The band Vulfpeck [1] tried this a year ago, releasing a completely silent EP and telling their fans to loop it. They did get some cash from it, but Spotify ended up taking their album down [2].<p>If you want to support artists, this honestly seems like a really roundabout and ineffective way of doing it. Buy a CD or something.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/spotify-silent-album_n_5275679.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/spotify-silent-albu...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album-that-earned-indie-band-20000" rel="nofollow">http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-sil...</a>
I always thought it was (roughly) general knowledge that artists make their money from going on tour, with the label taking most of the money from cd / record sales from the beginning of time.<p>I remember some tv show / documentary (years ago) of a rapper who had millions in cd sales but was still broke and living with mom because media sales don't generate money for the artist - tours do.
I have been working on an alternative streaming service that uses the Subscriber Share method. We are mostly targeting independent musicians, youtube musicians, and anyone without a label. I feel label are dead weight these days and just eat up a large piece of the pie for hardly any work.<p>My goal is to cut them out starting with independent artist of today, and maybe in a few years more artist will relies you don't need a label to get popular any more and can do it on your own.