I didn't know Bandcamp but a few days ago I wanted to buy the Bastion soundtrack. The Bandcamp link was the first hit on Google and it was linked from the game's official page so I went there.

I could listen to all the songs without restriction, pick from a variety of reasonable formats (including ogg) and download the same album to my computer at work the next day without any trouble.

This is how you do it. They treated me like a customer not a criminal and it was actually easier than using BitTorrent. I was happy to give these folks my money.

Bandcamp is a fantastic service, my friends and I absolutely love it. I love the ability to preview the mp3 audio at 128kpbs without flash. Noting that bandcamp takes 10-15% of the sale, with the rest going to the artist is what keeps me going back there first to look for music instead of iTunes.

Only downside is discovery of music on bandcamp, a side project I'm currently working on is a tool for myself to find new music on bandcamp; unfortunately their APIs aren't designed for finding similar artists.

Heh, the reason I used Bandcamp instead of iTunes is that it runs on Linux and that they actually want my money :-).

At least in some countries (mine included) you can't in fact buy music or video from iTunes. They won't accept your paypal or credit card.

There is a workaround -- buying and redeeming gift codes. But honestly, I can't be arsed to that.

Take a look at last.fm and their API - they have a pretty good relevant artist graph.

I made something to show it off a year or so ago: http://richardlyon.co.uk/coffee/lastfm.php?artist=mogwai (switch from 3d to 2d if it's being a pain, change artist in URL to something you like)

I dont suppose its open source is it? I'd really like to see how you've done it / what you used. Is it on gitHub?

UPDATE: @richthegeek, Thanks much appreciated.

Yep - http://github.com/richthegeek/coffeegraph

A more update version of the graphing program (without the lastfm stuff) is visible at http://richthegeek.github.com/coffeegraph

oh, please do that! I agree that it's hard to discover new content on Bandcamp. Apart from that the service is great. Very transparent and straight process of buying and a great full length player that has no issues on mobile devices.

Being a musician and considering moving to Bandcamp since the small labels I worked aren't very good at marketing their releases, I wonder how Bandcamp works for other artists compared to other stores like iTunes, amazon, etc. Are there any stats available?

Another interesting point: bandcamp does not in any way prevent users from downloading songs from them for free. A quick "view source" makes it trivial to determine the actual URLs for all the songs in an album, as do any number of standard tools for downloading files referenced by a page. Despite that, they make it easy for people to actually purchase songs and albums rather than just downloading them, and thus people do purchase them rather than just downloading them. They explicitly point out this approach in their FAQ: http://bandcamp.com/faq#steal .

For example, just this morning someone paid $10 for an album after Googling lelia broussard torrent. A bit later, a fan plunked down $17 after searching for murder by death, skeletons in the closet, mediafire.

Where do they get this data?

From the referer header. If someone clicks from google the search fields are transmitted in the referrer.

If this bothers you, use duckduckgo.com which has a special bounce-page to hide this info.

> If this bothers you, use duckduckgo.com which has a special bounce-page to hide this info.

Or something like RefControl http://www.stardrifter.org/refcontrol/ for Firefox and control what and to whom you send.

Or use https search, google doesn't even require you to go to encrypted.google.com [1]

[1] https://www.google.com/

Won't the referrer still be sent if the target site is available over SSL?

Yes, but the referrer will only be google.com.

Google SSL uses POST for the search query parameters, so the referrer URI w/ GET parameters will not leak your search terms.

I still think paying more than a few cents per song is insane. Who set these prices? They're not based on actual scarcity or supply and demand.

Why? Do you think there are plenty of Queens around?

I'm not paying for the band itself, I'm paying for digital bits which are an infinite supply.

I use Bandcamp from the other side, and it is a fantastic service. They not only know the music industry from the inside out (read "Bandcamp for Drummers"), but I've literally never had any problem with their site's functionality.

This can work for some special interest bands that are arty and hip and young and sexy. It will not work for conservative musical genres and pop music.

> It will not work for conservative musical genres and pop music.

I don't see why it can't work for most musical genres. I have bought music from bandcamp that spans dozens of different genres.

As for pop music, good riddance.

I'd rather artists get paid because their music is good, not because some company is paying millions a year to market the hell out it.

I think what the GP means is that it won't mesh well with certain outdated marketing methods used for certain target audiences. The genre itself is merely correlated with this, not directly linked.

Which is perfectly okay. We're in an age where music production is so accessible that a few talented musicians can make music of better quality than a top "pop band" and sell it with near-zero distribution costs. The production cost of a full album, including paying a talented, professionally trained vocalist, is now down to just a few thousand dollars.

As a result, there's a massive, ever-increasing supply of incredibly high-quality music that never touched a record label. The genre and style are irrelevant.

"Pop artists" these days are now more a matter of selling idols than selling sound. Let the music be made by actual musicians: Justin Bieber and AKB48 were never marketed based on their music to begin with.

Exactly. A "one-size fits all" model isn't going to work in the fragmented music market. Pop artists & their labels already know how to make money selling music, this model is more in tune to the less-than-mainstream.

Come on guys, why the downvotes? It's might not be the brightest comment on HN, but what's offensive or bad about it? Just discuss!

(upvoted to counter stupid downvotes, even though i don't agree with you)

Even Youtube seems to have worked for some singers like Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black.