Spotify, Apple Music, etc. are rent-seekers. A rent-seeker capitalizes on something freely available, that could have been freely given, and charges a premium for it. Spotify et al are digital music landlords over their vassals, big record companies, and the rest of us serfs, in this new age under an emergent system of oppression which some call technofeudalism.

When recorded music became free as a result of file-sharing, these lords offered protection to their vassals, since the record companies were losing money to piracy. And in a technofeudal system, as seems to be developing before us, the rest of us are just serfs, left to suffer all the more. Gillian Welch lamented this, singing, “They figured it out: that we’re gonna do it anyway even if it doesn’t pay.”

Why pay them for that which ought to belong to all humanity? Divest from them as soon as you can and invest what you have left over into the artists as directly as you can manage. We musicians make fractions of a cent for each stream. It would profit musicians better if a listener pirated five albums and sent $2 to each of the artists instead of spending $10 for a month of Spotify to listen to those same five albums. It would profit musicians better if a listener pirated 1000 songs and sent each artist $0.01 instead of paying $10 for a month of Spotify to listen to those same 1000 songs 10 times each in the course of that month.

It would be even better if consumers resisted commodity fetishism and paid musicians the wages they are worth. Surely an indie artist’s album is worth more than $2. And some albums by pop stars’ albums should be worth less, because in a truly equitable system, high-grossing albums should become cheaper over time, since the artist has already been recompensed, otherwise we get pop-star-billionaires. In the words of Joe Pug, “The more I buy, the more I’m bought, and the more I’m bought, the less I cost.”

Some listeners may not be able to afford to buy albums at $2, and that must be respected. A pay-what-you-can/want system might address this, as can a time/labor trade. I’ve heard the story of one artist selling a painting they made for the price of the hours of labor at the buyer’s hourly wage. Radical redistribution of wealth requires something from all of us. It’s not just “eat the rich,” but all of us with means must live more simply and generously. Black folks have been asking this of us white folks for a long time.

Some may advocate for musicians to remove their material from Spotify entirely. If musicians organized together and all went on strike at Spotify, this might work. However, it’s doubtful unless pop stars stand with the working class. Unfortunately, we are witnessing the rise of pop-star-billionaires like Taylor Swift who profit from Spotify and give value to Spotify. There’s also the probability that AI music will sabotage any leverage indies have. Unless streaming services en masse betray pop stars, we likely won’t have their solidarity because they have a conflict of interest.

The onus to change working conditions under streaming should not fall solely on the musicians, whose labor feeds consumers. All of us consumers must be mindful of how much we take and benefit from their labor. Just as the onus isn’t on a poor or unemployed person to refuse minimum-wage work (that isn’t how you change the system), it isn’t for us to judge a music worker whose music can be streamed. When material needs must be met, something is better than nothing. Give them a twenty and help them get out of the Spotify ghetto. We consumers have a lot of power to divest from big tech. The workers under these systems don’t have as much.

Yet this doesn’t mean we musicians should just accept that we must give music to streaming corporations. Yanis Varoufakis might say whenever we share our music with Spotify et al, we are serfs, who work for the lords for free in exchange for the privilege of living on their land. Compare this to a grounds keeper who lives on the grounds, or worse yet, a slave who cares for the family’s children (to be clear, this is a dramatization and not the situation of most music workers).

At the advent of the internet, digital media was like a river. You could ford the river. You could sail the river. You had folks whose thankless job was tending the river (artists). Their bosses (record labels) charged entry to enjoy a stretch of beach that people stopped using. Then rent-seekers came along and built a fancy bridge, so if you wanted to sail the river, you had to pay to draw the bridge. They said, you don’t have to ford the river anymore, so long as you pay the toll to cross. They polluted the waters.

It’s time music workers and allies stop trying to reform Spotify, Apple Music, etc. We must abolish them. We can abolish them by building robust alternatives that better serve musician and listener, making corporate streaming services redundant and obsolete. I believe there is destituent power in opting out, but not without a compelling and accessible alternative.

Spotify didn’t solve piracy. They just situated themselves as robber barons.