Kickstarter / Bandcamp / etc - C or D?

based on my experience as someone familiar with the pricing process, the answer to #1 is sloppy arithmetic -- they ask you to set an album price first, then they give you the option of selling the tracks individually. It would probably help with many people's arithmetic if they reversed the steps

Can anyone tell me if tracks put up on Bandcamp are licensed for radio broadcast? In other words, can I play them on the radio, as opposed to Spotify which is specifically NOT licensed for broadcast?

Is there any reason not to set up a Bandcamp page for a band?

not that i know of -- bandcamp is great

unless you don't want people to be able to listen to your music, then you should put your band's music somewhere else

nope

i mean it's a separate hassle from having your music auto-distributed to the traditional stores, but also it's fun, and it's responsible for by far the largest share of purchases of my band's music

I think the only limiting factor would be if you're a band with some sort of contract that denies you from doing so, but that's probably not a concern for very many people

Thanks - appreciated.

bandcamp app is almost unusable. does anyone here work for them, or know someone who does? if so tell em to get on that. the search function is insanely bad

bandcamp q for people who have multiple pages they manage:

i need to start a new one for a project that is not associated with any of my other projects. do you still need to have a separate email and login and all that if you want to start a new project (and don't have a personal page from which to branch things)?

halp
thank you in advance

I don't think you can have multiple bands with the same account. if you have gmail you can do the trick where you create a new account and for your email just put a period anywhere in the email address (ie John.smith@gmail instead of johnsmith@gmail). It'll treat it like a new email but the emails will come to your regular address.

I believe you need separate addresses to sign up but than can authorize your main account email to manage everything.

so confusing
i think i've got it under control now but my file is too big and the error message told me explicitly to "cut my ambient drone jam into smaller pieces"
lol!

"pay what you can" gives me existential dread for... well, several minutes but it's always tricky.

"pay what you can" gives me existential dread for... well, several minutes but it's always tricky.

― Funky Isolations (jed_), Saturday, 31 August 2019 00:35 (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Coincidentally I just found an article about this very subject, pretty good I think.

https://radiofreemidwich.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/name-your-price-value-underground-in-the-age-of-bandcamp/

thanks!

i keep going back and forth with the arguments the writer is making in that article ... starting with the overly simplistic take on the "DIY scene" ... maybe this is another case of America vs. Europe idk

I have spoken before about the true currency circulating being goodwill and it is more analogous to lifeblood oxygenating the scene than actual cash changing hands.

mostly true, but also no, and also it relates to a problem with the DIY scene ... because cash does change hands ... I think it's more accurate to say that the ever-circulating $20 is that "oxygenating lifeblood" and it also signifies goodwill, but it is still the $20 that goes from audience to artist to artist to audience member in the form of tips at the local where they are bartender, etc.. That's not the problem, the problem is "sustainability" or "continuity" because the "scene" is not completely outside the "system" and the goodwill will need to be converted into capitalist currency

otm sarahell - i found that article incredibly frustrating in ways that i could only draw out if i went through the article again, which i refuse to do.

Kickstarter Has Fired Two Union Organizers in Eight Days

If a union within the company is formed, Kickstarter will be the most prominent technology company with a unionized workforce.

This story is developing.

question: in my bandcamp collection, if something doesn't have the "appears in x other collections" thing underneath it, does it mean I'm the only person who has purchased it?

It could have been purchased by people without a profile/account, but otherwise yeah I think

Thanks, that makes sense. I'll imagine these artist's friends & family purchased w/o an account so I don't have to feel bad for them.

Yknow I don’t use push notifications for anything but I would actually like them for Bandcamp for when somebody I follow releases something new.

they send me email notifications of new releases for like every artist I've ever purchased anything by on there ever.

yeah I just signed up for that, guess that pretty much accomplishes the same thing lol

Yep and I get push notifications through the app for exactly that

Push notifications on a Bandcamp Friday can be.... a bit much lol.

otoh, I never would have scored my lovely blue first-run of the latest Mountain Goats tape if I had disabled them 🤷

Push notifications on a Bandcamp Friday can be.... a bit much lol.

Absolutely insane! I came here to post about this :)

Deeply insane; also when they started they had an issue where messages weren’t being sent as they should, clearly because those days were so popular. Thankfully that was cleared up and it’s been smooth sailing (if heavy emailing) since.

one could imagine a single push notification in digest format compiling announcements from every artist you're interested in.

The Friday emails are a bit crazy, I'm ok with it but it does became sort of a worklist. I just open up a bunch of tabs and listen to at least a track from everything, and usually end up finding some gems.

Hey so I've been working on a little something that allows people to make, play & share playlists using the Bandcamp platform that I've been calling BNDCMPR (Bandcamper).

Decided to put it into an open beta today at https://t.co/P93ziPghSy.

Any feedback would be sick (:

— ☕️ (@lonbeshiri) February 8, 2021

O_O

i haven't tried it yet, but uhh. . . fuck yeah?

do the artists get paid?

They don't but it would still be beneficial I think. Personally I would be happy to be on one of these playlists knowing that a single Bandcamp sale pays the same as thousands of streams.

not wanting to be a dick about it -- like, presumably at this stage it wouldn't be feasible, but it would be cool if there were a model where y'know, artists got paid better

small steps, i'm afraid.

but yes, i absolutely agree.

if they let people make and share mixes of Bandcamp works and you could buy the mixes, with money going to the respective artists featured... lovely

It's cool to be able to share music in the form of, like, a periodic round-up of recommended releases. But not so much if the idea is just to use Bandcamp as a streaming service, even if I'm as guilty as anyone of listening to certain things multiple times without buying. Although the artists do have that function to prevent streaming after a certain number of listens, which I assume would still work through this service? If it circumvents that, that would be shady.

Doesn't the limit on stream plays depend on the user being logged in? But that's the way it's set up so I don't think it's especially exploitative if there are easy links to buy tracks.

so for anyone curious, i made a playlist of some of my own music and in the tracklist it puts a nice "buy" link next to each song, which takes you directly to the song's page on bandcamp. here's what it looks like..

(sorry to link to my own, but i haven't seen any others yet)

Also how is this different from https://buymusic.club/?

The front end is nicer, admittedly (choosing your own colors is nice). I made one for a recent radio mix.

Damn:

Bandcamp is now blocked in China. The reason will be bureaucratic, routine. The effect will be subtle tragedy- a slow-burn drift to an insular music scene that has to rely on volunteer content smuggling and context translation. Skills this resilient scene knows all too well. 😭😭

— Krish Raghav (@krishraghav) February 17, 2021

the replies on that tweet are not encouraging, people are just wanting a way to have bandcamp be spotify

Not really into bndcmpr, the need to build up a library there has driven a fair amount of purchasing - trying to reach critical mass where my Bandcamp library has enough variety to replace other services as the default when I turn on my truck.

Bandcamp blocked in China, https://t.co/UPX1g0C4Q2

— joris gillet (@stereo) February 23, 2021

Gotta say, Bandcamp Fridays are starting to be a bummer. It's warping the whole release schedule...you're either part of a huge glut on first Fridays, or worried that people will only buy/check for music on those days. Also feels a little weird to jump the line and release something a few days before a BC Friday. Not to mention making artists feel like they are now on a schedule to put something out once a month.

I wish they would just reduce their revenue share overall for the next X number of months, it would really smooth things out. Someone tell Robert Bandcamp.

Anyone know if there's a way to make a playlist for my Bandcamp purchases a la Spotify? I have quite a decent collection and a lot of it isn't available on Spotify. I'd like to be able to put these into a playlist so I can have these playing as I work or on my phone, but it seems that's not really a thing Bandcamp offers, which seems like a real shame

playlists suck. Bandcamp is for album listening.