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In praise of Bandcamp

Count Arthur

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I've bought quite a few albums as downloads from Bandcamp: https://bandcamp.com/

I never bothered with iTunes and the like because they only offered music in compressed, lossy formats, often for a higher price than I could buy a physical copy on CD and have it sent by post - which, other than the fact that you get it instantly, made no sense.

Bandcamp sells physical copies on vinyl and CD, but also offers digital downloads in a variety of formats. Once you've purchase an album, or track, you can select which format you wish to download it in, they are all the same price. In addition, once you've purchased a track or album you can log into your account and download it at any time in any of the available formats that you wish:

1612261965643.png


I always choose the uncompressed WAV version and quite often I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I get a copy that is a higher bit rate and sampling frequency than CD standard, 16bit/44.1khz, but never lower.

The album above, New Light by Gidge was 16bit, 48khz.

The album Perplexagon by Kebu had both a 16bit, 44.1khz and a 24bit, 88.2khz versions of each track.

All Encores by Nils Frahm was 24bit, 96khz.

I know it's debatable whether you can hear any difference above 16bit/44.1khz, possibly even 320kbps MP3, but it's nice to get more than you bargained for. :)
 

Moderate Dionysianism

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I believe you get whatever the artist/label uploaded, as they don't apply any post-processing like streaming services do. I already had some surprises like this myself, when a screamo album or a re-released cassette from the 80s turned out to be 24bit in the digital version:) It was overkill ofc, but still nice.

BTW, February 5th is Bandcamp Friday, with 100% of the proceedings going directly to the seller. Anyone considering a purchase should do it then.
 

Matias

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I love Bandcamp, it is very friendly to small bands and also sells high res.
 

pagan84

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Yup, quite often I get a 24-bit version of garage-quality recordings from there :)
Foobar2000 can convert whatever you have into FLAC/MP3/AAC/OGG/WAVE and more. Also can change the bit-depth and resample. For free.
Quite useful for 192kHz/32bit vinyl rips LOL
 

Martin

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I’ve bought quite a few albums on Bandcamp. I love the name your price feature on some titles. Yesterday I purchased Nora Brown’s Cinnamon Tree and April Rain’s One Is Glad to Be of Service. Im considering buying an album or two from Stolen Jars. I like finding new music in the music threads on this site.

Martin
 

Sombreuil

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It's interesting to note that most of the time they (on Bandcamp that is) mention who did the mix & mastering. Also and it might be related to what I'm listening to, it's not rare to see the digital version of an album being more expensive than its physical version. There are also lots of bundles, sales, etc throughout the year.
 

phrwn

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Bandcamp is the best! Let's also remember that you can stream whatever you have bought as well. And that you can listen to the entire track to preview something you might want to buy, rather than 30 second segments.
 

Mnyb

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I might choose FLAC or AIFF because the metadata is handled better than WAV. All three will be bit perfect.

Yes there is no reason for WAV since the 90's i would pick FLAC myself .

WAV tagging software has become more common , for a while I and many others actaully thougth it was not possible at all , because most tagging apps don't do WAV. Main culprit is WMP .

WAV is always an learning experience when new to music ripping . 20 years ago i learned the Windows media Player actually don't tag any file but just keeps everything in it's own dB :)
 

Mnyb

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.. But Bandcamp is fantastic most of my music buying the latest 5 years has been from this site
 

hmscott

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I've bought quite a few albums as downloads from Bandcamp: https://bandcamp.com/

I never bothered with iTunes and the like because they only offered music in compressed, lossy formats, often for a higher price than I could buy a physical copy on CD and have it sent by post - which, other than the fact that you get it instantly, made no sense.

Bandcamp sells physical copies on vinyl and CD, but also offers digital downloads in a variety of formats. Once you've purchase an album, or track, you can select which format you wish to download it in, they are all the same price. In addition, once you've purchased a track or album you can log into your account and download it at any time in any of the available formats that you wish:

View attachment 110070

I always choose the uncompressed WAV version and quite often I've been pleasantly surprised to find that I get a copy that is a higher bit rate and sampling frequency than CD standard, 16bit/44.1khz, but never lower.

The album above, New Light by Gidge was 16bit, 48khz.

The album Perplexagon by Kebu had both a 16bit, 44.1khz and a 24bit, 88.2khz versions of each track.

All Encores by Nils Frahm was 24bit, 96khz.

I know it's debatable whether you can hear any difference above 16bit/44.1khz, possibly even 320kbps MP3, but it's nice to get more than you bargained for. :)
Thanks for the head's up - the recording sounds very clean and it has been a relaxing listen so far. Most (all?) Bandcamp releases are on
Tidal and Amazon Music HD, and New Light is available on both @ 16/44.1:
1612282433622.png

1612282578292.png
I'm enjoying the application of a layer of "vinyl" noise in the playback :)

Here are the album links:
https://tidal.com/browse/album/154216500
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B08HGN6DF9

Really enjoying the echo dynamics playing through my new (today) HD660s, thanks again! - Scott
 
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Matias

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kipman725

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love bandcamp its what a music store should be. Prefer it to beatport which I find pretty disoganised, expensive and many tracks are just not that great vinyl rips.
 

Katji

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love bandcamp its what a music store should be. Prefer it to beatport which I find pretty disoganised, expensive and many tracks are just not that great vinyl rips.

Beatport and Traxsource...and Juno, although it is somewhat less corporate/etc.
But all of those are still better than big corporate entities like Amazon and Apple/iTunes and so on. (Who all do funny stuff re format and so on, and
are vague about it.

Bandcamp makes it quite clear - it's all there, starting with the About page. And then the pages explaining to producers and educating them.
 

LTig

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I also bought a few albums at bandcamp. One was a bundle with a T-shirt I'm wearing right now. The band had delivery problems so the singer got in contact with me. That's really great service.
 

fungd

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Worth mentioning that Bandcamp has a reputation for compensating artists fairly, in comparison to other more mainstream purchasing outlets (e.g. iTunes), as well as offering an alternative to the measly payouts of streaming services.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-...camp-compared-to-spotify-apple-music-youtube/

Also, Bandcamp does a yearly promotion in March called Bandcamp Fridays where they waive their fees entirely so all proceeds go directly to the artist. Due to COVID, they are doing this on Feb. 5, March 5, April 2, and May 7.
 

Wagstaff

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Another Bandcamp user and fan here.
Recently bought Harvey Valdes (amazing jazz guitarist); MFTJ (2 records, duo of Mike Keneally and Scott Schorr —and a tee shirt! — ; Ronald Shannon Jackson (Ex-Ornette drummer, among other things); Harriet Tubman (Jazz/fusion power trio); Reeves Gabrels (experimental/rock guitarist, one-time Bowie bandleader among other things...) more, (more) ....

FLAC generally. Didn’t know about sometime-higher
 
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Katji

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Also, Bandcamp does a yearly promotion in March called Bandcamp Fridays where they waive their fees entirely so all proceeds go directly to the artist. Due to COVID, they are doing this on Feb. 5, March 5, April 2, and May 7.

Yes, I wanted to mention, /to get links/text I posted a couple times elsewhere... Yes, started in March/April last year, economic effect of pandemic on artists/producers...and then they extended it...repeated since then.

As in, "you can make a difference", actually... - as opposed to companies sucking more money via government bail-out subsidies.
 
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