Socrates said the same thing about books.

I agree with what you’re saying, and I should have been more clear.

I’m not saying you have to send them money, but if you do let money leave your wallet, we should be trying to make sure it gets to a deserving party. I think in general, we should avoid giving money to extractive industries that don’t add value and I’m encouraging you to error on the side of sending that money directly to the artist/laborers and cutting out literally everybody else.

I agree with you in that no one needs to be sending money to Metallica.

If you send the artist money in the form of a check or a donation more of that money goes to the person who produces the thing.

It’s not possible to reach 100%, but every little bit of your dollar you ensure enters the pocket of a person who worked for a living is one less bit of that dollar that ends up in the hands of a leech or a parasite.

Giving Spotify or Google or Apple or whoever has inserted themselves into the system to absorb money for something that they don’t pay for is fundamentally not healthy for any part of the ecosystem of art.