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I'm another non-streamer and I get most of my music from Bandcamp. The appeal to me is a lot of smaller labels and artists are on a more level playing field, I

I'm another non-streamer and I get most of my music from Bandcamp. The appeal to me is a lot of smaller labels and artists are on a more level playing field, I know more money goes to the artists, and the merch selection is great. I'm of an era that I remember CD albums would cost 15-20GBP sometimes, and I'm still very album-oriented in my listening. My 'thing' these days is buying digital copies of releases I like, and buying a vinyl copy of releases I really like, so I have a memento. The shipping costs can be steep, especially trans-Atlantic, but the tangible collection of records in a flight case is the closest thing to a safe of valuables that I own. Buy the vinyl, and typically there's an included copy of the digital version (either a code in the sleeve or a gratis copy in Bandcamp's case), so I can then download the FLAC and make whatever format I want from there. Total price typically ends up being more expensive than one of those 15-20GBP CDs from a bygone era, but I've got a digital copy I can play over and over, and a physical copy as a keepsake. I've found a lot of new music from Bandcamp. Their articles are high quality, and have directed me toward all kinds of music I wouldn't usually listen to. (Disclaimer: active customer of Bandcamp, not connected in any financial or professional sense, no other affiliation…though I do think about applying to work with them from time to time.) Edit: I use the same username here as I do on Bandcamp if anyone wants to snoop on my collection and/or wantlist, or be internet friends etc.

brusch64 8y ago
Bandcamp is my preferred way of buying music these days. The only advantage of physival media is the record cover. But I am really pissed if I can't download the album or if I am just able to download a shitty MP3 of the music I've bought. So Bandcamp works great for me. It offers all the options I want (FLAC) and I like that a band can set the price to 0$ so you can download it from Bandcamp for free but you can give them money if you want to. Awesome experience all around. And with the music I like most of the bands are on Bandcamp.
- eertami 8y ago
  What do you find so shitty about MP3, are you morally opposed to it's origin/licensing? Quality wise for listening you aren't going to tell the difference between a -v0 MP3 and FLAC even if you think otherwise. For anyone that wants to claim otherwise, unless you've had someone setup an A/B test with a significant amount of cases you're falling victim to placebo. I say this as a professional audio engineer, who long ago would always seek out FLAC. Now, unless I need to edit or re-encode a file the MP3 is just as good, far from shitty.
  - Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
    Reminds me of one of my favorite articles about HDMI cables where they had a bunch of supposed audiophiles try to tell the difference between a $2,000 cable and one made from a bent coat hanger. Surprise surprise, they couldn't. Back when I ripped CDs, I encoded my MP3s with variable bitrate with the quality set to high. They average around 192 kbps. I was never able to tell the difference between the CD and the MP3 at that rate.
    - cmrx64 8y ago
      Not HDMI, apparently. https://gizmodo.com/363154/audiophile-deathmatch-monster-cables-vs-a-coat-hanger https://gizmodo.com/363154/audiophile-deathmatch-monster-cab...
    - Applejinx 8y ago
      A good coat hanger is actually a damn fine wire for speaker cable. Most of what you want there is ability to handle big current spikes. I made 'audiophile style' cables using simple house cable solid-core, wrapped in opposite directions around a polystyrene tube core, so the conductors keep crossing at right angles (the point of that shenanigan). Works fantastic. Sounds a lil' better than zip-cord, and of course at these levels it's a game of countless 'lil better' choices wherever possible. I guess you could pay $2000 to have the conductors made out of silver and yak hair, but the 'heavier conductors and cable geometry' parts don't require any of that.
  - goostavos 8y ago
    "Placebo" describes the audio scene people pretty well in my experience. I did that MP3/FLAC A/B/X test back in my audio engineer days after catching a ton of condescending comments due to my listening of 'terrible sounding' MP3s. Either my ears are garbage, or the difference is so subtle that even with solid headphones in a dead quiet room, the absolute best you could hope to be able to detect is that one is "different." getting all the way to "shitty" sounds near impossible to me. Also, to my surprise, if you burned someone a cd from an MP3 source, but told the person it was Flac, it'd still "sound really smooth". Hm.
- glitcher 8y ago
  > The only advantage of physival media is the record cover. I would add that for long-term archiving purposes, vinyl has many advantages over digital formats. I'll admit this is probably not a concern for most people, but once I own something on vinyl it feels much more like I own a permanent copy of the music.
  - speleo_engr 8y ago
    How is vinyl more durable as far as physical media goes than a CD (digital format)? Vinyl can easily warp when improperly stored, degrades every time it is played, and even a small scratch result in audible imperfections. A CD at least can be scratched heavily and still be identical to the original thanks to forward error correction by Reed-Solomon codes.
    - glitcher 8y ago
      All good points. Personally, for daily listening I am using online digital streaming options almost exclusively now. My vinyl gets pulled out maybe once a year, and I am very aware that overuse can degrade them physically. As for cd's, I am no expert on this by any means, but I wonder how prevalent disc rot will become as some discs age to 30, 40, 50+ years old in the near future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot As far as I know vinyl doesn't have a comparable risk of degradation while sitting at rest in climate controlled storage. But I agree that the downsides are major concerns.
  - brusch64 8y ago
    I would say from a technical point of view vinyl is one of the worst for archiving purposes. It degrades every time you play it, it can warp, playing it back is error prone... The advantage of vinyl is in your last sentence: "once I own something on vinyl it feels much more like I own a permanent copy of the music". That's totally fine for me if you feel this way, but I don't. I feel better with multiple digital copies of the music on multiple places.
disantlor 8y ago
Great advice and also don’t sleep on wfmu.org for music discovery and all around refreshingly non-corporate experience
devmunchies 8y ago
> though I do think about applying to work with them from time to time. It’s evident that they are a small team. They need some work. For example I accidentally bought all work from an artist AND and individual album in the same checkout and I couldn’t undo it. So I double purchased an album. Support never responded.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ryanmcbride 8y ago
I've release most of my music on bandcamp and it really is great. It's low barrier of entry, the tools they have are pretty good, and they've given me more visibility than I've gotten on any other platform. Most of my listening comes from streaming and buying records but bandcamp has a special place in my heart. Especially since they still haven't gotten greedy and started inserting ads everywhere. (maybe they're mining our data? I dunno).
standerman 8y ago
One of my favorite features of Bandcamp is how you're allowed to listen for free and after a certain number of listens to a track you're prompted to purchase the music, since you've obviously been enjoying it.
- ubertakter 8y ago
  Interesting. My band mates and I decided not to turn on that feature. It seemed like it would be rather annoying.
_zachs 8y ago
What setup do you use for listening to vinyl? I've been thinking about purchasing the AT LP120
- petecooper 8y ago
  I used to have a couple of Technics SL-1210, but sold those after I stopped DJ'ing about a decade ago. Stanton ST150 is my preferred choice these days. http://www.stantondj.com/stanton-turntables/st150.html http://www.stantondj.com/stanton-turntables/st150.html
jen729w 8y ago
Nice one, Pete. Signed up, following you, and I've already found gold.
hardwaresofton 8y ago
Bandcamp in my mind is just about the only company in this space I want to buy things from (including Spotify, Youtube Red, Amazon Music, whatever else). It: - supports the artists (and lots of them, not just the biggest ones) - gives me instant, irrefutable ownership of the music I've bought - gives great download format choice If an artist is on bandcamp, it is a no-brainer for me to throw them their minimum + 1/2 dollars and buy an album. I can't say everyone thinks this way, but the feeling that I'm supporting the artists is felt more directly than on any other platform, and it feels good. To me, it's worth the price increase from free (to a point). If I could buy all my music on bandcamp I would. The only thing better than bandcamp would be a distributed/federated network of direct-from-band merch and album stores with (somehow) good discovery features written in a way that made it easy for bands to set up payment distribution (ex. stripe integration, shipping fulfillment integration, etc) -- but bandcamp is close enough.
branchless 8y ago
looks cool but the "artist-recommended" part is really frustrating. I can filter by bands from a particular city, with a particular sub-format when searching "best-selling", but not "artist-recommended".

brusch64 8y ago

Bandcamp is my preferred way of buying music these days. The only advantage of physival media is the record cover. But I am really pissed if I can't download the album or if I am just able to download a shitty MP3 of the music I've bought. So Bandcamp works great for me. It offers all the options I want (FLAC) and I like that a band can set the price to 0$ so you can download it from Bandcamp for free but you can give them money if you want to. Awesome experience all around. And with the music I like most of the bands are on Bandcamp.

eertami 8y ago
What do you find so shitty about MP3, are you morally opposed to it's origin/licensing? Quality wise for listening you aren't going to tell the difference between a -v0 MP3 and FLAC even if you think otherwise. For anyone that wants to claim otherwise, unless you've had someone setup an A/B test with a significant amount of cases you're falling victim to placebo. I say this as a professional audio engineer, who long ago would always seek out FLAC. Now, unless I need to edit or re-encode a file the MP3 is just as good, far from shitty.
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
  Reminds me of one of my favorite articles about HDMI cables where they had a bunch of supposed audiophiles try to tell the difference between a $2,000 cable and one made from a bent coat hanger. Surprise surprise, they couldn't. Back when I ripped CDs, I encoded my MP3s with variable bitrate with the quality set to high. They average around 192 kbps. I was never able to tell the difference between the CD and the MP3 at that rate.
  - cmrx64 8y ago
    Not HDMI, apparently. https://gizmodo.com/363154/audiophile-deathmatch-monster-cables-vs-a-coat-hanger https://gizmodo.com/363154/audiophile-deathmatch-monster-cab...
  - Applejinx 8y ago
    A good coat hanger is actually a damn fine wire for speaker cable. Most of what you want there is ability to handle big current spikes. I made 'audiophile style' cables using simple house cable solid-core, wrapped in opposite directions around a polystyrene tube core, so the conductors keep crossing at right angles (the point of that shenanigan). Works fantastic. Sounds a lil' better than zip-cord, and of course at these levels it's a game of countless 'lil better' choices wherever possible. I guess you could pay $2000 to have the conductors made out of silver and yak hair, but the 'heavier conductors and cable geometry' parts don't require any of that.
- goostavos 8y ago
  "Placebo" describes the audio scene people pretty well in my experience. I did that MP3/FLAC A/B/X test back in my audio engineer days after catching a ton of condescending comments due to my listening of 'terrible sounding' MP3s. Either my ears are garbage, or the difference is so subtle that even with solid headphones in a dead quiet room, the absolute best you could hope to be able to detect is that one is "different." getting all the way to "shitty" sounds near impossible to me. Also, to my surprise, if you burned someone a cd from an MP3 source, but told the person it was Flac, it'd still "sound really smooth". Hm.
glitcher 8y ago
> The only advantage of physival media is the record cover. I would add that for long-term archiving purposes, vinyl has many advantages over digital formats. I'll admit this is probably not a concern for most people, but once I own something on vinyl it feels much more like I own a permanent copy of the music.
- speleo_engr 8y ago
  How is vinyl more durable as far as physical media goes than a CD (digital format)? Vinyl can easily warp when improperly stored, degrades every time it is played, and even a small scratch result in audible imperfections. A CD at least can be scratched heavily and still be identical to the original thanks to forward error correction by Reed-Solomon codes.
  - glitcher 8y ago
    All good points. Personally, for daily listening I am using online digital streaming options almost exclusively now. My vinyl gets pulled out maybe once a year, and I am very aware that overuse can degrade them physically. As for cd's, I am no expert on this by any means, but I wonder how prevalent disc rot will become as some discs age to 30, 40, 50+ years old in the near future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot As far as I know vinyl doesn't have a comparable risk of degradation while sitting at rest in climate controlled storage. But I agree that the downsides are major concerns.
- brusch64 8y ago
  I would say from a technical point of view vinyl is one of the worst for archiving purposes. It degrades every time you play it, it can warp, playing it back is error prone... The advantage of vinyl is in your last sentence: "once I own something on vinyl it feels much more like I own a permanent copy of the music". That's totally fine for me if you feel this way, but I don't. I feel better with multiple digital copies of the music on multiple places.

disantlor 8y ago

Great advice and also don’t sleep on wfmu.org for music discovery and all around refreshingly non-corporate experience

devmunchies 8y ago

> though I do think about applying to work with them from time to time. It’s evident that they are a small team. They need some work. For example I accidentally bought all work from an artist AND and individual album in the same checkout and I couldn’t undo it. So I double purchased an album. Support never responded.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ryanmcbride 8y ago

I've release most of my music on bandcamp and it really is great. It's low barrier of entry, the tools they have are pretty good, and they've given me more visibility than I've gotten on any other platform. Most of my listening comes from streaming and buying records but bandcamp has a special place in my heart. Especially since they still haven't gotten greedy and started inserting ads everywhere. (maybe they're mining our data? I dunno).

standerman 8y ago

One of my favorite features of Bandcamp is how you're allowed to listen for free and after a certain number of listens to a track you're prompted to purchase the music, since you've obviously been enjoying it.

ubertakter 8y ago
Interesting. My band mates and I decided not to turn on that feature. It seemed like it would be rather annoying.

_zachs 8y ago

What setup do you use for listening to vinyl? I've been thinking about purchasing the AT LP120

petecooper 8y ago
I used to have a couple of Technics SL-1210, but sold those after I stopped DJ'ing about a decade ago. Stanton ST150 is my preferred choice these days. http://www.stantondj.com/stanton-turntables/st150.html http://www.stantondj.com/stanton-turntables/st150.html

jen729w 8y ago

Nice one, Pete. Signed up, following you, and I've already found gold.

hardwaresofton 8y ago

Bandcamp in my mind is just about the only company in this space I want to buy things from (including Spotify, Youtube Red, Amazon Music, whatever else). It: - supports the artists (and lots of them, not just the biggest ones) - gives me instant, irrefutable ownership of the music I've bought - gives great download format choice If an artist is on bandcamp, it is a no-brainer for me to throw them their minimum + 1/2 dollars and buy an album. I can't say everyone thinks this way, but the feeling that I'm supporting the artists is felt more directly than on any other platform, and it feels good. To me, it's worth the price increase from free (to a point). If I could buy all my music on bandcamp I would. The only thing better than bandcamp would be a distributed/federated network of direct-from-band merch and album stores with (somehow) good discovery features written in a way that made it easy for bands to set up payment distribution (ex. stripe integration, shipping fulfillment integration, etc) -- but bandcamp is close enough.

branchless 8y ago

looks cool but the "artist-recommended" part is really frustrating. I can filter by bands from a particular city, with a particular sub-format when searching "best-selling", but not "artist-recommended".