direct from the artists whenever possible, Bandcamp, Patreon, merch and physical media, gigs when possible. lots of smaller artists are on bandcamp because it seems reasonably well run, pays the artists fairly (especially on “bandcamp friday” sale days, where the artist gets 100% of the revenue)

if you have contact details for an artist contact them directly, dont give them your life story or act like a crazy stalker, just say hi, explain you prefer to buy music directly when possible and you dont want to support companies like Spotify. This method is mainly for niche music and new artists that struggle to find audiences in the traditional algorithm based machine but it doesn’t hurt to try.

I’ll download music from Soulseek (and I share TBs of it too) when all else fails, or in a try before you buy type of arrangement.