Bandcamp consistently throws Ws
YES! YES!! YES!!! I hate having to sift through that tripe when exploring certain genres.
Bandcamp W. One of the platforms I buy music from and surf other than soundcloud. You can find some banger albums by genre on there.
I’m generally supportive of removing AI from artistic endeavors, but also wildly unfamiliar with bandcamp. I’m looking at it for the first time right now. Does it work like Deezer / Tidal or one of the streaming services where I can listen to things from my phone, or is it more of a website that you use to discover unsigned / smaller acts by clicking through a bunch of things and listening?
Bit of both. More on the indi/hobby side of things though.
Great decision Bandcamp, I use Bandcamp to support musicians
Paying monthly subscriptions for music that for most people is essentially the same mix with some deviations will become very costly for listeners over time. Relying on paid streaming services is the ultimate expression of laziness.
I’m glad they did this. Confident in my choice to remain with Bandcamp.
Totally agree. I just wish I had more money to spend with Bandcamp. :D
What’s a good way to discover artists on Bandcamp? Most artists I listen to at the moment are with the usual big labels and don’t sell on Bandcamp.
- read Bandcamp’s writeups. Sometimes they do a deep dive into a genre, city, or band. https://daily.bandcamp.com/
- if you find something you like, scroll down and there’s other users who bought it. Peek into their collections
- if you scroll down further on an album, there will be more recommendations
- you can search by genre or tag, too
This is the best answer! Thank you for sharing your methods. I was going to reply about the daily editorial, but yours is more complete.
I would also like to add that I type the name of things I like and often find them on bandcamp. Including big artists.
Peter Gabriel, Evanescence, Run the Jewels, Flight of Conchords, Ghost…
What I don’t find there, I get from a thrift store (easy to find famous artists there) or quobuz.
The real gems are still hard to find, and require more ambitious exploring.
Most of the best, I get from suggestions from other people in irc or on the fediverse.
I’ll often find something interesting and look through the collections of other people who also have the album. Another way is to just start in the genre sections and browse.
Here are a few varied suggestions, no specific genre since I don’t know your tastes:
https://boyharsher.bandcamp.com/album/country-girl-uncut https://idlesband.bandcamp.com/album/tangk https://williethrasher.bandcamp.com/album/spirit-child
There are a couple of methods that I use to discover new artists on Bandcamp. First, you can search by genre on the site itself, which will give you a listing of artists in that genre. Grab a glass of your preferred beverage and spend some time checking them out - each artist’s page has samples of their music that you can stream for free (most have entire albums that can be streamed). I have found tons of artists that I love just by doing this very thing.
The second method I use is Music Map which lets you put in your favorite artists and then shows you other artists with a similar sound (which you can then look up on Bandcamp). It can be really hit or miss, but I’ve found a few artists I like this way.
Hope that helps - have fun listening to new tunes! :)
Thanks, I didn’t know about music map. I have used Everynoise, which is similar, but doesn’t get updates anymore since Spotify closed that particular API access.
Try searching by tags within genres that you like.
That doesn’t really work in my experience because artists seem to be incapable of tagging their work correctly.
N-th the suggestion to creep on people who buy the same stuff as you. There’s a lil grid of their pfps, I click on a cool one and check out the stuff they listen to that I haven’t
This, I think, is the best way. You start to recognise people that are buying all the same stuff you like so follow them and periodically have a look at what they are buying.
All other avenues on bandcamp are a bit shit IMO. Tags are dog shit because artists never tag their work correctly and my feed will constantly be old shit I listened to a long time ago. You can’t even rely on it to let you know when artists you follow release new work.
I love bandcamp but I also fucking hate bandcamp xD
Not answering your question exactly, but finding community (non-commercial) radio shows in your local area that you like is a good way to find new music. Find a few shows/presenters that play music/genres you like and they should play local artists that you might not have heard. They’ll also mention upcoming gigs etc.
c. Find a few shows/presenters that play music/genres you like and they should play local artists that you might not have heard.
I love option c.
That’s definitely one of the more unique methods of finding new music haha
maybe someone [who is not me because i am done being a mod] could make a “hey i found this neat song/album/artist/genre/existence on bandcamp” community because i would for sure sign up and comment and share songs
Keep it up bandcamp. We are all waiting for when you enshittify like everyone else but you’ve held it at bay so far.
They gave us a scare over the years, being sold around to companies that are famous for enshittifying platforms.
Epic sold the company when people unionized, and the next did a trick to not recognized the union and “hire” half of the staff (contrary to fire half of them).
The platform is not what has been 5 years ago, but it is still my favourite place to get music around.
Neat, my current setup is :
- stream from FIP.fr via cvlc
- when I absolutely love a tune, buy on Bandcamp
- if it’s not available or I bought it elsewhere, e.g. old CD, then get from Soulseek
- scp my ~/Music directory on my mobile phone
I tried LMS for few weeks but honestly just plain VLC is enough for me.
Anyway, point is, this decision makes me want to buy from Bandcamp even more.
First I’ve heard of FIP, I’ll have to give it a go
I hope all my fave autistic musicians are not mistaken for AI and deleted under a false-positive detection of being AI. At least my fave’s album releases all pre-date AI music generators. Safe, for now.
I think safer would be to encourage all purely AI-generated be tagged as such, so it can be optionally toggled out of view, and then there’s less incentive for the unscrupulous to simply hide that it’s AI generated. Banning increases the “hide that it’s AI” vibes, not the “don’t do AI” vibes. Prohibition does not prevent. Prohibition makes the good things bad and the bad things worse.
I doubt they would just blanket scan all music and ban that which they think is AI (aside from how that’s practically impossible). That’s the kind of thing a lazy big tech company would do. I wouldn’t be surprised if this will just end up being on a report basis, at the very least with human verification once steps like banning would be taken. Because otherwise it would be pretty disastrous for the reasons you mentioned, since it would ban legitimate artists. Not to mention the bar of “substantially AI” would need to be judged by someone.
I hope more platforms ban this useless spam.
Are Bandcamp still the good guys? I thought they were bought by the big capital and now went down the drain. Artists’ opinions especially welcome
People expected them to get fucked after the acquisition, though the new owners are just going “you keep doing what you’re doing, not gonna change a thing, just give us a cut of your profits”
Touch wood, it’s gonna stay that way.
on average, i’m earning 3x as much from bandcamp FLAC sales compared to what i earn off streaming. Hasn’t been ruined so far.
I don’t bought a lot of music, but all the independent musicians I follow have a bandcamp store. They also sell merch there.
Were sold by epicc to some other company.
Still doing their regular job and not went to shit.- A user
As they should.
On the other hand, if AI music was any good why would I go to bandcamp for it?
good decision, also good decision to not ban all music with ai in it. like, we got so many pedals nowadays. live pitch correction? like wtf. how is that not ai. as long as there is some human pouring their blood, sweat, tears and soul into the music, that is what i want to hear.
FUCK YEAH!
