4 ms·

Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? As far as I can tell, it has music file storage gated behind a paywall (or not, plenty of music is offered for fre

Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? As far as I can tell, it has music file storage gated behind a paywall (or not, plenty of music is offered for free), a few very basic functionalities like liking/wishlisting albums, and “following” musicians (fwiw… not sure what’s the value of that… a personalized feed?) and… that’s pretty much it? I guess the front page, which I assume boost sales a little bit for the included musicians? What am I missing?

notsurenymore 3y ago
Discovery… at least to an extent While you can find a some of the big names in specific genres on bandcamp, it’s always struck me as more of a place for underground and tiny artists. The genre breakdown categories tend to be pretty good, and you can find some interesting stuff that’s not easily found elsewhere. Sometimes I’d just go into a specific genre and start listening to anything that caught my eye. I usually found it much better than streaming platforms, that just continuously recommend the same stuff I’ve heard time and time again, but just didn’t have in a playlist. I do have a problem with their mobile app though: It doesn’t allow you to change the sort method, so you end up seeing a lot of stuff you’ve already seen before. To be honest, I don’t use it as much as I used to. Nowadays, I’ve mostly found YouTube channels that upload and curate various rare and underground content for specific genres and that’s how I do most of my new (and new old) music discovery.
RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
It's not Spotify, it's not a social media site, it's a simple no-frills store where you can just buy music with no dark patterns or manipulative bullshit. The simplicity is the value proposition.
mjr00 3y ago
> Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? A place to purchase and download music legally, in lossless formats, mostly from smaller artists. In some ways it's closer to Patreon than iTunes. Most people don't buy music anyway so it's a niche product, and a niche even within that as Apple Music/Amazon Music etc have a larger selection. No clue what Epic was doing with this purchase. My best guess is big plans to make it the next Spotify that got derailed by ZIRP ending.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  IMO, Epic's grand vision is to be an all-in-one solution for any sort of media, from video games to complete CG movies. It's seems straight forward to see how a audio related business fits into this, and also straight forward to see how it ultimately wasn't really the right fit.
lewispollard 3y ago
> music file storage gated behind a paywall This is what streaming services have done to artists - the idea of "paying an artist for their music" is such an alien idea to some people that it ends up phrased like this.
- secretsatan 3y ago
  It's damn weird. I get that most people just want a radio, but it's getting harder to just buy music, to keep. Apple music is slowly erasing iTunes, the media management aspect of it seems to be slowly breaking down, currently all my album art is completely messed up on my iPhone.
  - thirdsun 3y ago
    > currently all my album art is completely messed up on my iPhone That's not normal. Maybe just sync your library again.
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    There seems to be a bug where adding your music to up next adds it to a random place in your playlist. It's so prevalent, I thought it was a feature I didn't know about. It's been years. This makes the platform almost unusable. It's pretty amazing to see such fundamental usability issues never get fixed. It's astonishing to see in flagship software from a major company. It just doesn't work at all in a basic sense.
epsylon 3y ago
> Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? Actual money going to the actual people who make the music you listen to on spotify.

notsurenymore 3y ago

Discovery… at least to an extent While you can find a some of the big names in specific genres on bandcamp, it’s always struck me as more of a place for underground and tiny artists. The genre breakdown categories tend to be pretty good, and you can find some interesting stuff that’s not easily found elsewhere. Sometimes I’d just go into a specific genre and start listening to anything that caught my eye. I usually found it much better than streaming platforms, that just continuously recommend the same stuff I’ve heard time and time again, but just didn’t have in a playlist. I do have a problem with their mobile app though: It doesn’t allow you to change the sort method, so you end up seeing a lot of stuff you’ve already seen before. To be honest, I don’t use it as much as I used to. Nowadays, I’ve mostly found YouTube channels that upload and curate various rare and underground content for specific genres and that’s how I do most of my new (and new old) music discovery.

RodgerTheGreat 3y ago

It's not Spotify, it's not a social media site, it's a simple no-frills store where you can just buy music with no dark patterns or manipulative bullshit. The simplicity is the value proposition.

mjr00 3y ago

> Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? A place to purchase and download music legally, in lossless formats, mostly from smaller artists. In some ways it's closer to Patreon than iTunes. Most people don't buy music anyway so it's a niche product, and a niche even within that as Apple Music/Amazon Music etc have a larger selection. No clue what Epic was doing with this purchase. My best guess is big plans to make it the next Spotify that got derailed by ZIRP ending.

somenameforme 3y ago
IMO, Epic's grand vision is to be an all-in-one solution for any sort of media, from video games to complete CG movies. It's seems straight forward to see how a audio related business fits into this, and also straight forward to see how it ultimately wasn't really the right fit.

lewispollard 3y ago

> music file storage gated behind a paywall This is what streaming services have done to artists - the idea of "paying an artist for their music" is such an alien idea to some people that it ends up phrased like this.

secretsatan 3y ago
It's damn weird. I get that most people just want a radio, but it's getting harder to just buy music, to keep. Apple music is slowly erasing iTunes, the media management aspect of it seems to be slowly breaking down, currently all my album art is completely messed up on my iPhone.
- thirdsun 3y ago
  > currently all my album art is completely messed up on my iPhone That's not normal. Maybe just sync your library again.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  There seems to be a bug where adding your music to up next adds it to a random place in your playlist. It's so prevalent, I thought it was a feature I didn't know about. It's been years. This makes the platform almost unusable. It's pretty amazing to see such fundamental usability issues never get fixed. It's astonishing to see in flagship software from a major company. It just doesn't work at all in a basic sense.

epsylon 3y ago

> Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? Actual money going to the actual people who make the music you listen to on spotify.