguments fail to recognize the huge power imbalance between a label and a band, or any agreement between a single person and a huge company. These agreements are almost never between equals, and are often one-sided and "take it or leave it".

Yes, technically I voluntarily entered into my contract with my ISP, my cell phone carrier, and my employer. But in all cases, it's obvious I'm getting screwed over because of the massive power imbalance. It's a fact of life, but it should at least be acknowledged.

What ethics are there to consider besides 'money can be exchanged for goods and services'? Everyone is a willing participant in the transaction.

Off the top of my head.... -How was the labor sourced for those services? -Child Labor, illegal immigrant labor? -What are the working conditions for the labor?, is it sweatshop -what inputs go into the goods/services? -what do they do with their waste? -where do the inputs come from? My country, another country, my town, a town in my state...

you may think the government plays a role to enforce some of these, and they do to a point...

You can go on in your own head about all the things behind that simple exchange of money for something. If it's a perfectly competitive market sure, that may work but there aren't many if any markets in the US that are that level of competitive.

A personal anecdote for you. My uncle owns an auto parts re-manufacturer, so they rebuild car parts and sell them. I worked there a lot growing up. The normal input is buying "cores" from service stations....your starter motor isn't working and you get a new one, that old one is sold to someone like my uncle who refurbs it.

Often we had people come by with very clearly stolen parts....should we have just exchanged money for those? This ranged from a tweaker who would show up with one part, to full scale organized theft rings with pallets of parts...

So, do we buy those since the price is much, much better? There is a an ethical decision there...

I'm curious, do you personally buy any goods or services? It seems like the logical conclusion to this kind of thinking is to just not ever purchase or use anything.

I'm curious, do you personally make any decisions? It seems like the logical conclusion to this kind of thinking is to just not ever consider or decide upon anything.

I do make decisions and often times people many degrees removed get hurt or exploited as a result of it.

I choose not to focus on that though, whereas the person I replied to apparently does. I was curious how such a person manages to live a just life in the modern world.

Apparently those decisions don't include answering the question at hand.

I think it’s more of a function of mental leisure time. People like worrying about these things and wrapping up simple transactions (“I’d like to stream music this month for $10”) into some moral and ethical quandary as if they can resolve or contribute to an existing relationship between two other parties.

It’s nice that we have the luxury to think about these things. But for the most part, I ignore it and discount people who bring it up to other people, unless they genuinely think people aren’t aware of the situation.

Maybe it’s guilt over benefiting from this. Maybe it’s just internet points for demonstrating one’s knowledge and virtue. Beats me, I hope it reduces.

"I assume the artists are reasonable rational adults. If they're on the platform, its economically advantageous to them." - Your assumption is wrong though. Artists aren't on spotify because it's economically advantageous for them, they are on spotify because they have no other alternative. It doesn't matter if it's streaming platform A or B or C, they are ubiquitous and as an artist you want your music to be heard, so you have to play the field. In this case, the field sucks and mirrors capitalism, skewing the gains towards the top of the pyramid.

Is there some other market system that produced better music?

This one has its flaws but it seems to be optimizing for a great variety.

> In this case, the field sucks and mirrors capitalism, skewing the gains towards the top of the pyramid.

What alternative do you suggest and why would it work better than capitalism?

> skewing the gains towards the top of the pyramid

Hasn't Spotify been losing money for all/most of its existence? Or is there some other top of the pyramid?

Daniel Ek sure hasn't lost any of his own money.

One basic reason to support artists you like is just because you want them to make more stuff.

I think you're of the majority opinion actually. There are loud voices on HN whenever this topic comes up, but clearly most people don't think about these issues much, they just want to access music.

Spotify isn't really the problem. Record labels being the gatekeepers and a bunch of byzantine historic laws that they sit on are the problem. Musicians themselves are the problem - those few who've made it big could band together than change things in various ways for all, but that would mean giving up some money so...

You assume a lot, wrongly.

Artists don't have a choice. If the only viable marketplace is ripping off sellers, and sellers chose to remain there because it's the only viable marketplace, and the sellers gotta hear their buyer defending the owners of the only viable marketplace ripping them off, they're not gonna keep selling and you're not gonna keep getting new music.

This race to defend the most evil of corporations, ripping people off right and left, is rampant on HN over the last 5 years. It's like all the hacker turned into lackeys or something. What a shame. The first 10 years of this site the people here had backbones but now they're mostly just bootlickers.