You’ve heard that streaming platforms are exploitative, but what are the alternatives for artists wanting to release their music?
Sydney folk and indie artist Jude Pascal has taken a stand against music streaming giants. When rolling out his new album, Today is the Day (2026) back in August, Jude purposefully chose to release his music exclusively on a website and in physical (vinyl and CD) formats.
Not on YouTube Music, not on Apple Music, and definitely not on Spotify. Why? Jude says it’s in direct opposition to Spotify’s ethical controversies around low artist pay, commercially-focused algorithms, investment in weapons manufacturing and promotion of “ghost” artists and AI-generated music.
Speaking with AFTRS FM, Jude explained that fighting “the evil powers that be” became a main priority of his album, along with creating joyful music that was delivered to listeners in an imaginative and novel way.
Jude said his use of a website was an ode to “surfing the web” back when he was a kid, playing flash games, having fun online and getting lost in cool websites, “it’s such a shame that we have a blank canvas of infinite possibilities [the internet] and now everyone gets funnelled into algorithms; YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. That’s some peoples entire experience of the internet.”
What do artists like Jude lose by ditching Spotify? Possibly made up stats and figures about who’s listening and where, “Spotify likes spitting out these big numbers at you such as, ‘you got played in 104 countries last year,’ but they can just manufacture that number,” Jude added, “you really just have to consider if this is important to you.”
And in true larrikin style, Jude uploaded a “fake version” of the album, a 40-minute, poor quality track of him playing one of his sillier songs with a housemate to Spotify, as a prank. Although it has bamboozled some listeners, it has only bolstered his message about imaginative and alternative ways to release music, “it’s not like its harder to access…on Spotify you have multiple steps to get to the artist, when its on a website, you just open Safari, type it in and you’re there,” he said.
The response to Jude’s music has been overwhelmingly positive. But for Jude, his album rollout and rejection of streaming platforms has achieved something far greater, “it’s started a conversation, and that’s exactly what I wanted it to do.”
You can hear the album at https://judepascal.com/. And you can hear much more from Jude in our “Media Rebellion” episode for AFTRS FM: https://aftrsfm.aftrs.edu.au/in-focus-podcast/.
Leave a Reply