Do artists benefit more from ad-dense, algorithm gamed, corporate controlled media outlets kicking them a few bucks every month?

Or is a guerilla campaign of populist free-at-download distribution better for long term concert attendance and merch sales?

On the whole, there is minimal moral difference between an individual playing an album on Spotify or lifting it wholesale from a seedy site. The actual difference is that if you are pirating or file-sharing, you’re about 30% likelier to actually buy music