We’ve all had a whole lot of fun this week posting our Spotify Wrapped graphics, showing our friends, family, and followers just what we’ve been listening to throughout 2020. But all those lists just showed songs we’ve streamed, not purchased, and a companion debate has also sprung up across the blessed internet over whether or not the act of streaming has financially helped your favorite artists (spoiler alert: It has most likely not).
Now you can help support those musicians you love through Hype Machine’s new program Merch Table, which lets users input their Spotify playlists and purchase those songs via Bandcamp. This is especially cool on a day like today (December 4), the final Bandcamp Friday of 2020, where the music hosting platform waives its fees and delivers 100 percent of sales to artists.
Merch Table works relatively simply, though it’s far from perfect: Plug in the Spotify playlist url code into the search bar, press the “Find releases” button, and results of the songs listed begin to compile, taking you to each artist’s Bandcamp page to purchase tracks directly. Obviously, an artist’s songs need to be posted and available on Bandcamp for this to work, and it’s up to you to then re-compile the playlist. But hey, not too shabby.
It’s a pretty cool function to put some money where the streams are, and throw that money directly into the pockets of the artists you’ve listened to all year. Spotify Wrapped is cool, but artists actually unwrapping some payment for their efforts is even cooler.