Nice to see people stand up for Bandcamp. It’s the only good music platform.
We can’t have nice things anymore, they all need to be shitty
For real, I use(d) bandcamp for a good chunk of my music discovery and a not insignificant amount of my album purchases. A lot of small/indie labels provide bandcamp codes with vinyl and cassettes which honestly makes me want to support those labels more as while I like to collect physical releases, I’m 9 times out of 10 going to be listening digitally.
1500+ albums and usually when there’s not a $25 shipping charge I buy the vinyl too…this is bullshit.
Nicklin’s colleague and Die Gute Fabrik co-founder Douglas Wilson added that it was “infuriating to watch large corporations gut one of the most valuable communities/services on the internet.”
We’ve been here before. Remember mp3.com? For those who don’t, imagine if somebody bought Bandcamp and then deleted all of the music.
That is exactly what they are going to do. Mark my words: bandcamp will be a subscription service soon, and likely will be a revenue generating click-through to Spotify or itunes or similar.
The big labels can’t STAND that we can get good music, but/own it outright, listen to it at our leisure without commercials, and share it with friend.
I encourage everyone to checkout Funkwhale. Specifically the instance I use, because I want access to your music lol.
Funk.gravitywell.xyz (for info, sign up)
Or
https://funk.gravitywell.xyz/library (listen to others’ public libraries)
There’s also an android app, albeit a little buggy.
Here’s my library - https://funk.gravitywell.xyz/federation/music/libraries/9788b698-e8f1-44ac-b2d3-30501fa4ccfe
Beyond just music, bandcamp is a great site to buy and sell (as a musician or indie label) physical merchandise.
Independent musicians and labels rely on bandcamp. Most alternatives are cost prohibitive to “small” bands.
A bunch of the small metal bands I support are only on bandcamp. Literally can not get thier music or merchandise anywhere else.
Any you could share a link to? I’m always on the hunt for new music and I love metal.
Ive updated my comment, and idk how to “notify” you properly here, so… im leaving a new comment. to uh. .check out my other comment. yeah.
Check out the line up of bands under the Pelagic Records label. I keep finding gems there. I never heard The Ocean Collective before recently, I’m absolutely loving their old stuff. New stuff is good too, but its a bit James Maynard/perfect circle kind of preachy.
They aren’t really a small label
https://pelagic-records.com/artists/
ninja edit:
Ill leave this here, from my collection, also, please everyone join this funkwhale instance so i can get your music too lmao
https://funk.gravitywell.xyz/library/artists/1289
or my library:
https://funk.gravitywell.xyz/federation/music/libraries/9788b698-e8f1-44ac-b2d3-30501fa4ccfe
eMusic as well. Still seems to be around, but I don’t see it as being viable anymore the way things are going.
I remember subscribing to eMusic for some number of song downloads a month and downloading stuff from artists I’d never heard of to use up my downloads at the end of the month. All MP3s, still got them and still listen to them once in a while.
Definitely. I found so many unknown artists from their human-curated recommendations that you just won’t find on the streaming services anymore. I rely on KEXP for new music now, which is great, but just kinda…slower I guess.
S
L
A
M
Wait, were they slammed?
Holy shit! They were slammed! They slammed them! sLAMMMMMMED
They can never recover
Someone call a SLAMbulance
Yep. Somehow actually paying independent artists is not a profitable business model. Someone needs to suck the blood out of them for the “system” to work…
I mean… it is basically the same problem as youtube/video. Audio is orders of magnitude less storage (unless you are a FLAC sicko), but it is also played a lot more. And people generally don’t want to have to plug their zune into their computer to grab mp3s before they go for a drive, so you still need a content delivery service. All of which costs money.
And then you have monetization. Just look around at all the people losing their god damned minds over youtube caring about adblockers. Hell, just look at how every single youtube video gets a bot reply that basically says “Hey, want to dick over this content creator? use this link instead”. And, evil google or not, most creators (who don’t get demonetized because of their content…) will point out that youtube is pretty nice in terms of revenue and that they give a very good cut of the premium ad-free subscribers.
Which gets back to music. Someone will probably pay for Tay-Tay’s latest album because she is the biggest musician on the planet. But Biffy Clyro? They are great to listen to in a mix but are they REALLY worth the 15 bucks for an album? I mean, sure you listen to them every single day but…
These kinds of arguments remind me of when someone (I think it was Snoop?) was ranting about how much they hate spotify and gave what, on paper, sounded like a small number. And if you actually broke down the amount of money per listen they were asking for and then normalized against the cost of an ad on various services, it was actually REALLY expensive.
You make a fair point but in Bandcamp’s case they offer a download like Steam or streamed playback if someone prefers. It’s the one place where I DON’T HAVE to resort to piracy or buying massive collections of CDz if I want to be able to listen to music without restriction. I want to pay the people who did the creative work. I don’t want to pay a whole bunch of people with a small fraction of it reaching the original creator.
Again, the normal case is not people maintaining their own giant collection of mp3 files. Just like with physical copies of games and movies, most people have decided they want the convenience of not having to manage an mp3 player library.
Same with purchasing. It is great that you want to pay the people who did the creative work. … Does that mean you buy every single album you listen to? Because you ARE going to have to buy a “massive collection” unless you only listen to one or two bands endlessly. Or, more likely, you will do what everyone does and decide “Well, I barely listen to that band and only like one or two of their songs so it it really worth buying?”.
It sucks for the artists who have lost their bandcamp revenue. But it was bound to happen because the model itself is fundamentally incompatible with the modern consumer base.
I’m weird that I do listen to the same 7 song album for hours some days. (Turbo being one example)
But also other artists I listen to like Michael Jackson aren’t on Bandcamp and I haven’t found a local used CD shop since I last moved. They also aren’t stuffing money I’d give for Michael’s music into his grave anyway.
When Rockstar Games is chewing you out about how you treat your employees you know you really screwed up.
