I don't know if the freedom of Bandcamp's model is the primary psychological factor for me in this behavior, but I find myself much more liberally spendy (paying more than what the artist usually asks, if it's an option) with this platform than I have been on any other. From watching the front page where they give you a live feed of people purchasing music, including how much more than the asking price they pay, I don't think I'm alone.

Same here:

I feel I simultaneously

* judge authors and artists more leniently when I get to choose what to pay

* and pay more, partially just to support a good cause (I know the artist/author pockets most of it) and I guess partially to spite the big labels and make it more attractive for other artists to leave the dark side.

Yeah. It feels virtuous to pay on Bandcamp, in a way it doesn't in other places, because you know they're getting most of it and what the deal is.

I think SoundCloud is better if you are not planning on buying anything and want to listen to covers of songs you like.

Also SoundCloud front end is easily the best front end of any site I've seen before or since.

Beatport? Definitely a lot easier to buy large amounts of tracks at once.

Not if you want lossless tracks. Beatport's lossless surcharge is absolutely insane.

A good example is 'Ils - Bohemia (Remixes & Exclusives)'. [1] This album consists of 35 tracks which in MP3 format is £18.35 inc. VAT ($20 USD).

However, should you want it in WAV or AIFF format (they don't offer FLAC) and the album suddenly costs £41.54 ($54.32 USD) due to the ridiculous £26.25 surcharge. After adding VAT @ 20% the total comes to £49.85! It would be over 7 times cheaper to buy the physical CD from Amazon [2] and rip it yourself.

I don't understand how Beatport can justify charging these exorbitant prices for lossless tracks? Even their MP3 prices aren't great compared to the competition. [3]

[1] https://www.beatport.com/release/bohemia-remixes-and-exclusi...

[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0007XTOB6

[3] http://www.junodownload.com/products/ils-bohemia-remixes-exc...

Their target audience is DJs, and a lot of their catalogue is only available there or on limited-print vinyls. If you can buy an album elsewhere or on CD, don't buy it on beatport.

I remember friend having a lot of trouble using Beatport without flash.

Same goes with Soundcloud - works well 80% of the time, but then some tracks wouldn't forward and just keep loading forever. Must be some DRM involved.

I know SoundCloud is implementing DRM based on some personal tests that inspired me to write-up a quick musing:

http://medium.com/@6StringMerc/quick-thoughts-on-soundcloud-...

The article points out that Bandcamp is trying to expand their Editorial staff. I think that's akin to "mission creep" or dangerously close to opening up "payola" avenues. Beatport turned un-profitable when it tried to do more than just being a download site. Now, they've (allegedly) returned to good profitability by chopping off the unwanted appendages that SFX had pushed downward. Personally I'm happy that they went back to doing what they did best...and coupons!

Disclaimer: Happy Beatport customer for 5+ years.

To me, SoundCloud feels like a whole other domain of music distribution. I listen to a lot of small artists, all of whom are mainly based on SoundCloud. It serves as a place to catch up with their new release and what they like ( using the repost system ). And practically all of the artists who actually sell their music, put up links to BandCamp for people to purchase their tracks from.

Sound scraping the preview MP3s? While this is trivial (view source, you can find the URLs starting popplers5.bandcamp.com), it strikes me as ... a bit tawdry. These are indie artists.

What's the use case you had in mind for it?

Spotify seems to be partially gearing for that. A lot of reasonable sized artists' pages have an "Offers" section where they sell records and other merch.

cool insight. vertical integration rockefeller style