Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you encoding MP3 at all in 2023? It's at least two generations behind the times. (AAC and then Opus)
I'm not encoding mp3's, but a lot of music is sold as mp3's :)
Disappointed Amazon still only offers mp3...
Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
231–240 of 254 posts
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#232Throwaway, 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.
That's very discouraging. Bandcamp was great and I will be sorry to see it go.
As I see it maybe there is a void which will need to be filled.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cymbals in MP3 sound bad due to fundamental limitations of MP3; even high bitrates can't fix that. It's not a problem in any other codec though. You probably couldn't hear the difference in AAC or Opus.
Interesting - it's a persistent and annoying problem. I assumed that better bit rates would improve the issue but most compressed music I listen to is AAC where it may be better. Do you have a reference for the MP3 issue?
https://web.archive.org/web/20120222124415/http://www.mp3-te...
The highest frequency band doesn't have its own quantization level meaning it's hard to control the bitrate when there's detail in it.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Just so you know, Apple and Amazon also offer DRM free music downloads. Obviously, you have to actually buy the individual song or album, not a streaming plan. In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file (on Windows, I'm not sure what the s…
For an online music store with DRM free downloads I like Qobuz. Available quality depends on the album/song, but if something is not on Bandcamp it's a good, no-nonsense alternative.
Just tried them... they make you download individual tracks like they've never heard of a zip file, just to make you try their app out of annoyance. Not really no-nonsense :(.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check out https://rateyourmusic.com/ which is good for discovery, e.g., https://rateyourmusic.com/genre/atmospheric-black-metal/ and the all-time lists: https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/all-time/g:atmosp... Users also make wonderful charts on this website. also, hello from a fellow what refugee!
I'm very happy you posted this, the information here is really interesting. Thank you.
I'm glad you found it useful :-)
The other useful resource I will mention is "soulseek" (https://www.slsknet.org/news/) which is basically old-school direct downloads, and includes a lot of obscure music that you won't find on AppleMusic/Spotify.
Happy trails!
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also watermark free?
Is bandcamp watermark free?
No, not for a while. As I understand it they didn't have one at first but after some asshole used it as a backup (since they let anyone upload "music") and made a blog post about it they added one. Quite possibly they wanted to anyway and it was just a convenient excuse.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn’t even that per-se. It’s treatment of dividends as income vs long term capital gains. Very, very different tax rates and degree of flexibility re: when you’d get taxed.
Right. And that leaves out that the company's already paid taxes on them.
Correct, that is just the icing on top.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
For an online music store with DRM free downloads I like Qobuz. Available quality depends on the album/song, but if something is not on Bandcamp it's a good, no-nonsense alternative.
Just tried them... they make you download individual tracks like they've never heard of a zip file, just to make you try their app out of annoyance. Not really no-nonsense :(.
Oof, that's frustrating and a recent change. There used to be a quality selection at the top and a "Download all" button that would download an archive of the entire purchase.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#239Make 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…
> One negative thing about bandcamp is that artists/labels/bandcamp can remove anything at anytime for any reason, so things you paid for can straight up disappear.
That seems borderline illegal.. I can't imagine Valve removing a Steam game from someone's library if they already bought it without the Internet giving them a lot of bad press, they'll just delist the item from being purchased.
Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?
#240Earlier 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…
Lossless is mainly for mixing/remixing, not listening.
And archiving. Personally I prefer to have the lossless format stored in my digital vault and use a lossy version on my portable devices for storage efficiency.