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> Faircamp bills itself as “a static site generator for audio producers”, but an easier way to understand it is this: it’s a simple site that you can host yours
by bigbillheck 3y ago
> Faircamp bills itself as “a static site generator for audio producers”, but an easier way to understand it is this: it’s a simple site that you can host yourself. Install some software on your server, point it at the folder of the music you want to sell, and your site’s pages will build themselves.
That "on your server" part is going to make is unsuited for 99.9+% of bandcamp artists, and speaking as someone who buys an awful lot of music on bandcamp, I would have some concerns as well. (Not least of which being that with bandcamp I can download purchased music years after purchase, even if artists have died or bands broken up, I wouldn't have that guarantee here).
- bee_rider 3y agoAlso Bandcamp already has my credit card.
- rglullis 3y agoIf only the US could ever leave the 19th century and allow instant wire transfers... Oh, wait. They did already! https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fednow_about.h...
- bee_rider 3y agoHuh, interesting. Did Faircamp implement some sort of payment system that works through FedNow? That’s pretty neat if so.
- dangus 3y agoThere are a wide array of different payment preferences depending on the country. Bank transfer isn’t universally the most popular method of e-commerce transactions. For example, PayPal seems to be the most overwhelmingly popular online payment method in Germany. In the UK, PayPal and debit cards are the leaders. Debit cards are also generally popular globally (a debit card isn’t the same as a bank transfer). https://blog.2checkout.com/popular-online-payment-methods-globally-and-locally/ https://blog.2checkout.com/popular-online-payment-methods-gl... https://www.rapyd.net/blog/the-top-payment-methods-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.rapyd.net/blog/the-top-payment-methods-in-the-un... This speaks more toward someone like a musician needing a solution that has many payment options to appeal to a wide breadth of customers, not some kind of dig on US e-commerce and banking because “Europe does it better and the US is stuck in the 19th century.”
- rglullis 3y agoPaypal is the most popular method in Europe because they operate as a bank here, and therefore customers can make wire transfers to each other.
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- JohnFen 3y agoIt technically exists, but I haven't actually seen it "in the wild" yet. My banks certainly aren't on board at this time. Maybe it will become something useful in the future, though.
- terinjokes 3y ago> Not least of which being that with bandcamp I can download purchased music years after purchase, even if artists have died or bands broken up, I wouldn't have that guarantee here Note that this isn't guaranteed, especially for smaller bands that get picked up by a label. Most of the time the label just makes the releases hidden, so they're no longer displayed publicly, but can still be downloaded. However, some labels delete the release instead, so it's no longer downloadable from your collection.
- drngdds 3y agoYeah, this is a risk. The best approach is to take advantage of the fact that Bandcamp lets you download everything and simply download everything you buy and keep backups (as you would with any other important data)
- RoyTyrell 3y agoYep exactly, that's what I do too. Download a lossless version and then use Bandcamp if I ever wanted to stream it. However I also host Navidrome (OSS streaming with a web-app) so use that 99.9% of the time I want to stream. Even if there aren't labels requiring artists to hide or delete music from Bandcamp, you never know if Bandcamp could just go down one day for financial reasons and then you're screwed.
- JohnFen 3y agoThis is the primary use case for Bandcamp for me -- it's one of the main ways I buy new music. I'm not interested in streaming services. Being able to buy (with most of the money going to the artist) and download lossless copies of albums is what I want.
- terinjokes 3y agoYep, I download the FLAC and always keep the original zip file, and back it up separately from the files I manage with beets. I playback the beets-managed files with Navidrome. Beets doesn't maange handle the extra files that the zip often includes, such as PDFs of linear notes, the sheet music I once found included, or band photos. Maybe someday I'll figure out a good archive for everything that isn't "the literal zip file".
- actionfromafar 3y agoThe irony is that for this federated network to succeed, it probably needs a large-ish "commercial" peer which works similarly to how Bandcamp did.
- optionalsquid 3y agoThat "on your server" part also means that discoverability takes a massive nose-dive. Most of the music I've purchased on Bandcamp was discovered by following suggestions listed on the pages of albums I liked or by trawling through everything that shared tags with albums I liked. But that doesn't seem possible on Faircamp.
- slothtrop 3y agoThere are far more important/popular sources for discoverability than BC. Their UI is not great for that in the first place.
- lancesells 3y agoI discover plenty through their blog posts and following labels that I like.