Bandcamp consistently throws Ws
Surprising considers that it’s parent company Epic (yes, of
FortniteUnreal Tournament and GoW fame) has a pro-AI stance.Your info is a bit out of date. Epic already sold off Bandcamp back in 2023 during layoffs. Its owned by Songtradr now, who I personally know nothing about.
Short Wikipedia, so far so good for a company.
It was being OVERRUN with AI stuff, hopefully this cleans it up
Good especially those that mix’s Quran verses with metal music which is very haram and forbidden to us Muslims
I was buying some LPs recently and saw one that caught my attention. I looked them up and almost all their content included some form of AI.
it’s bullshit.
fuck AI.
I’m glad they did this. Confident in my choice to remain with Bandcamp.
Totally agree. I just wish I had more money to spend with Bandcamp. :D
What’s a good way to discover artists on Bandcamp? Most artists I listen to at the moment are with the usual big labels and don’t sell on Bandcamp.
- read Bandcamp’s writeups. Sometimes they do a deep dive into a genre, city, or band. https://daily.bandcamp.com/
- if you find something you like, scroll down and there’s other users who bought it. Peek into their collections
- if you scroll down further on an album, there will be more recommendations
- you can search by genre or tag, too
This is the best answer! Thank you for sharing your methods. I was going to reply about the daily editorial, but yours is more complete.
I would also like to add that I type the name of things I like and often find them on bandcamp. Including big artists.
Peter Gabriel, Evanescence, Run the Jewels, Flight of Conchords, Ghost…
What I don’t find there, I get from a thrift store (easy to find famous artists there) or quobuz.
The real rare gems are still hard to find, and require more ambitious exploring.
Most of the best, I get from suggestions from other people in irc or on the fediverse.
I’ll often find something interesting and look through the collections of other people who also have the album. Another way is to just start in the genre sections and browse.
Here are a few varied suggestions, no specific genre since I don’t know your tastes:
https://boyharsher.bandcamp.com/album/country-girl-uncut https://idlesband.bandcamp.com/album/tangk https://williethrasher.bandcamp.com/album/spirit-child
There are a couple of methods that I use to discover new artists on Bandcamp. First, you can search by genre on the site itself, which will give you a listing of artists in that genre. Grab a glass of your preferred beverage and spend some time checking them out - each artist’s page has samples of their music that you can stream for free (most have entire albums that can be streamed). I have found tons of artists that I love just by doing this very thing.
The second method I use is Music Map which lets you put in your favorite artists and then shows you other artists with a similar sound (which you can then look up on Bandcamp). It can be really hit or miss, but I’ve found a few artists I like this way.
Hope that helps - have fun listening to new tunes! :)
Thanks, I didn’t know about music map. I have used Everynoise, which is similar, but doesn’t get updates anymore since Spotify closed that particular API access.
Try searching by tags within genres that you like.
That doesn’t really work in my experience because artists seem to be incapable of tagging their work correctly.
N-th the suggestion to creep on people who buy the same stuff as you. There’s a lil grid of their pfps, I click on a cool one and check out the stuff they listen to that I haven’t
This, I think, is the best way. You start to recognise people that are buying all the same stuff you like so follow them and periodically have a look at what they are buying.
All other avenues on bandcamp are a bit shit IMO. Tags are dog shit because artists never tag their work correctly and my feed will constantly be old shit I listened to a long time ago. You can’t even rely on it to let you know when artists you follow release new work.
I love bandcamp but I also fucking hate bandcamp xD
Not answering your question exactly, but finding community (non-commercial) radio shows in your local area that you like is a good way to find new music. Find a few shows/presenters that play music/genres you like and they should play local artists that you might not have heard. They’ll also mention upcoming gigs etc.
c. Find a few shows/presenters that play music/genres you like and they should play local artists that you might not have heard.
I love option c. I’ve been going to the music shop and buying stickers, then looking up the bands whose stickers i’ve bought and going to their shows. most of the bands are, uh, well the bands i was in at that age sucked and they’re a little better than we were. but like $5 concerts, you can’t be mad even if the music sucks
That’s definitely one of the more unique methods of finding new music haha
I’m a fan of the new and notable feed on the main page myself. KEXP is also a great source of new acts which are typically not on major labels.
maybe someone [who is not me because i am done being a mod] could make a “hey i found this neat song/album/artist/genre/existence on bandcamp” community because i would for sure sign up and comment and share songs
YES! YES!! YES!!! I hate having to sift through that tripe when exploring certain genres.
Keep it up bandcamp. We are all waiting for when you enshittify like everyone else but you’ve held it at bay so far.
They gave us a scare over the years, being sold around to companies that are famous for enshittifying platforms.
Epic sold the company when people unionized, and the next did a trick to not recognized the union and “hire” half of the staff (contrary to fire half of them).
The platform is not what has been 5 years ago, but it is still my favourite place to get music around.
I hope more platforms ban this useless spam.
Great decision Bandcamp, I use Bandcamp to support musicians
Bandcamp W. One of the platforms I buy music from and surf other than soundcloud. You can find some banger albums by genre on there.
I hope all my fave autistic musicians are not mistaken for AI and deleted under a false-positive detection of being AI. At least my fave’s album releases all pre-date AI music generators. Safe, for now.
I think safer would be to encourage all purely AI-generated be tagged as such, so it can be optionally toggled out of view, and then there’s less incentive for the unscrupulous to simply hide that it’s AI generated. Banning increases the “hide that it’s AI” vibes, not the “don’t do AI” vibes. Prohibition does not prevent. Prohibition makes the good things bad and the bad things worse.
Prohibition of AI does indeed prevent Bandcamp’s servers from being overwhelmed by the storage needs of slop “artists” and the gruel they call their “music”.
I’ve been re-reading LOTR lately and I like to put on Middle-Earth ambience in the background. Do you have any idea how much LOTR themed ambient slop is on YouTube? There are channels with over 100 videos, each exactly a 3-hour slopfest of sounds with HD/4k resolution slop art playing on screen.
Considering the vast majority of real artists might put out 5 hours of music in their entire careers, why the hell would bandcamp want to host hundreds of hours of fake music from a single source and pay for all that storage?
AI is a plague upon humanity. Bandcamp is on the right side of history and I’m happy to have my music on their platform.
I doubt they would just blanket scan all music and ban that which they think is AI (aside from how that’s practically impossible). That’s the kind of thing a lazy big tech company would do. I wouldn’t be surprised if this will just end up being on a report basis, at the very least with human verification once steps like banning would be taken. Because otherwise it would be pretty disastrous for the reasons you mentioned, since it would ban legitimate artists. Not to mention the bar of “substantially AI” would need to be judged by someone.
lol I can imagine decades ago people cheering for songs that use sampling to no longer being allowed on a site. We really never learn sigh.
I can imagine lots of things, but I don’t confuse it with reality, because I’m an adult.
I think there’s a place for AI in music, just like sampling, and it has to be regulated, but not straight-up banned (or regulated in a muddy way like “substantially made by AI”).
It doesn’t help that everyone has their own personal opinion on how much AI should be allowed, though, and we’re never gonna reach a solution that everyone agrees on.
We will just like all these issues before, A new generation of artists will rise and see the use in them, while a new generation without the prejudices of the previous will consume. Everyone complained about how digital art “isn’t art”, literally the computer IS doing most of the work for you, computers are complex machines and something as simple as drawing pad goes through layers among layers among layers of abstractions made my the work hours of hundreds of engineers. But we agree the artist was the person using the drawing pad no? People complained about photography the same way. The world is flooded with horrible hip hop beats over copy pasted sample packs over 808 VSTs, we all agree now that this is all art, the people at the time did not.
People confuse the playing an instrument and illustration as art, when art is much more complex, vague, and interesting idea than that. All forms of human production carry some artistic value, we simply value things where the production process feels less alienated than others (Carpentry vs factory work)
All forms of human production carry some artistic value, we simply value things where the production process feels less alienated than others (Carpentry vs factory work)
And we agree on that, I think most people do. What they don’t agree on is what qualifies a “human production”. Or, to which degree does a human have to get involved in a production for that to be considered “human”.
I think there’s a gigantic difference between someone composing a song and writing its lyrics, then pasting it into an AI and having it sing it (basically Vocaloid), and a guy going onto Suno, writing “make me a pop song”, and taking the first output. And they shouldn’t be treated the same way.
I agree theirs a big difference, mostly from the fact they are using the tool bad (Just writing make me a pop song does not inspire) but to me this is the same as good hip-hop versus people who just rap random shit over premade hip-hop beats. It’s “art” but its just no high quality (which makes sense why sense why would we want to limit it on a site).
One thing I wonder is if you make a recommendation system that generates new music purely based on what previous music you liked (That was also generated by AI) who is the artist? Think like spotify but the AI keeps creating new music based on what you like from it. In the end I feel you are the artist of that song then no? Your recommendations then created whatever final song you listened to. Just something I was thinking about
to me this is the same as good hip-hop versus people who just rap random shit over premade hip-hop beats. It’s “art” but its just no high quality
I still don’t think it’s the same, even the guy who rapped random shit over someone else’s beat put MUCH more effort and input into the “song” than the random prompt guy.
The line gets blurry when you talk about stuff like Duchamp’s readymades, which are considered “art” by a reasoning that you could easily apply to the prompt guy song too. Just goes to show how literally everyone has a different definition of “art”, and even a single person’s definition might be contradictory in itself.
One thing I wonder is if you make a recommendation system that generates new music purely based on what previous music you liked (That was also generated by AI) who is the artist? Think like spotify but the AI keeps creating new music based on what you like from it. In the end I feel you are the artist of that song then no? Your recommendations then created whatever final song you listened to.
Ehh… that’s just an indirect commission. For example, the Prince of Wales in 1876 was gifted by the Maharaja of Jaipur some british usage items crafted by the city’s artisans that were specifically made as a gift to him. But the “artist” in this situation is not the prince whose taste was tailored to, nor the Maharaja who commissioned them, it’s still the individual artisans.
In the case of the algorithm-made song, you basically “commissioned” to it a song made for your tastes, and it “gifted” it to you. But it’s still the algorithm who “made” it, not you. And personally, unless you take it and consciously edit/remix it in some way, I wouldn’t label it as “art”. But again, it’s a blurry subject and that’s just my opinion.
That really was a thing. There was a backlash towards sampling for like a decade and nowadays, no one seems to even notice or care. Same with synthesizer based music…so many people argued that it was not music and not real and that it was going to ruin music.
It genuinely astonishes me how regressive people turn about AI in art, its like I’m talking to Bill O Reilly complaining about modern art.
Just watch, we’re two weeks away from some tech bro trying to start a Clankercamp website. The best part is that no one except other tech bros will care.
They do already, and most of the comments on the noise are “please share promp”.
I really hope they do. I hope the build their own websites to host all of there slop and self-segregate. Please do it. It would be so easy to add a couple of slop domains to my pihole.
Suno.com is basically this. It even allows users to comment on the songs.
Unfortunately they would never stick to segregated websites like that. AI pushers needs to expose it to everyone and slop it on general platforms, otherwise they will lose out on that sweet investment money.
Are Bandcamp still the good guys? I thought they were bought by the big capital and now went down the drain. Artists’ opinions especially welcome
I haven’t noticed any change since they’ve been bought up. The new owners did bust up an attempt at unionizing, though, so there’s that.
on average, i’m earning 3x as much from bandcamp FLAC sales compared to what i earn off streaming. Hasn’t been ruined so far.
People expected them to get fucked after the acquisition, though the new owners are just going “you keep doing what you’re doing, not gonna change a thing, just give us a cut of your profits”
Touch wood, it’s gonna stay that way.
They fucked the union, though.
The massive layoff that gutted Oakland-based music service Bandcamp hit one group at the company particularly hard: leaders of its nascent union.
As of Monday, Bandcamp has been sold by video game juggernaut Epic Games to Songtradr, a music licensing firm. The acquisition closed with just half of Bandcamp’s employees offered jobs at the Santa Monica-based company.
The job cuts, which SFGATE reported Monday amounted to about 60 of 118 employees, disproportionately hit union leaders, Bandcamp United told SFGATE in a Tuesday press release. Every member of the union’s eight-person bargaining team was laid off, it said, and in sum, 40 of the bargaining unit’s 67 people lost their jobs.
Shit, that I didn’t know about 😭
deleted by creator
I don’t bought a lot of music, but all the independent musicians I follow have a bandcamp store. They also sell merch there.
Were sold by epicc to some other company.
Still doing their regular job and not went to shit.- A user
Oh, I need to get back into Bandcamp
The next Bandcamp Friday is Feb 6 (Bandcamp foregoes their cut).
