Whenever you listen to a song you gain some agency over it. You are interpreter of that piece of art and it means something to you that it doesn't mean to the person who created it, based on your own life experience. That said, fuck financially supporting someone with obviously harmful views, or who has committed obviously harmful acts. The monetary support is the issue in the current musical climate.

Okay. Same. No offense, but damn you're not helpful. Haha

I prefer it that way too. I just find the bands I like the most impressed me more live. The aforementioned Envy on the Coast have a very "recorded in the same room" sound for their first album, and watching them live with proper sound engineering blew my mind. Most other bands have disappointed me live, but knowing there is that dichotomy just makes me so curious about what everybody else's percentage is, or what bands they feel the same way about. You mentioned classic rock?

People think they get better sound quality out of a record than 36 wav files that hold each individual track, but I do think there's something to be said for records and the artists' listening experience. Nowadays everything has to be mixed for phone, surround sound, speaker system, standard car sets, and any decent enough record player will be comparable to what the artist heard when they were recording for record, or any analogue disc. It's not better. It is authentic where that applies though. Tons of bands re-release or put special editions on vinyl but it wasn't recorded for that and doesn't matter in that situation.

Fair enough. It's better 98% of the time, but I just always feel like I'm searching because I love live music. It's what got me into most of the genres I follow now.