I don’t mind the homogenisation- I work in video games and benefit from it in that side.

But you are right if you want it to succeed then you need to chip in. We sell an album for £7 digitally, or £30 for vinyl + digital, but it’s basically just donating to us to say “please keep recording stuff”. We’ve made more off selling a single vinyl than all our combined streaming income

i don't think spotify is good for discovery, unless "discovery" means "more of the same."

i've taken to terrestrial radio for true discovery and bandcamp for digging into a genre.

Honestly, I've found Youtube Music great for discovery. There's a lot of metal bands that are small enough that you can't find their album preorders on Amazon that I found only by following the musical recommendations down the rabbit hole. In my city smaller bands from Europe don't tend to get a lot of playtime on the radio.

Interesting, especially since I really enjoy death/speed metal. I'll give this a try; thank you!