Keeping my 2020 Spotify Wrapped wrapped

No. Sorry. I'm not going to do it. I know you want me to, but I won't. I refuse. I absolutely refuse.

Everyone else is sharing their Spotify Wrapped. Oh look, Jason has listened to a lot of Billie Eilish. My great aunt Ermintrude has been banging out Queen all year. Some anonymous account with a manga avatar is obsessed with Bullet for My Valentine.

I won't share mine because I feel guilty about Spotify. I use it all the time, and I have a recommendation series on Twitter that's almost two years old. But the lack of money flowing to artists really bothers me. Apparently every time you stream a song, the songwriter receives a poo in a box with a label attached saying "soz no money 4 u". It's not right.

Hype Machine has done a clever thing called Merch Table in which you can input a Spotify playlist and it'll point you towards Bandcamp pages. You can then fork out your well-earned krona and place money straight into the pockets of the musicians. Obviously, you can also do that as you pass them in the street, but doing it on Bandcamp is less alarming for them.

Incidentally, in my latest column for Electronic Sound magazine I turn my wonky spotlight on Bandcamp Friday. This is the monthly fee-waiver designed to help struggling artists in a difficult 2020. Or, as I write in my column:

"If you purchase tunes on that day, the act is charged nothing instead of the usual levy of 15% cash, a stash of stolen diamonds and a child sacrifice to the seventeen-nippled god Bandus Campos."

I had fun illustrating Bandus Campos alongside my column (snippet above). I suppose if Spotify had a god, it would be a vengeful Old Testament one, or maybe an absent one leaving its directionless subjects having their sackcloth and ashes eaten by goats. Or something. It's a long time since I read the bible.

So yes, no cheeky tweet from me advertising Spotify Wrapped. Just all these words on a blog. And all those recommendation tweets.

The gods are frowning on me.

Further Fats: Do you pay for your record collection? (2009)

Further Fats: Spotify's mystical rivers of bad recommendations (2020)