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Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
81–90 of 254 posts
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have also purchased music on Amazon and let's not pretend its "full on downloads", Amazon has V0 MP3 only iirc and Bandcamp offers ever format under the sun including FLAC and ALAC. Don't know about Apple because iTunes doesn't have Linux support and the whole setup of downloading an app in order to download a file strikes me as a bit gross.
It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon…
For me it’s not about somehow hearing a difference (at least, not anymore, especially at my age. Thought I do remember the days when mp3s had a good chance of sounding tinny from bad encoding, even when done by myself from a CD). Honestly, I probably have a nonzero amount of bandcamp flac files that are actually just mp3’s that were converted, but I’m unlikely to ever know unless I analyze the waveform.
For me it’s about having a reference/master copy to archive and then modify, cutting parts away I don’t like, applying equalization, etc and compressing for streaming/loading on a device. I am not going to compound losses on a file if I can help it.
Storage space is trivial these days, so just grabbing a flac file and declaring that it’s perfectly as the artist intended removes any potential cognitive load of trying to evaluate audio quality or “which of these mp3 files is the best one to archive” anxiety.
Basically: Start clean, stay clean, and move on.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#83> Songtradr is talking up using its licensing prowess to give opportunities to Bandcamp artists — including licensing on Epic games. So... Epic sells bandcamp, a profitable business unit, to another entity which will then sell bandcamp assets back to ... Epic. ?? And Epic's competitors. Why would Epic go out of its way to support a company that is supporting its competitors?
The machine that goes 'ping'.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#84Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader Other downloaders only target the openly available mp3 files. I have a straightforward guide on how to get up and running on windows here: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 You should always archive your collection anyways. One negative thing about bandcamp i…
> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs.
Don't forget Qobuz: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop
They not only have streaming plans but also let you buy the music files directly.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#85Throwaway, but I work at Bandcamp. We're all very frightened and don't know what the future holds. We were told that some, but not all, will get offers from Songtradr and it may be up to a month before we receive an offer. It's pretty depressing.
thanks for your contributions to bandcamp, I'd love to connect with you to explore opportunities working on www.kuky.com we're a platform that actually pays creators for their music.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#86Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader Other downloaders only target the openly available mp3 files. I have a straightforward guide on how to get up and running on windows here: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 You should always archive your collection anyways. One negative thing about bandcamp i…
> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. Don't forget Qobuz: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop They not only have streaming plans but also let you buy the music files directly.
Amazon has always let me download the entire album as mp3, I've made cd's and copied to usb/phone just fine.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#87Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader Other downloaders only target the openly available mp3 files. I have a straightforward guide on how to get up and running on windows here: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 You should always archive your collection anyways. One negative thing about bandcamp i…
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Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#88Throwaway, but I work at Bandcamp. We're all very frightened and don't know what the future holds. We were told that some, but not all, will get offers from Songtradr and it may be up to a month before we receive an offer. It's pretty depressing.
I work at SongTradr. I know nothing about the acquisition, but can answer any other questions you have.
I feel like Bandcamp 100% fits better with SongTradr than Epic.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#89I've posted something to this effect before but I'll post it again. I'm terrified someone is going to enshittify bandcamp. I used to be a huge what fan, primarily for discovery. Never would've known I liked atmospheric black metal if not for them. When they closed, I didn't really have enough "in" in the scene to know where other refugees went, so I just shopped around for anywhere else that would let me get "real" (…
Most people from What migrated over to what is now called REDacted. Unfortunately your window for account renewal is long passed, but the large majority of What is on there at this point, so worth going through the interview if you wanna get back into it
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon…
I'm a DJ on mid-range monitoring hardware and I can definitely hear the difference with apple's encodes vs FLAC, at least on their older encodes. I am not 100% sure its the compression protocol (could be differences in mastering since streaming has different requirements) but the attentuation on bass and watery-sounding cymbals stick out like a sore thumb in the right listening environment I only buy music on itunes…
then you should check out SongTradr's other recent acquisition, 7digital.com... not only do they have flac, but many have 16 and 24bit available.