In the January 19, 2012, issue of Rolling Stone, there was a small sidebar article about how artists, specifically The Black Keys and Coldplay, have chosen not to have their latest albums available to stream on Spotify. The article (“The Black Keys, Coldplay Say No (For Now) to Spotify“; page 17) quotes The Black Keys guitarist, Dan Auerbach, as saying, “How is that good for musicians?” and, “We didn’t want it to impact our record sales.”

I’ve only recently even discovered The Black Keys. Want to know how I even tried giving them a listening to? On Spotify.

That’s right. Thanks to Spotify, the very service they’re proactively keeping their new music from is the very service that helped me come to love their music. It’s because of Spotify, that in the past three weeks alone, my household has purchased their two most recent releases, “El Camino”and“Brothers,”with a very good chance of me picking up any of their other five albums.

I’ve said it many times before, but musicians need to know that streaming music services isn’t what’s killing their record sales. Crappy music is killing their record sales (That’s right, I’m talking to you, too, AFI). I stream music all the time and when I find a song or CD that doesn’t totally suck, I’ll happily go and give them my money.

So please, musicians, focus on putting out awesome music and let us, your fans, worry about giving you our money. If you make it too difficult for current and potential fans to listen to your music, then we’ll just keep our money and go our separate ways.