Website: Bandcamp

Every now and then, a music-oriented website comes to my attention and really impresses me. MySpace started out as a nifty idea for the independent artist, but the potential for abuse and shift in direction was obvious from the get-go. When I first found mp3.com over a decade ago, it was a fantastic site for discovering lesser-known artists, but they whored themselves out pretty quickly.

I finally found the perfect spiritual successor to mp3.com, and it looks like they've implemented a solid model with great potential. It's the perfect example for the direction the music industry should be taking in the age of the Internet. The name of the site is Bandcamp, and when I first discovered it about two months ago, I decided right away that it should be the subject of my first website review. After giving it some time and thought, here are my observations.


For starters, let's look at preview streaming. You're probably thinking "OK, they have a low-quality, 30-second clip of every song just like Amazon, et al." You're wrong. Bandcamp offers full-length 128kbps MP3 previews. "Wow, really? So if I don't want to buy an album, I could find a tool to download/record that stream." Sure. That is, if you really think the effort is worth the quality loss, and you really want to be that asshole...go for it. But wouldn't it be easier to just decide whether or not you like it and then pay the measly $1 for the album?

That's right; I've found dozens of albums for right around a buck or two. Not only that, but there are tons of FREE downloads. Bandcamp gives the artist complete control of the cost of the album. They can set it to any static price they want, give it away, or allow the user to specify a price (with or without a minimum cost). The more expensive albums I've found cost no more than typical music store sites; I don't think I've seen anything over $12 yet. And yes, you can usually download individual tracks. I've even seen some artists who offer free individual downloads and charge $2 for the full album if you want to save the trouble (and usually get extra goodies, like cover art or even bonus tracks). I really encourage people to chip in a tad more when an album is really cheap. Would it really kill you to pay $5 instead of $4.70, especially when most of it goes to the artist? (Read on for more about that!)

That low (or absent) cost gets you any one of a variety of formats, including 320k MP3, OGG, AAC, FLAC (yeah, that's right), and Apple Lossless. The artist only has to upload one copy in a lossless format (WAV, FLAC, etc.), and Bandcamp transcodes the rest, so all of these choices are available on every single download. This is a huge plus for someone like me who wants everything in FLAC these days. If you have a really shitty ISP or you're on stone-age dial-up and don't have the bandwidth for even a 50MB download, sorry, can't help you there.

Bandcamp also offers a variety of licensing options that should appeal to both artists and fans. Many artists still wish to license their music under a traditional copyright, which is just fine here. If you'd rather use one of the more flexible Creative Commons licenses, that works too. There's a good amount of CC stuff here, often by-nc-sa, so samplers and remixers can find some great material.

The best thing about Bandcamp is that the artists see a high percentage of sales (85%, up to 90% when an artist hits $5000). Doesn't matter if it's a download or a physical album (although physical albums are currently 10% across the board while Bandcamp is working on related features). And there are other price breaks too, for things like higher-priced ($100+) deluxe-type items. And they don't hold money; the artist's share goes directly to his/her PayPal account whenever a purchase is made.

As of December 18, the front page states that in the past 30 days, artists have made $509,358. That's a pretty sweet figure. Here are a few other claims from the front page:

• On Bandcamp, albums outsell tracks 4 to 1 (in the rest of the music buying world, tracks outsell albums 16 to 1).
  
• On name-your-price albums, fans pay an average of 50% more than whatever you set as your minimum.
  
• We've driven 567,683 paid transactions and served 9,335,852 downloads to happy fans.

Don't believe it? Take it from a major-label artist who made the switch. Bandcamp posted the following quote from Amanda Palmer:
"I've always tried to be as directly connected with fans as possible, but until you guys came along, the actual facilitation and sales-element of the infrastructure was much more difficult. Bandcamp brings the whole picture together into a very lovely package that not only works, but works WELL. Me and my team made more in one night than I've seen to date from my 2008 (major-label) album."

Even with all these fantastic points, I have found a few downsides to Bandcamp. Some of these are things I imagine might be addressed or added in the future, but I was unable to find any reference to such intentions.

The first is the lack of a good search engine. The only way to search Bandcamp is to use the search field on the main page, which is just driven by Google with the "site:" function. The site supports tagging, but the Google thing is still the only way to search for it. Fortunately, it works OK once you get used to using it, but it can be a little difficult to find what you want. For example, searching for an artist name might yield singles or albums as the first 5-20 results, when what you really want to get to is the band's main page. I've found the best way to navigate is to get to an artist's album page, and click the "more" link in the album sidebar.

A major missing feature is the ability to create a user account. When you make a purchase, you get redirected to PayPal, and that's it. While this makes the whole process very quick and easy, it seems that your purchases are only remembered via browser cookies. So, if I purchase an album at home and download the FLAC, then decide while I'm at work that I want to grab the OGGs and stick them on my phone, it doesn't know that I already bought the album. This isn't a complete loss since you get an e-mail with a download link when you make a purchase, so as long as you're using web-based e-mail, you can still get your downloads anywhere. Problem with that is, those links expire eventually. Apparently you can e-mail support about that, but I haven't looked into it. It would be nice to have an account that keeps track of everything you've bought so you can re-download any time. Bonuses would be the addition of user-defined tags (as long as there is an option to ignore them in searches), favorites, suggestions, etc. But no social crap, please, or at least keep it to a minimum. Please note I have not experimented with an artist account (which is free to sign up for, by the way); I get the impression that it's only for uploading music and managing your page, but I have no details at the moment. Until such time as Bandcamp sees fit to change the way this works, you should probably keep backups of your downloads somewhere.

Any other drawbacks are minor, and mostly on the artists' side of things. The most limiting one I read about is the 291MB upload limit. However, that's not even a very big deal. Many albums will compress to less than that using FLAC. Also, when an artist hits over $20 in sales, their limit is increased to 600MB, which is enough for anything in FLAC, and probably even most albums left in WAV format. Another item I saw mentioned in the FAQ was the lack of "label" accounts, which isn't something I would have thought of; they're working on it, anyway.

The cons here mostly affect the users, thus the docking of a full star from my rating. Sites like this that are primarily (if not completely) sales-driven rely on a strong user base, and I think the search engine and re-download capability need to be addressed if Bandcamp wants to gain a larger user base. The site could easily become much more popular and generate even more impressive revenue for artists if the user experience is made more seamless. The site is relatively young, and the staff seems open to making improvements, so hopefully they will find ways to make the site more accessible in these respects.

Having said that, the pros outweigh the cons by a lot. Additionally, there are a number of other benefits to the artists that I didn't even get into here. Overall, Bandcamp is an excellent site for both fans and artists. Whether you're an artist looking for an outlet, or a music fan looking for great, cheap/free music, go check out Bandcamp immediately!