if 100 people give you $5k dollars

or 200 spend 5 once a week

That’s 50k a year

More than 80% of artist make off Spotify yet they still get millions of plays,

patrons who find your work matches their political social and prestige ambitions, others will contribute in other valued ways.

being anti-ad isn’t anti merch, this is how those just below that 80% are eating, it’s not thanks to ad supported Spotify. This is really no different than sending a 5 dollar of twitch bits or a 5 dollar supper chat once a week.

I think a younger audience is very aware if they don’t buy the merch they fucking over their favorite creator unless they doing billions of plays a year and headlining sold out appearances. They buy a 50 dollar hoodie, they know is way over priced every 3-6 months. They proudly wear it as a symbol of the prestige that comes from being a patron of that artists, not because they think they are baller wearing an overpriced hoodie.

Then you add in micro payments in the future where you are also making something (maybe only microsats) just for your content to be served in a subscription app. Maybe you earn some back by increasing the reach. Now free tier is no longer, it’s just micro tier. This is essentially twitch prime sub just better facilitated because they don’t have to bundle stuff together for a 20 cent Mastercard processing fee.