Hacker News Reader

Comment by grmnygrmny2 | Hacker News Reader

Hey, we're on HN! As mentioned elsewhere we're waiting revenue share tomorrow. We've got a handy timezone-aware site for tomorrow and other future fundraisers: https://isitbandcampfriday.com

A few records were announced this week that I'm pretty excited for, if you need some inspiration:

http://music.sufjan.com/album/the-ascension

https://videoage.bandcamp.com/album/pleasure-line

https://washedout.bandcamp.com/album/purple-noon

View on HN

Thanks for a great site - I love how shopping for music on Bandcamp feels quite personal. I particularly like that it is all based around the record label - especially in more niche genres, the labels are absolutely fundamental and there’s a good chance that if you like a record, you’ll find loads more interesting stuff on the same label.

For whatever reason, Spotify etc. seem to demote the existence of the label to a tiny font with no label “home page” or anything. You can search by label but it’s pretty hidden and doesn’t work 100%. I wonder if part of their long term plan is to remove labels from the equation...

Anyway, I was wondering if you had any plans for a public facing API to search your catalogue? I’ve got loads of ideas for content discovery tools but the lack of an API makes them impractical. For example, I built this to find your top Spotify artists on Bandcamp, but without an API all it can do is link off to a search so it’s quite a frustrating UX: https://tomduncalf.github.io/supportify/

Yes please, an API!

Also there's a recurring theme/running gag on NTS Radio that it's faster to find releases on Bandcamp through Google than through the internal search. I've witnessed several times that linking to releases is crowdsourced to the NTS chat because the DJs can't find it fast enough.

And they are pushing Bandcamp a lot, with whole shows dedicated solely to music available on Bandcamp. Mostly on the "no-fee fridays".

So an improved search or an API to enable external discovery tools would be great!

An API would be amazing, I'd much rather be pulling new releases than getting newsletters :)

I can't comment on our plans, but I personally totally agree with you and would love an API (and will continue to advocate for one!). Supportify is super cool :)

Thanks for the reply, fingers crossed :) Keep up the great work!

A lot of listeners chiming in about how great Bandcamp is for listeners, but I also want to sing the praises of the experience as an independent musician publishing music.

Even a nobody like me with no label and no interest in marketing my music can trivially upload my music, manage my own page with my own branding (in theory), and get the stats I care about on how people engage with the music. For free (technically for a revenue share, but I don't sell my music)!

And unlike something like Spotify/iTunes/Soundcloud, the platform is not the dominant brand when someone visits my Bandcamp page.

On top of all this, Bandcamp's been super generous with dropping their revenue share during the outbreak to help artists.

So yeah, I love everything about it. Bandcamp's hands-down my favorite music publishing platform, no contest. Thanks and long may it continue!

All of that is fantastic! And as a relative nobody independent artist myself I totally agree with you, it's why I work there. Thanks for using the site!

Bandcamp had been my favorite music store since it launched, it's simply "how things should be done" ! It's the first place since the mp3 boom where I actually spend money and feel really good about it. Big up!

Just wanted to say thank you for what you helped build. I buy almost all my albums on BC nowadays (the exception are those few who aren’t on there). And I love being able to listen through a whole album before deciding.

You are very welcome, and that's great to hear :) Thank you for supporting independent artists (and us)!

You guys really seem to be one of the very few companies in this space that manage to put the artist and the listener first, without some kind of adversarial relationship.

We hope to release our first EP at the end of the summer. Looking forward to putting it on Bandcamp!

> Thank you for supporting independent artists

While many are independent, you also have a lot of labels on BC (at least for metal) ;)

If you're affiliated with bandcamp, I have a question: is there something like bandcamp radio coming out sometime? I don't know about others but I have trouble actually discovering stuff on bandcamp. Every artists page seems to be cut off from other artists and I haven't found a way to just let random or similar artists be played.

Jamendo has radios, "best of" and "trending" lists per genre, artist, tag and across their whole music selection which makes discovery really easy. For bandcamp, knowledge of who's who seems to be necessary and I don't have the time to be that into music. That's why jamendo has been getting my money lately.

The Discover section on the front page is good for this: https://bandcamp.com/#discover

You can sort by genre and a few other variables, but I leave it on the default settings and listen to anything that seems interesting, one page at a time. The Discover section is available on the android app, but it doesn't give me the same feeling that I'm rummaging through a record store.

Hmm, I had a look at it and though I like the top layout, what's missing is automatically playing the next item. I can't just hit play, resume doing something else and when the occasional good song pops up add it to my favorites, a playlist or just open it in a new tab and play the whole album.

Maybe my way of discovering music isn't normal, but I think Soundcloud and Jamendo did it pretty well. I could have music playing for ages and keep adding to my favorites and playlists without actively having to know any artist.

Thanks for the link nonetheless.

I plugged elsewhere here, but I put together https://bandhiking.isandrew.com/ because I had the same problem. It's basically a Bandcamp radio thing. (I've found a few dozen things over the last month or so using to it!)

Niiiice! Thanks a lot! That's very much more what I was looking for. And opensource too!

Good job :)

Use the feed. Follow artists/labels you like and fans whose tastes you enjoy (Bandcamp will automatically suggest some every so often inline with other feed entries). Visit the homepage and Discover every now and then to get a broader perspective and find more leads to plug into your feed. And don't be afraid to prune things that no longer spark joy from your following list.

Discover on the Bandcamp homepage is good for this, and we have pretty good genre-specific tag pages now that have a combination of algorithmic and curated picks, and you can dig in real deep with your own filters if you want. Example: https://bandcamp.com/tag/electronic

I work on the discovery team, so this is great feedback to have, thank you :)

(also proper radio is a great idea)

I'll copy my response to a comment made earlier:

---------------

The /tag/ page worked only for the highlights, but "all electronic releases" would only play one song and I couldn't play the next song (Firefox 77). In theory though, that's more of what I'm looking for, so thumbs up.

Not sure how long the discovery part has been up, but to me it seems new.

Also, Soundcloud's feature of playing similar songs from the track's page was very nice. That would also help a lot with music discovery.

Y'all are awesome!

Any chance that the app will get Chromecast support?

Hey, thanks!

I can't really comment, but it is a common request... I'm curious, are you using Chromecast via TV or Chromecast Audio (or something else)?

I'm using both Chromecast widgets.

This is something I'd really like too, I have the speakers in my apartment set up with a pair of Chromecast audios, and would use the bandcamp app a lot more if it could work with them. At the moment I just try to find the bands on Google music instead, because that does work.

I have both devices but in this case it would be Chromecast Audio. I currently get by with casting my screen but native Chromecast support in Bandcamp would be much better - music would go directly from bandcamp.com to Chromecast Audio as opposed to bandcamp.com to my phone to Chromecast. Would save a lot of phone battery and the extra decode + reencode on phone that happens in casting the screen.

Thank you for all of your hard work! I consistently hold up Bandcamp as a shining pillar of how to do media distribution right. Keep being excellent!

Thank you!

Your platform changed the way I consumed and discovered music. Now I complemented that with a steaming service but still fall back to BC for some material.

Really digged the job puzzles you had too... even when I wasn't actively looking was fun to solve. Just a shame you're not hiring at the moment.

Ah yes, I remember the "check headers" task as the first step

Thank you for the last decade or so of amazing music. Love Bandcamp.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com