Yeah, I remember the last one having something like 25 parties and in the area of 400 candidates

Edit: I checked. It was 26 parties with 955 candidates!

If I do better than my peers, I want to be recognized for that. Otherwise, why would I put in the effort?

About this, I will try to find it. But there is quite some research that shows productivity in simple jobs (think assembly line, or fruit picking) goes up in relation to reward. But complex an skilled jobs actually give diminishing returns quite soon with a higher reward, because with complex jobs most of the satisfaction comes from doing the job itself and excelling not the reward.

Bandcamp is US owned, but still worth mentioning I think because of their commitment to high revenue sharing, about 80-82% goes directly to the artists. They have custom playlists, and offer high quality formats as well.

If the goal is a quality product and an ethical approach to supporting artists I’m not dead set on only using European alternatives

Protonmail allows payment in cash, I believe you send it per mail to Switzerland.