The band Vulfpeck [1] tried this a year ago, releasing a completely silent EP and telling their fans to loop it. They did get some cash from it, but Spotify ended up taking their album down [2].

If you want to support artists, this honestly seems like a really roundabout and ineffective way of doing it. Buy a CD or something.

[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/spotify-silent-albu...

[2]: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-sil...

I always try to buy as direct from the artist as possible. In the case of many synthwave artists like Droid Bishop it seems Bandcamp is the most direct way and they get a good chunk of the money from the purchase as opposed to other avenues like iTunes. So, I always suggest to people to see if the artist in question has a Bandcamp or equivalent account on a site where they can get the majority of the money from the purchase. Otherwise, buy a CD as you state or even some merchandise when they're on tour since they get quite a bit of the money from that as well.

I always thought it was (roughly) general knowledge that artists make their money from going on tour, with the label taking most of the money from cd / record sales from the beginning of time.

I remember some tv show / documentary (years ago) of a rapper who had millions in cd sales but was still broke and living with mom because media sales don't generate money for the artist - tours do.

"I always thought it was (roughly) general knowledge that artists make their money from going on tour"

It's roughly not because that's not how it used to be. Money from tours is something that started to become the trend since (I'd say) mid eighties.

...and the vast majority of bands (especially small bands) lose money on live performance.

That leaves merch as the only way to make money. I prefer to listen to music by people who want to make music, not people who are good at selling t-shirts.

I have been working on an alternative streaming service that uses the Subscriber Share method. We are mostly targeting independent musicians, youtube musicians, and anyone without a label. I feel label are dead weight these days and just eat up a large piece of the pie for hardly any work.

My goal is to cut them out starting with independent artist of today, and maybe in a few years more artist will relies you don't need a label to get popular any more and can do it on your own.

If you want to support your artists, go see them live. Not only you will be more happy about it, they will too, and they'll make money that way.