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Comment by avitous | Hacker News Reader

I too loved Bandcamp for its sane approach to acquiring new music; unlike "most people" I refuse to use the streaming-only services, and insist upon buying albums and listening to exactly those selections I choose (and I prefer to listen to albums in their entirety, even today).

Perhaps I'm just old and set in my ways, but choices made by others, especially algorithmically generated "options maximizing my engagement", hold no attraction for me whatsoever. Losing such freedom of choice would be painful in the extreme.

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I also refuse to use streaming services, and prefer to curate my own music - but for me, it's less about algorithmic suggestions, and more about actually owning the things I've paid for.

A streaming service or an artist can pull music from a service (see Neil Young), but they ain't going to be reaching into my hard drives and pulling the mp3s out of it.

I am all in on owning things as well. To the point that I'll buy Blu-Rays where I can too, rather than sign up for an extra streaming service.

With music in particular, I definitely see discovery as a problem though -- particularly these days when "radio" isn't really a thing (at least for me). Spotify might be able to fill that gap, but I haven't really tried yet.

I'm also worried that "owning digital things" is going to become harder and harder as time goes on, but I haven't quite been able to put my finger on what the tipping point for that is going to be.

Yeah it seems like it's going in that direction. The new generation seems fine with streaming services, now. I worked for a few customers who want to retain their physical music in their homes with a media devices and stream it to all their devices in the home. Slowly but surely many home entertainment devices that store music have been slowly removing those features in favor of streaming services. This has been making it very hard for people to retain physical copies of their music without some sort of custom solution that has to be maintained.

For me, I refuse to use music streaming services, I rely heavily on my digital music collection most of which comes from Bandcamp. Bandcamp is the last bastion of physical digital music where there is direct interaction between musicians and music lovers. If it dies, we are screwed. If its possible, id actually like to see it be supported from donations like Thunderbird is if it was possible. I don't like the idea that it relies on commercialism.

Or just go to another country - when I moved to Singapore most of my hip hop was removed from my library

Ownership is indeed the other reason I don't do streaming. I pay for a track or album, download it, and it's mine.

I do see this capability disappearing in coming years, however; especially with growing use of "AI" tools to, say, craft ever more complicated barriers to avoiding rent-seeking.

This is me as well. Streaming services don't serve my needs at all.

I find algorithmic suggestions pretty much useless, but they're easy to ignore so don't really enter into it.

I used to leech Mp3's with the best of them, trawling through blogs enmasse before music was consolidated by giant aggregators. DI.FM is different though, its a streaming service, curated by humans (who are the worlds best DJs), has a sustainable buinsess model and lets you download streams.

Its very intersting how my music taste has evolved over the years, the more genres and types i was exposed to, the more i discovered. Nothing beats going to a concert you dont know anything about and having the night of your life. Im one for nostalgia, no doubt, but i think listening to the same song, in the same tone, over and over again, is a simplistic view of music and ruines its potential magic. Music and moods are instrinically linked. What happens if i was to listen to my favourite rockband, but instead mixed into chillout music that ebbs and flows over 5 or 10 hours. I get to hear the songs i love, in different ways, evoking different emotions and memories. I find that extends the life of music, not run it into the ground, dulling all those memories that triggered your love in the first place. I kissed that girl for the first time listening to this song, fades if you listen to that song everyday.

Spotify is automated radio, warts and all. Popular amoung the consumerist sheeple, often coupled with tv and shopping subscription technoligies. Society has always had this cross section of music interest, chinstroker outlets always existed at fringes, hardly able to survive in the world they helped create. Music sells. Captalists like to sell things people love to buy. A victim of their own success. Such is the harsh reality of this economic system, things just cant be done, they have to be done to death, then revamped and rebranded and the cycle goes on.

> I used to leech Mp3's with the best of them, trawling through blogs enmasse before music was consolidated by giant aggregators

That's not the only alternative. I've never done that.

> Its very intersting how my music taste has evolved over the years, the more genres and types i was exposed to, the more i discovered.

I couldn't agree more! But streaming services (or old-school radio) doesn't work well for me when it comes to discovering new music. I get that plenty of people find that a great path and more power to them.

But for me, streaming services are like radio you pay for, and music radio has never been a thing of value to me at any point in my life.

And, financially speaking, "radio you pay for" makes no sense to me. If I'm paying money, I want to have the music available to listen to any time I want, on any device I want -- not just when a DJ decides it's time to play it, or only when I have an internet connection.

But don't get me wrong -- I am not saying that streaming services are stupid and shouldn't exist. I'm just saying that they don't provide value to me, personally.

I too listen to albums in their entirety and don’t interact too much with autogenerated content.

But I was on Apple Music and now I’m on Spotify. The amount of new albums I get to listen to would put a massive dent in my bank account if I was buying them as I go.

I still purchase Vinyl and the odd CD, but that is reserved for my top must have records. A flat rate for music just makes sense to me, and allows me to check out and discover so many more new artists than in the old days, where my music taste was much narrower and confined to more mainstream “classic” rock and the like.

Sounds like Bandcamp is perfect for you. You can stream full albums for free, then buy and download the odd ones that you really like.

I WANT for bandcamp to work for me. But……

For the few albums that are there sure, it works. Unfortunately the vast majority of the time there isn’t anything there. Most artists just aren’t on bandcamp. Or the artist is on there but only a subset of their albums are. Even if I started using it more, it would be so rare, as I’d need to go use Spotify or my own physical/digital collection most of the time, which means when the album ends I’m more likely to keep listening on the current platform, not think to switch back to bandcamp to see once again if the newest Metric album is suddenly there, or if any albums apart from one are there etc. Also the amount of similarly named artist/albums that are tributes or fan “sequels” or straight up just the same named artist a a little bit of friction to make search.

Bandcamp exists in an odd space where unless I’m willing to have my music choices heavily restricted it then it loses out to traditional a-la-carte purchasing of albums whether physically or on digital storefronts, or to just using a streaming service. If I was a young kid in primary school again, it would still lose out to pirating music as well I think.

That's fair! Bandcamp's model is awesome, it just doesn't have the coverage (yet?).

bandcamp is still pretty generous with streaming. I own maybe a third of the music on bandcamp that I listen to.

Just to offer a counterpoint - there's so many indie and small bands I've found while listening to Pandora. Most or all of which I would have never discovered otherwise.

Sure, maybe they don't pay as much as me buying the CD would for the artist - but I likely would have never found them any other way. Now, they get something every time I listen to their songs.

I would, however, enjoy much higher quality audio. Even with the top tier Pandora plan, it's still MP3's, albeit high quality MP3's.

I tried a couple streaming services a while back, and them rather annoying. I've discovered a lot of good new bands through Bandcamp, just reading about related bands in genres I like. The annoyances of the various streaming services just push me away, and yes, potentially to my own detriment in missing out of artists I might not discover any other way.

Those people don't listen to music, they consume background sound. I don't care if it sounds snob, that's how most people treat music.

This is an interesting point, actually. I rarely play music in the background when I'm doing other things -- but I listen to a lot of music. When I do, I put an album on and listen to it with my full attention. In other words, I listen to music like other people watch movies.

It was only in the last few years that I learned that I was unusual in this.

That's how truly good albums shine, specially if you do it in the dark, you can travel to different worlds :) But yeah most people don't have the patience.

Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them? If so I'd like to know which are some of your favorites.

> Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them?

Absolutely yes. Like with good books and movies, you can't really appreciate music fully on a single listen. And a lot of music reveals wonders only after you've become very familiar with it.

Also, with some of my favorite artists (Kate Bush comes immediately to mind, but she's not the only one), I often dislike their music on first listen. It's only after sitting with it a few times that I fall in love with it.

It would take too long to list my favorites, but here's what I've been listening to over the past week: Martina DaSilva, Oriana Curls, Yello, Frank Zappa, early Pink Floyd, miscellaneous Venezuelan salsa bands.

I once went to a "blind concert" (basically a pitch black theater) where they played Atom Heart Mother, I didn't know that album but I was a big PF fan, and it was a wonderful experience.

> Venezuelan salsa bands

Like Zeta?

Atom Heart Mother is a wonderful piece of work. The albums I've listened to in the last week were Obscured by Clouds and Meddle.

> Like Zeta?

I'm actually new to the genre and still finding my way by listening to single songs from different groups to figure out the ones that appeal to me the most (that's why I didn't name a specific band). I hadn't come across Zeta, but they look like the right sort of thing. I'll check them out. Thanks!

Meddle is one I listened to religiously for a while. I do find that I can get obsessed and then "burnt out" with a particular album or even band. This happened to me with PF, I can still listen to them, but not with the same focus.

And that's not entirely a bad thing, because it makes me value more the (few) bands or composers who stand that test.

Salsa is wonderful to explore, in particular if you're able to find a good group to watch live :)

Can you explain why you are so opposed to streaming? I actually do both and own a few hundred lossless albums as well. Usually if I think something is moderately good, I'll purchase a lossless copy (unless I buy a CD of it, which I'll rip to my collection). However streaming is a more modern version of radio to me when I don't want to dig around playlists. I'll find new music I like from whatever spotify or apple music serves up if it's new to me, quite often. Just curious.

Streaming is very different from radio: https://thebaffler.com/downstream/big-mood-machine-pelly When I pay for music I don't want harvesting of my listening habits to be part of the price.

Im the total opposite, I don't want to own music (some things sure) but streaming services allow me to use the music I like to listen to wherever I want. I can make playlists and organize how I want it even make my own "radio stations" for different moods.

There is no way I can and will buy the amount of metal music I consume lol.

Also the algo that suggests new music is awesome! I learned about a lot of new bands just by using that feature.

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