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Bandcamp support is faltering – maybe you should download your music now
- peterlk 3y agoCan this community tell me what alternatives exist? What I really want is for a business to let me pay an amount of my choosing, and send my money to artists based on my engagement.
- dddavid 3y agoNot really - there are a few, but there's no guarantee that they won't be bought out and enshitificaton will ensue
- F-Lexx 3y agoOh, if it isn't the joys of the capitalist cycle... Let the enshitification begin.
- pparanoidd 3y agonothing to do with capitalism. people just don't want to directly pay for music
- F-Lexx 3y agoInteresting thought. What is this based on? I mean, why would people just not want to directly pay for the music that they enjoy?
- spencerflem 3y agothis one absolutely is though - people were happy using bandcamp to directly pay for music but the owners got greedy and sold the site
- cageface 3y agoA significant minority do. Bandcamp cleared $20 million in profit in 2022: https://www.fastcompany.com/90951664/bandcamp-spotify-vinyl-renaissance https://www.fastcompany.com/90951664/bandcamp-spotify-vinyl-...
- crtasm 3y agoand "Fans have paid artists $1.21 billion using Bandcamp, and $193 million in the last year." from bandcamp homepage.
- Lacerda69 3y ago100% all i care about is that the mlney actually ends up in the pockets of artists. if bandcamp disappears there needs to be some alternative to pay artists. Spotify and the like are predators IMO.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lyjia 3y agoI am on the verge of self-publishing my first release on Bandcamp and the timing on this couldn't be worse.
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoTake it up with Patreon or Ko-Fi..
- rizky05 3y ago[dead]
- moogly 3y agoThis is so depressing. Bandcamp was the last bastion of what once made the Internet great. I could do without everything else, really. It's all greed now.
- Lacerda69 3y agoI could not agree more. If Bandcamp actually implodes I would have no idea where to buy music. I want to buy directly fron the artists; everything else feels tainted. Is there any alternative?
- Pxtl 3y ago7digital? Except... they're owned by the same company.
- Syonyk 3y agoBuy a vinyl album from artists who sell such things, which will get them far more, per album sold, than just about anything else. Your ability to play vinyl is irrelevant here, and all I'll ask is that you store it reasonably (upright, in a cool place, sealed if you're not going to play it) for future use, since they last "about forever" when well taken care of. Then obtain the music in some lossless form. FLAC download from the usual sources, used CD on eBay into the ripper, etc. Though I've also debated just starting to mail checks in envelopes to artists I want to directly support. It's certainly more annoying than something like BandCamp. But given how "literally everything useful on the internet" either turns into a behavioral surplus vampire or dies (gets killed off), I don't have any better ideas either.
- Lacerda69 3y agoI want a comprehensive directory of all indie/underground music where I can buy physical or digital copies of the music directly from the artist. I need to know that 80%+ of the money goes to the artist. Is there any other platform than bandcamp that offers this?
- 3y ago
- Macha 3y agoBandcamp was handy for me for years because it sold downloads, all the indie musicians were on it and a surprising amount of stuff from bigger media was there too. It also felt nice supporting "the little guy" compared to iTunes or whatever. It's rather disappointing if it closes then, but at least I've always used it as a download store so have copies of the music I bought there rather than using their app.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoBit confusing.... support for Bandcamp isn't faltering, Bandcamp Support, the dept staff, teams etc, is faltering. For time being it's all we've really got and I think most labels and artists will stick around until it shuts down as there isn't really decent alternatives yet
- ashu1461 3y agoYes, it is a slow death as the OP pointed out Neglect can kill a company, and if it doesn't kill it, then it can leave it lurching on, even while its soul has been banished to the shadow realm.
- Kye 3y agoThe first thing I did when I heard Bandcamp was being sold again was put all my albums into a Ko-fi shop thing for free and let everyone who ever bought one know. https://ko-fi.com/s/7e9f22c63b https://ko-fi.com/s/7e9f22c63b I figured I could at least make sure the people who supported my music all these years were taken care of.
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoBillionaire buys rights to thousands of popular records. Releases all to public domain. Or Start service and stream all for anyone without authentication. I only stream. Lost all my mp3s. Own zero CDs. Seems silly that I'm still paying for what I "purchased " a dozen years ago.
- crtasm 3y agoWhere did you buy the MP3s from?
- dvngnt_ 3y agoknowledge.bandcamp.com put me onto bandcamp a decade ago for buying digital music and actually owning it. Spotify is good for discovery but it can disappear at any moment
- AndyKelley 3y agoThis is why we need more businesses to run as non-profits.
- GormHouj 3y agoAnyone know how to actually download all the albums you have access to? There's not like a "download all" button... EDIT: Whoops, missed the extension suggestion in the actual article. RTFL...
- imrehg 3y agoI'm always uncertain what formats to use if I were to download my digital library from Bandcamp. It seems like at least FLAC, OGG, AAC versions of everything would be pretty mandatory, given how different music players' support is, plus the for archiving. During the day I need to switch between MacOS, Linux, Android, and that's an ethernal technical sudoku... Any other versions one should take themselves (say one of the MP3 variants), that have any tangible benefits?
- jMyles 3y ago...FLAC seems like the winner for your requirements, no?
- imrehg 3y agoI'd like to avoid having to convert it all the time (e.g. MacOS' music player doesn't seem to support that? But gonna have to check it). And the sizes are just enormous. But yeah, as storage space & bandwidth are less and less an issue, if FLAC is fully supported across the board, the scale should be tipped. My worry comes from we not quite being there yet.
- jMyles 3y ago...MacOS' music player doesn't support FLAC? Sometimes I'm just baffled by how broken the Apple ecosystem can seem.
- frizzlebox 3y agoIt supports ALAC. There’s a handy app called XLD (X Lossless Decoder) that will convert from FLAC to ALAC (and probably back) in a couple clicks if you need it. Lossless means I don’t really need to care whether my music is in an equivalent format, but I will admit it’s a bit silly. https://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html https://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html
- moogly 3y ago
- iforgotpassword 3y agoWhy does everything ultimately have to get sold to big greedy corps? OK the answer is probably simply money as it always is. I guess I just don't want to understand, when it comes to products where it is safe to assume they were a labor of love, born out of passion. You don't build Bandcamp to make money, you build it because you love music.
- DeIlliad 3y agoFriend of a friend built and ran a very successful restaurant for a decade give or take. Staff was treated and paid well and everyone was happy. Eventually they sold the place because they just didn't want to run it any more and the new owners drove it to shit in all the ways you would expect. They felt bad but what else were they suppose to do if they just didn't want to run it any more? Sometimes the answer isn't money, sometimes the answer is the owner is just tired and wants out.
- mcpackieh 3y agoThe best option may be to sell the business to one or more of the employees. Of course this is contingent on you paying your employees well enough for this to be viable, as well as your employees believing in the business, but I've seen it work well once before. A diner near me was sold to a waitress who worked there for 20 years, who's now been running it successfully for about 10 years. Obviously she knew the business inside and out, understood the customers and the business side as well.
- blargey 3y agoIf the plan was literally just "leave the role" they could just pick a capable successor and hand it off. Or set up a co-op (or some other non-faceless-investment-firm ownership/operation structure) and sell to that, if at a lower price than they'd get from someone who plans to "drive it to shit in all the ways you would expect". But if the owner's retirement plan is to sell it at the "drive it to shit" price, isn't that just money?
- randomployees 3y ago
- boredemployee 3y agoParadoxically, I was lucky enough to work with something I love, music, for 7 years. Just as the internet and social media helped me gain enough exposure to make a living DJing and producing music, providing a decent life for my family, the intense competition for attention on social media, exacerbated by the pandemic, made continuing in this profession unfeasible, largely due to my somewhat introverted personality. Bandcamp wasn't really my thing but I had some friends that made a decent money out of it. Anyway, I wish the best of luck to those still trying to make a living from music in this new era. I'm unhappy with my current job, but at least I can pay the bills.
- jMyles 3y agoSo, as a musician who recently released a record via both decentralized and legacy services: I'm seeing so many people in this thread ask why this is happening, eg - is it just greed? And it seems to me that the answer is very simple: the silly state-propped notion of "intellectual property" has caused an almost unfathomable cottage industry to rent-seek around it. Have you been to Nashville lately? I'm headed there Monday. And I love a lot of things about Nashville - especially the lovely collaborative bluegrass vibes of East Nashville and Madison. But as much as it's a music town, it's a finance town, and it's depressing how palpable this is. Much of the skyline are bank skyscrapers - literal artifacts of decades of vampiring music profits away from struggling musicians. The system of copyright is basically, "if you acquire my music through any means other than the legitimate one, I can call the cops to stop you, violently." And believe me when I tell you: none of us have that view of our music or our fans. Make all bits copyable. No such thing as an illegal number. And watch as the crony systems of UPC/ISRC/CdBaby/Streaming retreat, while massive archives of stellar music, available for free everywhere, bloom. In such an environment, it will be much easier from musicians to make a living, not only from direct contributions from fans, but from our live shows, merch, etc. Obviously something also needs to be done about ticketmaster also, but that's another discussion (that is still unresolved decades after Pearl Jam gave such eloquent and spot-on testimony in congress).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> it will be much easier from musicians to make a living Do you really believe this? My fear: if I can get an AI, personally reactive, front-seat simulated concert in my living room (with my friends), what value does supporting the artist provide beyond personal connection? The latter is a real market. But it reduces artists to something closer to baristas than what they are now.
- jMyles 3y agoWell, obviously the overarching concern here is a bottoming-out of nearly every market for labor related to cognitive or creative tasks. And I think you're right: that's coming. And with it, perhaps the most obvious impetus for rethinking the entire economic configuration of things. The only way that AI is a doomsday is if, in your imagination, you drag along 20th-century monetary and economic paradigms with it. People seem to like to be the presence of vibrating strings. I don't think that's subject to deprecation just because people can also have meaningful relationships with AI as a creator of art. In fact, the rapid growth of AI as a provider of passionate musical experiences seems to me likely to grow the palette and appetite for such things, not to shrink it.
- askvictor 3y agoProbably a good time to give a shout out to Mopidy: https://mopidy.com/ https://mopidy.com/ Though as for myself, I'm still running Squeezebox - nothing like being able to SSH into your smart speaker and mess around with the Perl system that's running it.
- throwaway15968 3y agoAs one of said engineers doing support right now, cut us some slack, we are doing our best :)
- dijksterhuis 3y ago<3
- Ruthalas 3y agoWe very much appreciate your work!
- DavidPeiffer 3y agoThis was the nudge I needed to finally buy (and promptly download) some albums from a local band I saw live over a decade ago. Their domain is expired, Facebook page is blank, and they haven't tweeted in a handful of years. There is very little about the band online anymore, and I don't know of any other source to find their music (including a quick search on the high seas).
- crtasm 3y agoCan any artists comment on how often they have reason to interact with Bandcamp's support department?
- meeb 3y agoWhen Bandcamp was sold a few weeks back I built this to download my somewhat extensive music library without having to manually download and unzip hundreds of ZIP files: https://github.com/meeb/bandcampsync https://github.com/meeb/bandcampsync May be useful to anyone else in this thread who wants to do the same.
- beaugunderson 3y agowas hoping to find something like this linked here!
- herewulf 3y agoThis looks great! Thanks! What is the download process like in terms of parallelism? Serial? Limited to n? Etc?
- meeb 3y agoSerial, single download at a time. Even for large libraries though it doesn't really matter, just let it run for a few hours. My personal use case is via the container which runs every 24 hours, roughly.
- rcarr 3y agoHere's my idea for an indie music service. No idea if the numbers would work out viable but I'm sure with a bit of tweaking they could. The customer pays £11/month. The service keeps £1 for operating costs. The customer then gets 1,000 credits. Every time a customer streams a song, the artist gets 1p. If the customer listens to the song 100 times, the customer now owns the song and is free to download the song on to their devices. The customer doesn't spend any more credits any time they listen to that song and the artist doesn't get any more money from that customer for any further streams of that song. Alternatively the customer can purchase a song at any time for 100 credits - x, with x being however many times they've streamed it. If the customer burns through their 1000 credit limit they're free to purchase another 1000 credits by topping up another £10. Unused credits get passed on to the next month. Prices of credits are increased in line with inflation every year to ensure the work of the artist and the music service isn't being devalued. 1000 credits should work out at 115 minutes a day of music listening, if we're assuming the average song length is 3 mins 30 seconds. Really surprised something like this hasn't been implemented already. Seems like the sweet spot for both consumer convenience and artist renumeration. In my opinion Bandcamp was/is ok but has always been hamstrung in growing to its full potential by trying to shoehorn the old EP/LP model into the web rather than finding a way to make streaming better.
- Ruthalas 3y agoMany of us use bandcamp specifically to avoid subscriptions and because it provides downloads, rather than streaming. Your idea isn't bad, but I don't think it will appeal to the folks who are lamenting this situation.
- rcarr 3y agoYou'd still be able to purchase and download the songs but you can also stream for discovery and the artist would still get paid fairly for it. It's basically a store but with the option to pay outright or to use a micro installment payment plan with no time limits. I'd say most millenials and older have had the experience of buying an album only to realise they only really like one song and then having buyers remorse.
- herewulf 3y agoUsers should also be aware that artists can remove their music from Bandcamp at any time for any reason with no warning. I found that out the hard way after a purchase was just mysteriously missing from my Bandcamp collection. I contacted BC support and that was the gist of their response. Fortunately the missing item was just a single and I had already downloaded it in WAV format to burn to a CD. However, downloading from BC again would have saved me the trouble of converting and tagging that track.
- mikrotikker 3y agoI had that, but found the archive.org page and pulled the links to the mp3s from it which were actually still live. I won't say who it was because they likely cleaned it from the internet to clean up their image. It was glorifying the confederate flag and stereotypical redneck culture, which I see as a hilarious meme "Billy's mom gave him a shotgun when he was 3 that's why we call him shotgun Bil-leeeeee" :D
- moogly 3y agoBut on Bandcamp, downloading the music you bought was put front-and-center, and DRM-free. I always downloaded the music straight away in a lossless format. I only used the streaming capability once in a blue moon when my NAS was down and I didn't have access to my Subsonic server.
- trclst 3y agoSomething current: all the albums I bought this weekend have "(pre-order)" in the file name even though it's apparently the complete album. the headline sounds wrong: If you don't save and archive paid bandcamp downloads, you've lost either way, no matter how the company is doing. The good thing about bandcamp is that you have the option to do so. More importantly you have the possibility to get lossless music files. If you download from bandcamp then currently only in flac and backup the results with programs like restic [1] just as you should back up all other data. You should always make a second copy fo any further changes if you rewrite tags or encode to other formats like mp3. [1] https://restic.net https://restic.net