Bandcamp is pretty close to this experience if they set it as "pay what you want" (which a lot of artists do)

In my band, we sell digital lossless albums on bandcamp for just that reason.

Spotify has this as an option for artists.

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/fan-support/

https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/getting-a-fan...

Wouldn’t the artist offering you to buy the album from them, DRM free, accomplish the same thing while clarifying the transaction that’s happening?

Same. Let me just pay you to be an artist, and keep putting art into the world (while avoiding middlemen and platforms whenever possible).

I’ve wanted something like this ever since the early Napster days. Patreon is the closest thing but that puts an onus on the artists to produce content all of the time. If some of my favorite less popular artists had their Venmo in their Instagram profile I would probably use that.

I bought the vinyl release which also came with the digital download of an album last year. When the vinyl arrived, there was a handwritten personalized thank you note from the artist. Best of all worlds