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Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader https://github.com/eas

Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader Other downloaders only target the openly available mp3 files. I have a straightforward guide on how to get up and running on windows here: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 You should always archive your collection anyways. One negative thing about bandcamp is that artists/labels/bandcamp can remove anything at anytime for any reason, so things you paid for can straight up disappear. This was very disappointing to discover. Note that sometimes things are set as hidden, rather than outright removed. This info may be outdated, as the relevant support page seems to gave changed from the last time I looked at it. Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. I’m happy enough to hand artists money if it’s easy and I can archive a lossless copy, but if they start fucking around with things, I’ll go right back to doing what I was before. That said, if they fix the outright removal of paid things problem, and start treating “artist” as first class instead of “label” in searches and links, I’ll be singing their praises.

deleted 3y ago
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Wowfunhappy 3y ago
> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. Just so you know, Apple and Amazon also offer DRM free music downloads. Obviously, you have to actually buy the individual song or album, not a streaming plan. In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file (on Windows, I'm not sure what the status is on Mac nowadays), which kind of sucks.
- eindiran 3y ago
  I have also purchased music on Amazon and let's not pretend its "full on downloads", Amazon has V0 MP3 only iirc and Bandcamp offers ever format under the sun including FLAC and ALAC. Don't know about Apple because iTunes doesn't have Linux support and the whole setup of downloading an app in order to download a file strikes me as a bit gross.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon vs Lossless. (I really do wish Amazon offered AAC downloads.)
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free They are DRM-free, but I wouldn't characterize the MP3s as "very good quality". They're only OK. It was the quality of their encodings that got me to stop buying music downloads from Amazon.
    - Kye 3y ago
      Lossless is mainly for mixing/remixing, not listening.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        I disagree. As a listener, the lossy encodings I've heard are fairly annoying, especially in the higher frequencies. I haven't heard every lossy encoding, of course, and there may be an actually good one that escaped my attention.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        There's no evidence that more than a very small percentage of humans (if even that) can differentiate between reasonable bit-rate pyscho-acoustic (lossy) compression and the source material. Double-blind tests have made this abundantly clear. If you really can hear a difference, you've either got particularly poorly compressed files, or are in a tiny minority of us.
- jorams 3y ago
  For an online music store with DRM free downloads I like Qobuz. Available quality depends on the album/song, but if something is not on Bandcamp it's a good, no-nonsense alternative.
  - joveian 3y ago
    Just tried them... they make you download individual tracks like they've never heard of a zip file, just to make you try their app out of annoyance. Not really no-nonsense :(.
    - jorams 3y ago
      Oof, that's frustrating and a recent change. There used to be a quality selection at the top and a "Download all" button that would download an archive of the entire purchase.
- PeterStuer 3y ago
  Also watermark free?
  - CodesInChaos 3y ago
    Is bandcamp watermark free?
    - PeterStuer 3y ago
      I don't know. It was a genuine question. My hunch; no way Apple and Amazon will not watermark. But that is just based on behavioral inference, not on knowledge or data.
      - iggldiggl 3y ago
        Apple does indeed include the original purchaser in the MPEG-4 metadata. I have no idea whether or not they also do any kind of more advanced watermarking of the actual audio data itself.
    - joveian 3y ago
      No, not for a while. As I understand it they didn't have one at first but after some asshole used it as a backup (since they let anyone upload "music") and made a blog post about it they added one. Quite possibly they wanted to anyway and it was just a convenient excuse.
      - CodesInChaos 3y ago
        Do you have a link?
        joveian 3y ago
        Thanks for asking, because it turns out I was wrong :(. I should know better than to rely on my memory these days. If you download the same FLAC file twice it won't be the same (possibly unless the two downloads are within a few days) but I just checked and they do decode to the same WAV. I haven't checked multiple accounts but when trying to find the article I thought I remembered I found someone saying they had checked and found them to be the same (not that long ago). I'm not sure if the FLAC or other specific file downloads are ever exactly the same between accounts, possibly not and they record the generation timestamp or such, but it seems the audio itself is not watermarked. The backup thing did happen, though: https://medium.com/@__Tux/using-bandcamp-as-a-backup-solution-3b6549d24579 https://medium.com/@__Tux/using-bandcamp-as-a-backup-solutio...
- rchaud 3y ago
  > In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file Another laughable requirement from the land of 'it just works'. Bandcamp just packages the album in a simple ZIP file that can be opened anywhere, desktop or mobile.
Helithumper 3y ago
> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. Don't forget Qobuz: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop They not only have streaming plans but also let you buy the music files directly.
- IronWolve 3y ago
  Amazon has always let me download the entire album as mp3, I've made cd's and copied to usb/phone just fine.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- Modified3019 3y ago
  Good to know, thanks!
cookiengineer 3y ago
In case you have troubles exporting cookies, I made a simple extension for that: https://github.com/cookiengineer/me-want-cookies https://github.com/cookiengineer/me-want-cookies (Uses Netscape cookie format)
meeb 3y ago
Of a similar nature, my weekend project last week: https://github.com/meeb/bandcampsync https://github.com/meeb/bandcampsync Does much the same thing, but it unpacks the zips and tracks the directories. It can run as a docker container which syncs your collection on a daily timer. The use case is to download your purchases to local directories for use with Jellyfin/Plex/etc. You can just buy music and it'll appear on your local media server automatically within a day.
- jefozabuss 3y ago
  didn't want to create an issue on github for this but just looked at it and seems to have a duplicated PUID setting (the 2nd should be PGID I guess) in entrypoint.sh
  - meeb 3y ago
    Thanks! Fixed in v0.3.3. Feel free to open an issue for stuff like that.
pharmakom 3y ago
Things I have paid for have disappeared from store but I can still download them. Is there another level of “disappear”?
- heleninboodler 3y ago
  Well, there's what can happen if SongTradr decides to change the download policy.
- 3agle 3y ago
  There is, I have some older purchases where there's no longer a download link at all and it just asks you to contact the artist directly
Kbelicius 3y ago
> That said, if they fix the outright removal of paid things problem, and start treating “artist” as first class instead of “label” in searches and links, I’ll be singing their praises. I had paid things removed from my bandcamp collection a few years ago. The only recourse provided by band camp was to contact the artist(al things were from the same artist). If the experience of another user that responded to you about being able to download removed things that were paid for... well that is much better than the bandcamp experience since I can not download things that were removed.
raffraffraff 3y ago
Bandcamp, 7digital, rarely CDs (but I do still have a USB DVD recorder so I can still rip). And honestly, if I find that something is no longer available (like Spirogyra's "Bells, Boots & Shambles") and the composer is no longer living, I'll take it off something like YouTube if there's a decent quality rip available there. In some cases, original recordings aren't great quality anyway.
m-p-3 3y ago
> One negative thing about bandcamp is that artists/labels/bandcamp can remove anything at anytime for any reason, so things you paid for can straight up disappear. That seems borderline illegal.. I can't imagine Valve removing a Steam game from someone's library if they already bought it without the Internet giving them a lot of bad press, they'll just delist the item from being purchased.
- iggldiggl 3y ago
  Given that Bandcamp does allow downloading your purchases (indeed, I've only ever used them that way), I suppose they could argue that anything beyond a download immediately after purchase was only ever just a convenience feature. If they get a lot of customers that effectively treat them as a streaming service, tough, I suppose I can see that there might be a certain impedance mismatch of expectations there.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Wowfunhappy 3y ago

> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. Just so you know, Apple and Amazon also offer DRM free music downloads. Obviously, you have to actually buy the individual song or album, not a streaming plan. In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file (on Windows, I'm not sure what the status is on Mac nowadays), which kind of sucks.

eindiran 3y ago
I have also purchased music on Amazon and let's not pretend its "full on downloads", Amazon has V0 MP3 only iirc and Bandcamp offers ever format under the sun including FLAC and ALAC. Don't know about Apple because iTunes doesn't have Linux support and the whole setup of downloading an app in order to download a file strikes me as a bit gross.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon vs Lossless. (I really do wish Amazon offered AAC downloads.)
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free They are DRM-free, but I wouldn't characterize the MP3s as "very good quality". They're only OK. It was the quality of their encodings that got me to stop buying music downloads from Amazon.
  - Kye 3y ago
    Lossless is mainly for mixing/remixing, not listening.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I disagree. As a listener, the lossy encodings I've heard are fairly annoying, especially in the higher frequencies. I haven't heard every lossy encoding, of course, and there may be an actually good one that escaped my attention.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        There's no evidence that more than a very small percentage of humans (if even that) can differentiate between reasonable bit-rate pyscho-acoustic (lossy) compression and the source material. Double-blind tests have made this abundantly clear. If you really can hear a difference, you've either got particularly poorly compressed files, or are in a tiny minority of us.
jorams 3y ago
For an online music store with DRM free downloads I like Qobuz. Available quality depends on the album/song, but if something is not on Bandcamp it's a good, no-nonsense alternative.
- joveian 3y ago
  Just tried them... they make you download individual tracks like they've never heard of a zip file, just to make you try their app out of annoyance. Not really no-nonsense :(.
  - jorams 3y ago
    Oof, that's frustrating and a recent change. There used to be a quality selection at the top and a "Download all" button that would download an archive of the entire purchase.
PeterStuer 3y ago
Also watermark free?
- CodesInChaos 3y ago
  Is bandcamp watermark free?
  - PeterStuer 3y ago
    I don't know. It was a genuine question. My hunch; no way Apple and Amazon will not watermark. But that is just based on behavioral inference, not on knowledge or data.
    - iggldiggl 3y ago
      Apple does indeed include the original purchaser in the MPEG-4 metadata. I have no idea whether or not they also do any kind of more advanced watermarking of the actual audio data itself.
  - joveian 3y ago
    No, not for a while. As I understand it they didn't have one at first but after some asshole used it as a backup (since they let anyone upload "music") and made a blog post about it they added one. Quite possibly they wanted to anyway and it was just a convenient excuse.
    - CodesInChaos 3y ago
      Do you have a link?
      - joveian 3y ago
        Thanks for asking, because it turns out I was wrong :(. I should know better than to rely on my memory these days. If you download the same FLAC file twice it won't be the same (possibly unless the two downloads are within a few days) but I just checked and they do decode to the same WAV. I haven't checked multiple accounts but when trying to find the article I thought I remembered I found someone saying they had checked and found them to be the same (not that long ago). I'm not sure if the FLAC or other specific file downloads are ever exactly the same between accounts, possibly not and they record the generation timestamp or such, but it seems the audio itself is not watermarked. The backup thing did happen, though: https://medium.com/@__Tux/using-bandcamp-as-a-backup-solution-3b6549d24579 https://medium.com/@__Tux/using-bandcamp-as-a-backup-solutio...
rchaud 3y ago
> In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file Another laughable requirement from the land of 'it just works'. Bandcamp just packages the album in a simple ZIP file that can be opened anywhere, desktop or mobile.

Helithumper 3y ago

> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. Don't forget Qobuz: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop They not only have streaming plans but also let you buy the music files directly.

IronWolve 3y ago
Amazon has always let me download the entire album as mp3, I've made cd's and copied to usb/phone just fine.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Modified3019 3y ago
Good to know, thanks!

cookiengineer 3y ago

In case you have troubles exporting cookies, I made a simple extension for that: https://github.com/cookiengineer/me-want-cookies https://github.com/cookiengineer/me-want-cookies (Uses Netscape cookie format)

meeb 3y ago

Of a similar nature, my weekend project last week: https://github.com/meeb/bandcampsync https://github.com/meeb/bandcampsync Does much the same thing, but it unpacks the zips and tracks the directories. It can run as a docker container which syncs your collection on a daily timer. The use case is to download your purchases to local directories for use with Jellyfin/Plex/etc. You can just buy music and it'll appear on your local media server automatically within a day.

jefozabuss 3y ago
didn't want to create an issue on github for this but just looked at it and seems to have a duplicated PUID setting (the 2nd should be PGID I guess) in entrypoint.sh
- meeb 3y ago
  Thanks! Fixed in v0.3.3. Feel free to open an issue for stuff like that.

pharmakom 3y ago

Things I have paid for have disappeared from store but I can still download them. Is there another level of “disappear”?

heleninboodler 3y ago
Well, there's what can happen if SongTradr decides to change the download policy.
3agle 3y ago
There is, I have some older purchases where there's no longer a download link at all and it just asks you to contact the artist directly

Kbelicius 3y ago

> That said, if they fix the outright removal of paid things problem, and start treating “artist” as first class instead of “label” in searches and links, I’ll be singing their praises. I had paid things removed from my bandcamp collection a few years ago. The only recourse provided by band camp was to contact the artist(al things were from the same artist). If the experience of another user that responded to you about being able to download removed things that were paid for... well that is much better than the bandcamp experience since I can not download things that were removed.

raffraffraff 3y ago

Bandcamp, 7digital, rarely CDs (but I do still have a USB DVD recorder so I can still rip). And honestly, if I find that something is no longer available (like Spirogyra's "Bells, Boots & Shambles") and the composer is no longer living, I'll take it off something like YouTube if there's a decent quality rip available there. In some cases, original recordings aren't great quality anyway.

m-p-3 3y ago

> One negative thing about bandcamp is that artists/labels/bandcamp can remove anything at anytime for any reason, so things you paid for can straight up disappear. That seems borderline illegal.. I can't imagine Valve removing a Steam game from someone's library if they already bought it without the Internet giving them a lot of bad press, they'll just delist the item from being purchased.

iggldiggl 3y ago
Given that Bandcamp does allow downloading your purchases (indeed, I've only ever used them that way), I suppose they could argue that anything beyond a download immediately after purchase was only ever just a convenience feature. If they get a lot of customers that effectively treat them as a streaming service, tough, I suppose I can see that there might be a certain impedance mismatch of expectations there.