8 ms·

For me any modern service that uses subscription model feels like unnecessary fraudulent scheme. I use bandcamp to buy music, because it's a clear and a straigh

by rckt 2y ago

For me any modern service that uses subscription model feels like unnecessary fraudulent scheme. I use bandcamp to buy music, because it's a clear and a straightforward way to do it. Never ever am I going to subscribe to anything, because every day the market comes up with more and more ideas how to mess with you. It's become a really unpleasant experience and it's depressing to see how people simply don't care and just go with everything the marketing guys come up with.

eskori 2y ago
Serious question: how does Bandcamp manage purchases? Are you buying a "license for listening to music" or can you actually download a DRM-free copy etc.?
- rckt 2y ago
  After the purchase you get to download the audio files. And it stays available to download in your profile.
- rvense 2y ago
  You can get a ZIP of OGGs if you want. Those will last as least as long as a 2005 DVD rip from Pirate Bay. Feels good. (You can also stream through their site and app, and I think they have all sorts of social features... but you can ignore the hell out of it and just get tunes for money. Really one of my top 5 sites, Bandcamp, though I wish they were still independent.)
  - Semaphor 2y ago
    Zip of FLACs even. As space is cheap and abundant (or at least for me, buying only about 6-12 albums / month) that allows me to not worry about transcoding into whatever at some point in the future.
- tbolt 2y ago
  You can download drm-free music from iTunes, Amazon, etc today.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  I once bought https://djemynai.bandcamp.com/album/zao https://djemynai.bandcamp.com/album/zao. Once is the keyword here, because it allowed me to download the audio files. You are essentially paying for the ability to be able to download, and then you are free to do whatever, just like old times. :D
- 0xEF 2y ago
  Indeed, what others have said. Bandcamp files are DRM-free, and they say as much on their site. The only time I use their app to listen is when I'm driving, since the app plays nice with Android Auto, but you can use any capable player you wish. I have probably purchased around 200 albums from there over the years with an average of about $12USD per and discovered TONS of new-to-me artists from there. It is my sole source of music these days and all my purchases are backed up on my home media server in the event Bandcamp shutters its doors or does something ethically stupid.
- jsk2600 2y ago
  You own the stuff you purchased; that's the best thing about the Basecamp.
- pimeys 2y ago
  You get DRM-free copy, and unlimited amount of downloads for the music. In multiple formats, including flac and nowadays quite often 24bit flacs are also available.
- Modified3019 2y ago
  In addition to streaming, you can (and should) download the mp3 or flac files. Once you have them, they are yours. Be warned though, the artist/label can decide for whatever reason to take the music they have listed on the website down, which includes what you’ve purchased, so while it’s rare, it’s possible for things to just disappear, so make sure you download before then. The tool I use is: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader I just create a tmux session on my proxmox homeserver and copy+paste a command whenever I make purchases. I can paste the command I use tomorrow if anyone likes. I recently learned that foobar2000 can load the zip files of songs directly without having to unpack them, which is nice.
- nunez 2y ago
  You get a ZIP with the music on it, as $DEITY intended. You can even buy vinyls, cassette tapes or CDs sometimes!
kuboble 2y ago
Your kind is more and more of a minority. I'm selling a one-time payment lifetime license desktop software and way too many potential customers either - think it's a subscription (q: is it monthly or yearly subscription?), - would prefer it be a subscription (q: I don't want to pay a full price of I don't know if I will use it for life), - or sometimes demand a subscription so that they can try the full functionality out without paying the full price And then there are those who pay one-time and are angry they don't get all newest upgrades for free. My next product will be a subscription for sure.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >think it's a subscription (q: is it monthly or yearly subscription?), I've heard from a friend that some of his customers complain that his one off cost is more than the monthly subscription of one of his competitors. If you aren't serving consumers you might be surprised by how financially illiterate the average person is.
- dcminter 2y ago
  For desktop software I think JetBrains have the right model here; it's a subscription, but at the end of the year you have a perpetual license to the version from the start of the year. If I decide I don't want the subscription with updates I can just cancel and fall back to that version. Otherwise the subscription ensures that there will be a new version coming along and that the users are the customers. It feels fair to me as a customer.
  - joquarky 2y ago
    Also, the annual renewal is discounted. It seems pretty fair all around.
- jsk2600 2y ago
  You may want to consider one-time (full price) and optional annual renewal fees (a fraction of the full price, depending on the value/upgrades delivered in the new version). It's then up to the customer to pay an annual fee to get updates or stay on the old version (which may be a pain to support...). Basically, what you mentioned—' I don't want to pay a full price' and 'try the full functionality out without paying the full price'—are the primary drivers behind customers' preference for a subscription-based model.
jisnsm 2y ago
You can easily calculate the shipping costs of what you buy and see if free shipping is worth it for you. Nothing sinister about it.
magguzu 2y ago
I generally agree though I have to say - Costco has proven worth it to me and them sticking to DEI recently has made me appreciate them more. I admit though if they were introduced today I'd probably scoff.
netdevphoenix 2y ago
I think Spotify is an outlier in a way that Netflix isn't. Spotify doesn't just let you stream music. Spotify: a) let's you stream music on any device that is desktop/mobile/watch or has a browser. It's frictionless and uptime is as good as it gets based on my more than a decade of continuous use (over 8 hours daily) b) lets you search for artists directly (search artist, song, lyrics) or indirectly (similarity engine by way of radio or automatic playlist generation) c) let's you share your listening habits with friends d) let's you make friend playlists The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. None of these services have target those 3 areas anywhere near as good as Spotify has. While I could see myself buying albums from bandcamp, the lack of advanced music search or recommendation functionality as well as the inability to make playlists is just a deal breaker for me. The days where music listening was just playing an album on a loop are long gone just like the days where listening to music meant exclusively live music. In 2025, music discovery and music tagging (as in making playlists) is part of the music listening experience and any service that does not let me make that is sadly not going to make it. In addition to this, I feel that due to the way music is experience today but many young people means that music discovery and social sharing needs to be at heart of any service that aims for mass appeal. If your business model does not address social sharing or discovery as part of its listening experience, it is unlikely to succeed in my opinion. People listening to albums on repeat, people buying single albums, people not sharing their listening habits directly (i.e not by just mentioning the artist/song/album) are the minority. The future of popular music at least short terms leans heavily towards single songs over albums, streaming over downloads, subscription over purchases, social listening over individual listening. It's like people complaining of the inability of popular artits to project their voices without using amplifiers. Artists complaining about electrical instruments over acoustic ones. The wave is here to stay, you can ride with it or end up at the bottom of it never to be seen again.
- jasode 2y ago
  >The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. For regular people, the #1 reason they can't use Bandcamp is it doesn't have mainstream artists on the Big 3 Record Labels like Universal+Sony+Warner. In contrast, Bandcamp is deliberately designed for the smaller independent artists to upload and sell their music. If people want to listen to today's Taylor Swift or yesterday's Beatles and Led Zeppelin, that music is only (legally) found on the major subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. A very small hardcore subset buy Big Label artists music from HDTracks but that site doesn't have the selection of Spotify and it's a lot more expensive.
huijzer 2y ago
> For me any modern service that uses subscription model feels like unnecessary fraudulent scheme. I actually think the incentives are aligned better with a subscription than with a one-off sale. With a subscription, the companies have to work to keep you a member. (Having said that, I still prefer open source software or commodity services since I don't like being rugpulled.)
LeafItAlone 2y ago
I commend this viewpoint, but it is just untenable for me. How much media do you consume? I can’t imagine paying “retail” price for the amount of TV, movies, songs, etc. that my household consumes. Not even factoring in that I share my subscriptions with out-of-house family/friends. You get a couple of months of streaming for price cost of one season of one relatively recent show. For the price of one movie ticket for one person, you get at least one month of a subscription to Disney+. And while there _is_ a lot of content that we repeat (especially songs), most of it we don’t, so I don’t care to have my own copy of it. Sure there are many ways to find it cheaper or free (such as a library), but those all take up valuable time.
- joquarky 2y ago
  Just take a moment to imagine a media culture where copyright only lasts for 14 years.

by rckt 2y ago

eskori 2y ago

Serious question: how does Bandcamp manage purchases? Are you buying a "license for listening to music" or can you actually download a DRM-free copy etc.?

rckt 2y ago
After the purchase you get to download the audio files. And it stays available to download in your profile.
rvense 2y ago
You can get a ZIP of OGGs if you want. Those will last as least as long as a 2005 DVD rip from Pirate Bay. Feels good. (You can also stream through their site and app, and I think they have all sorts of social features... but you can ignore the hell out of it and just get tunes for money. Really one of my top 5 sites, Bandcamp, though I wish they were still independent.)
- Semaphor 2y ago
  Zip of FLACs even. As space is cheap and abundant (or at least for me, buying only about 6-12 albums / month) that allows me to not worry about transcoding into whatever at some point in the future.
tbolt 2y ago
You can download drm-free music from iTunes, Amazon, etc today.
johnisgood 2y ago
I once bought https://djemynai.bandcamp.com/album/zao https://djemynai.bandcamp.com/album/zao. Once is the keyword here, because it allowed me to download the audio files. You are essentially paying for the ability to be able to download, and then you are free to do whatever, just like old times. :D
0xEF 2y ago
Indeed, what others have said. Bandcamp files are DRM-free, and they say as much on their site. The only time I use their app to listen is when I'm driving, since the app plays nice with Android Auto, but you can use any capable player you wish. I have probably purchased around 200 albums from there over the years with an average of about $12USD per and discovered TONS of new-to-me artists from there. It is my sole source of music these days and all my purchases are backed up on my home media server in the event Bandcamp shutters its doors or does something ethically stupid.
jsk2600 2y ago
You own the stuff you purchased; that's the best thing about the Basecamp.
pimeys 2y ago
You get DRM-free copy, and unlimited amount of downloads for the music. In multiple formats, including flac and nowadays quite often 24bit flacs are also available.
Modified3019 2y ago
In addition to streaming, you can (and should) download the mp3 or flac files. Once you have them, they are yours. Be warned though, the artist/label can decide for whatever reason to take the music they have listed on the website down, which includes what you’ve purchased, so while it’s rare, it’s possible for things to just disappear, so make sure you download before then. The tool I use is: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader I just create a tmux session on my proxmox homeserver and copy+paste a command whenever I make purchases. I can paste the command I use tomorrow if anyone likes. I recently learned that foobar2000 can load the zip files of songs directly without having to unpack them, which is nice.
nunez 2y ago
You get a ZIP with the music on it, as $DEITY intended. You can even buy vinyls, cassette tapes or CDs sometimes!

kuboble 2y ago

Your kind is more and more of a minority. I'm selling a one-time payment lifetime license desktop software and way too many potential customers either - think it's a subscription (q: is it monthly or yearly subscription?), - would prefer it be a subscription (q: I don't want to pay a full price of I don't know if I will use it for life), - or sometimes demand a subscription so that they can try the full functionality out without paying the full price And then there are those who pay one-time and are angry they don't get all newest upgrades for free. My next product will be a subscription for sure.

tonyedgecombe 2y ago
>think it's a subscription (q: is it monthly or yearly subscription?), I've heard from a friend that some of his customers complain that his one off cost is more than the monthly subscription of one of his competitors. If you aren't serving consumers you might be surprised by how financially illiterate the average person is.
dcminter 2y ago
For desktop software I think JetBrains have the right model here; it's a subscription, but at the end of the year you have a perpetual license to the version from the start of the year. If I decide I don't want the subscription with updates I can just cancel and fall back to that version. Otherwise the subscription ensures that there will be a new version coming along and that the users are the customers. It feels fair to me as a customer.
- joquarky 2y ago
  Also, the annual renewal is discounted. It seems pretty fair all around.
jsk2600 2y ago
You may want to consider one-time (full price) and optional annual renewal fees (a fraction of the full price, depending on the value/upgrades delivered in the new version). It's then up to the customer to pay an annual fee to get updates or stay on the old version (which may be a pain to support...). Basically, what you mentioned—' I don't want to pay a full price' and 'try the full functionality out without paying the full price'—are the primary drivers behind customers' preference for a subscription-based model.

jisnsm 2y ago

You can easily calculate the shipping costs of what you buy and see if free shipping is worth it for you. Nothing sinister about it.

magguzu 2y ago

I generally agree though I have to say - Costco has proven worth it to me and them sticking to DEI recently has made me appreciate them more. I admit though if they were introduced today I'd probably scoff.

netdevphoenix 2y ago

I think Spotify is an outlier in a way that Netflix isn't. Spotify doesn't just let you stream music. Spotify: a) let's you stream music on any device that is desktop/mobile/watch or has a browser. It's frictionless and uptime is as good as it gets based on my more than a decade of continuous use (over 8 hours daily) b) lets you search for artists directly (search artist, song, lyrics) or indirectly (similarity engine by way of radio or automatic playlist generation) c) let's you share your listening habits with friends d) let's you make friend playlists The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. None of these services have target those 3 areas anywhere near as good as Spotify has. While I could see myself buying albums from bandcamp, the lack of advanced music search or recommendation functionality as well as the inability to make playlists is just a deal breaker for me. The days where music listening was just playing an album on a loop are long gone just like the days where listening to music meant exclusively live music. In 2025, music discovery and music tagging (as in making playlists) is part of the music listening experience and any service that does not let me make that is sadly not going to make it. In addition to this, I feel that due to the way music is experience today but many young people means that music discovery and social sharing needs to be at heart of any service that aims for mass appeal. If your business model does not address social sharing or discovery as part of its listening experience, it is unlikely to succeed in my opinion. People listening to albums on repeat, people buying single albums, people not sharing their listening habits directly (i.e not by just mentioning the artist/song/album) are the minority. The future of popular music at least short terms leans heavily towards single songs over albums, streaming over downloads, subscription over purchases, social listening over individual listening. It's like people complaining of the inability of popular artits to project their voices without using amplifiers. Artists complaining about electrical instruments over acoustic ones. The wave is here to stay, you can ride with it or end up at the bottom of it never to be seen again.

jasode 2y ago
>The top 3 are the killer features and the reason why I would not move to Tidal/Apple Music/bandcamp. For regular people, the #1 reason they can't use Bandcamp is it doesn't have mainstream artists on the Big 3 Record Labels like Universal+Sony+Warner. In contrast, Bandcamp is deliberately designed for the smaller independent artists to upload and sell their music. If people want to listen to today's Taylor Swift or yesterday's Beatles and Led Zeppelin, that music is only (legally) found on the major subscription services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. A very small hardcore subset buy Big Label artists music from HDTracks but that site doesn't have the selection of Spotify and it's a lot more expensive.

huijzer 2y ago

> For me any modern service that uses subscription model feels like unnecessary fraudulent scheme. I actually think the incentives are aligned better with a subscription than with a one-off sale. With a subscription, the companies have to work to keep you a member. (Having said that, I still prefer open source software or commodity services since I don't like being rugpulled.)

LeafItAlone 2y ago

I commend this viewpoint, but it is just untenable for me. How much media do you consume? I can’t imagine paying “retail” price for the amount of TV, movies, songs, etc. that my household consumes. Not even factoring in that I share my subscriptions with out-of-house family/friends. You get a couple of months of streaming for price cost of one season of one relatively recent show. For the price of one movie ticket for one person, you get at least one month of a subscription to Disney+. And while there _is_ a lot of content that we repeat (especially songs), most of it we don’t, so I don’t care to have my own copy of it. Sure there are many ways to find it cheaper or free (such as a library), but those all take up valuable time.

joquarky 2y ago
Just take a moment to imagine a media culture where copyright only lasts for 14 years.