Rochelle Shipman

I think this misses the fundamental purpose of DTC. Ownership comes with a degree of responsibility and sometimes inconvenience. That’s the price of possessing something rather than merely accessing it through a service. For me, purchasing music directly is also a small act of resistance against an industry that has increasingly reduced ownership to temporary access. And reducing an artist’s desire for compensation to “capitalism” ignores a fundamental principle: people have a right to benefit from the labor of their own hands. Convenience is valuable, but it isn’t the only value worth preserving. DTC doesn’t have to replicate streaming to justify its existence. The point isn’t simply how easily we can listen to music, but what kind of relationship we’re willing to have with the people who create it.