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Comment by jjulius | Hacker News Reader

"Was"?

Still possible but the company itself is being sold and resold, now in the hands of an actor that seems to conflict with its mission, unless I am mistaken

Hardcore Bandcamp user here - it's been sold, but other than layoffs, the user experience has remained essentially exactly the same. Especially with regards to OP's point about buying the files directly without hurdles. Songtradr has yet to announce any future changes to the platform as well. For all intents and purposes, it's the same as it ever was.

Hence my confusion over the use of the word "was".

Let's hope that it continues to be so, and that there aren't internal changes ongoing to impact this

Doesn't everyone just rip now with youtube-dl/yt-dlp?

I always thought audio quality was something for snobs, but recently my car's aux input died and I burned a few CDs with yt-dlp rips and I get it now. Youtube's 128kbps makes me wince on some of the quieter recordings, even compared to my previous setup of Spotify over a lackluster LTE connection.

It might be relevant that you're burning them at a set volume, and your only way to increase volume is by bumping up the output volume, whereas any sort of mp3 player you can bump up the volume of the source independently from the output. Maybe if you burn them at a higher volume and keep CD player's volume lower you'll have better luck?

Disclaimer: I'm far from an audiophile, I just know from personal experience that if your source is low volume and your output is cranked up you get a lot of...distortion? Interference? Artifacts? I don't know, it just sounds staticky and worse.

> if your source is low volume and your output is cranked up you get a lot of...distortion? Interference? Artifacts?

Mostly noise because you're amplifying it as well, and possibly artifacts because material converted at too low levels (which is the case of old CD rips that weren't normalized before encoding) wouldn't use all the available headroom, therefore losing one bit.

I managed to collect a rather massive digital music collection when p2p was en vogue.

I still listen to it every day because it's highly curated and has tracks unavailable on any service, but quality-wise it definitely feels like I'm plumbing the depths of a DVD collection when everyone else is watching Netflix.

Yeah, I used to do a lot of p2p too, I miss it. I used it heavily in HS but fell to the convenience of Spotify in college.

It was really a shame when what.cd went down, that was arguably the most complete archive of recorded music anywhere.

Support for artists and flac as the other comment already said (as well as clean UX)

If you want to support artists you'd be way better of just making a direct donation.

Sure, but:

* not every artist has a donation link. * I don't get the album for free otherwise

So I think it's totally ok for the service to give 10% to bandcamp (or whatever camp it will be in the future).

But I would be really happy when something like Faircamp takes off, and is easy for artists to use (or labels etc.), so they would be having more control, while providing a clean interface (unlike e.g. Qobuz)

I certainly don't, mostly because I want to pay the artists I appreciate. But also, the sound quality is awful.

can't get flacs from YouTube and some people also want to support the artists.

Can get flac from tidal or qobuz. I buy vinyls and go to concerts. That’s how I support musicians. Bandcamp is very nice imho

And buy vinyl, CDs and t-shirts etc.

No, I want to pay for my music. Otherwise why would the author continue such beautiful music?

Probably not. Bandcamp still sells albums, Amazon as well, and there are bunch of streaming services out there. If everyone was ripping from YouTube how would they stay in business?

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